% Die, and you win heaven. Conquer, and you enjoy the earth. Stand up now, son of Kunti, and resolve to fight. Realize that pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, are all one and the same: then go into battle. Do this and you cannot commit any sin. - Bhagavad Gita % You have the right to work, but for work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of your work. Desire for the fruits of your work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either. Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure; for it is the evenness in temper which is meant by yoga. Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the calm of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahman. They who work selfishly for results are miserable. - Bhagavad Gita % 'Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, --for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike. While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the sense, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.' - Conclusion to The Renaissance by Walter Pater % 'The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller's cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.' - Walden:Thoreau % The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. - Walden:Thoreau % 'There is only one sin. That is weakness. When I was a boy I read Milton's Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game. Stand up and die game! ... Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to the world. Be strong! ... You talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave.' - Swami Vivekananda % All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. Do not weaken! There is no other way out.... Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is! If death comes - that is the worst of our miseries - let it come! We are determined to die game. That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on! - Swami Vivekananda % 'Soyen Shaku, the first Zen teacher to come to America, said: 'My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes.' He made the following rules which he practiced every day of his life. • In the morning before dressing, light incense and meditate. • Retire at a regular hour. Partake of food at regular intervals. Eat with moderation and never to the point of satisfaction. • Receive a guest with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests. • Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it. • When an opportunity comes do not let it pass you by, yet always think twice before acting. • Do not regret the past. Look to the future. • Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child. • Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.' - Zen Flesh Zen Bones % Tanzan and Ekido were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. 'Come on, girl,' said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud. Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. 'We monks don't go near females,' he told Tanzan, 'especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?' 'I left the girl there,' said Tanzan. 'Are you still carrying her?' - Zen Flesh Zen Bones % 'A lord asked Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others. Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man: Not twice this day Inch time foot gem. This day will not come again. Each minute is worth a priceless gem.' - Zen Flesh Zen Bones % Zui-Gan called out to himself every day, 'Master.' Then he answered himself, 'Yes, sir.' And then he added, 'Become sober.' Again he answered, 'Yes, sir.' 'And after that,' he continued, 'do not be deceived by others.' 'Yes sir; yes, sir,' he replied. - Zen Flesh Zen Bones % 'We must cultivate our garden' - Candide:Voltaire % 'Hark ye yet again - the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike though the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.' - Ahab: Moby Dick % 'Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting!  What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do!  They think me mad- Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened!  That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself!  The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and-Aye!  I lost this leg.  I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer.  Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one.  That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were.  I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes!  I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies-Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me!  No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden.  Come forth from behind your cotton bags!  I have no long gun to reach ye.  Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me.  Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there.  Swerve me?  The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.  Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!  Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!' - Ahab: Moby Dick % There's always a siren Singing you to shipwreck - There There:Radiohead % 'I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees:... I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life... Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.' - Ulysses:Tennyson % 'She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.' - Macbeth:Shakespeare % ROS: All right, then. I don't care. I've had enough. To tell you the truth, I'm relieved. (And he disappears from view.) (GUIL does not notice.) GUIL: Our names shouted in a certain dawn ... a message ... a summons... there must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said-no. But somehow we missed it. (He looks round and sees he is alone.) Rosen--? Guil--?(He gathers himself.) Well, we'll know better next time. Now you see me, now you - (And disappears.) - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead:Stoppard % 'You pretended envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to and from Jupiter Tonans,' laughed I; 'you mere man who come here to put you and your pipestem between clay and sky, do you think that because you can strike a bit of green light from the Leyden jar, that you can thoroughly avert the supernal bolt? Your rod rusts, or breaks, and where are you? Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered, and the days of our lives. In thunder as in sunshine, I stand at ease in the hands of my God. False negotiator, away! See, the scroll of the storm is rolled back; the house is unharmed; and in the blue heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make war on man's earth.' - The Lightning Rod Man:Melville % “ACHIEVEMENT, n. The death of endeavor and the birth of disgust.” - Devil's Dictionary:Ambrose Bierce % “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.” - Shaw % (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. - Politics and the English Language:George Orwell % 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.' - Ozymandias: Percy Bysshe Shelley % Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity. - Ecclesiastes % 'It was a pleasure to burn' - Fahrenheit 451:Bradbury % 'When you do crap, it's definitely crap and there is no excuse' - Chris Gayle % 'Say, will you look at Aldebaran! Look at the colour. Like a - great blood orange!' From the way he spoke he might have been an art critic in a picture gallery. I was astonished. I confessed that I did not know which Aldebaran was - indeed, I had never even noticed that the stars were of different colours. Bozo began to give me some elementary hints on astronomy, pointing out the chief constellations. He seemed concerned at my ignorance. I said to him, surprised: 'You seem to know a lot about stars.' 'Not a great lot. I know a bit, though. I got two letters from the Astronomer Royal thanking me for writing about meteors. Now and again I go out at night and watch for meteors. The stars are a free show; it don't cost anything to use your eyes.' 'What a good idea! I should never have thought of it.' 'Well, you got to take an interest in something. It don't follow that because a man's on the road he can't think of anything but tea-and-two-slices.' 'But isn't it very hard to take an interest in things - things like stars - living this life?' 'Screeving, you mean? Not necessarily. It don't need turn you into a bloody rabbit - that is, not if you set your mind to it.' 'It seems to have that effect on most people.' 'Of course. Look at Paddy - a tea-swilling old moocher, only fit to scrounge for fag-ends. That's the way most of them go. I despise them. But you don't need to get like that. If you've got any education, it don't matter to you if you're on the road for the rest of your life.' 'Well, I've found just the contrary,' I said. 'It seems to me that when you take a man's money away he's fit for nothing from that moment.' 'No, not necessarily. If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, “I'm a free man in here”' - he tapped his forehead - 'and you're all right.' - Down and Out in Paris and London: Orwell % 'Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death'-Time:Pink Floyd % 'The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.' - Stopping By the Woods On A Snowy Evening:Frost % 'Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.' - To His Coy Mistress:Marvell % 'Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act, that each to-morrow Find us further than to-day. Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave. In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!' - Psalm of Life:Longfellow % 'Major Major forged diligently with his left hand to elude identification, insulated against intrusion by his own undesired au- thority and camouflaged in his false mustache and dark glasses as an additional safeguard against detection by anyone chancing to peer in through the dowdy celluloid window from which some thief had carved out a slice.' - Catch 22: Heller % 'A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such deep delight 'twould win me' - Kubla Khan:Coleridge % 'Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman -But who is that on the other side of you? ' - The Waste Land:Eliot % 'Multivac, what do you yourself want more than anything else?' The moment between question and answer lengthened unbearably, but neither Othman nor Gulliman breathed. And there was a clicking and a card popped out. It was a small card. On it, in precise letters, was the answer: 'I want to die.' - All The Troubles of the World:Asimov % 'I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her 'What do you want?' She answered, 'I want to die.' - Saytricon:Petronius % 'Bruce if I run any more,' -and we're still running-'if I run any more I'm liable to have a heart attack and die.' He said, 'Then die.' It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, 'Why did you say that?' He said, 'Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.' - Stirling Silliphant on Bruce Lee % 'Long distance runner what you standing there for? Get up, get off, get out of the door Your playin' cold music on the barroom floor Drowned in your laughter and dead to the core. There's a dragon with matches that's loose on the town Takes a whole pail of water just to cool him down... Almost aflame still you don't feel the heat Takes all you got just to stay on the beat You say it's a living, we all gotta eat but you're here alone there's no one to compete If mercy's in business I wish it for you More than just ashes when your dreams come true' - Fire on the Mountain:Grateful Dead % 'You're messin' up the water you're rolling in the wine you're poisoning your body you're poisoning your mind You gave me Coca-Cola You said it tasted good You watch the television It tells you that you should. How can you live in this way? You must have something to say. There must be more to this life. It's time we did something right. Child of Vision, won't you listen? Find yourself a new ambition.' - Child of Vision:Supertramp % 'If you don't stick to your values when tested, they're not values! They're hobbies'. - Fox News Fear Imbalance, The Daily Show:Jon Stewart % 'Magritte was fascinated by the seductiveness of images. Ordinarily, you see a picture of something and you believe in it, you are seduced by it; you take its honesty for granted. But Magritte knew that representations of things can lie. These images of men aren't men, just pictures of them, so they don't have to follow any rules.' - Charly Herscovici on René Magritte % 'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.' 'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' - Through the Looking Glass:Lewis Carroll % 'I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - The Myth of Sisyphus:Camus % 'The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.' - Walden:Thoreau % 'They are fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.' - Moby Dick:Melville % 'When asked, 'How could you possibly have done the first interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language, the first object oriented software system, all in one year?' Ivan replied, 'Well, I didn't know it was hard.' -Ivan Sutherland % The day before he died, he was practicing. His wife asked him 'Why?' He said, 'I keep hearing improvement.' - YouTube comment about Pablo Casals % 'Interviewer:Yes but his (Col. Matheiu's) is a form of logic which concludes that even torture is necessary and acceptable Franco Solinas: Of course, but you don't attack colonialism for using torture. If you like, you can call torture only the "signal" indicating a decaying situation; but do not wait for the exposure of torture to become aware of the colonial situation. If you do, you are both irresponsible and naïve. The Algerian colonial situation was rotten long before torture became an issue. The truth of the matter is that France never considered the problem. The colonial situation interested her only indirectly and vaguely. Even the French Left held an ambiguous position regarding the problem. Suddenly the question of torture explodes and in France they say its *unethical* to torture. Then and only then is the Algeiran war a "dirty war," colonialism wrong, and the French position anti-historical. In my opinion, this kind of reasoning is hypocritical because war is not ethics, war is not fair play...It is the same attitude - a romantic, nineteenth-century attitude - that led to the Geneva Convention, which established the rules for the kinds of bullets allowed in war. For instance, the dum-dum bullet is not permitted. Bullets must have a copper nose, which unlike lead, has some solidity and does not expand upon hitting the bones. Thus only if a man is wounded in a vital part does he die; if he's wounded in nonvital parts, he survives. This kind of reasoning is ridiculous. For centuries they've tried to prove that war is fair play, just like duels; but war is not, and therefore any method used to fight it is good. When French intelligence proved that the Algerians also used torture - and they did, too - the entire group of French intellectuals was again shocked and began saying, "Well, if the Algerians do it too, then ..." So the discussion was again about fair play. But that's not the point. It is not a question of ethics or fair play. What we must attack is war itself and the situations that lead to it, not the methods used to fight it. Actually, Mathieu is extremely sincere when he rationally and pitilessly says that torture is inevitable and those who want a French Algeria must steel themselves to it. If his position is immoral and inhuman because it tries to halt a historical process, at least he is honest in his dishonesty. He has no use for it...Torture is torture whether the victim be man, woman or child. The question of deliberately and indiscriminately using torture or any other war method, for that matter, is that if you do not you might *lose* the war.' - Interview on the Battle of Algiers included with the Criterion Collection DVD:Franco Solinas % 'I figure if horses can eat green shit and be strong and run like motherfuckers, why shouldn't I?' - On Recording Bitches Brew: Miles Davis % 'This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.' - Voyager Golden Record: Jimmy Carter %