09/22/09

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again. -Og Mandino

09/21/09

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. -Fyodor Dostoevsky

09/16/09

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause -- there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. -Joss Whedon

09/11/09

Writing eases my suffering... writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence. -Gao Xingjian

09/10/09

I used to think that people who regarded everyone benignly were a mite simple or oblivious or just plain lax--until I tried it myself. Then I realized that they made it only look easy. Even the Berditchever Rebbe, revered as a man who could strike a rock and bring forth a stream, was continually honing his intentions. "Until I remove the thread of hatred from my heart," he said of his daily meditations, "I am, in my own eyes, as if I did not exist." -Marc Barasch

09/08/09

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt. -Clarence Darrow

Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies. -John Dryden

09/03/09

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -Galileo Galilei

09/02/09

Language is not merely a means of expression and communication; it is an instrument of experiencing, thinking, and feeling ... Our ideas and experiences are not independent of language; they are all integral parts of the same pattern, the warp and woof of the same texture. We do not first have thoughts, ideas, feelings, and then put them into a verbal framework. We think in words, by means of words. Language and experience are inextricably interwoven, and the awareness of one awakens the other. Words and idioms are as indispensible to our thoughts and experiences as are colors and tints to a painting. —William Chomsky

09/01/09

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a flame to be kindled. -Plutarch