What does Halloween represent? better known as the eve of All Saints’ Day. Halloween in Western countries is about ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and the supernatural.
In Britain, Halloween is associated with children playing ‘Trick or Treat’ a game where children dress up and visit neighbours’ houses threatening to play practical jokes on the inhabitants if not rewarded with sweets or money. All harmless fun of course.
In recent years, the number of local events organised to “celebrate” Halloween has shot up. Also, merchandise is readily available and many families decorate their homes as they do at Christmas.
Where did this phenomenon come from anyway, the United States? We spoke to Kit Bennett from American website Amazing Moms who pleads guilty on all counts.
Kit says, “It’s huge, I would say it’s right up there with Christmas for kids. We as always have gone over the top,” she said. However, Kit, herself a Grandmother and teacher said she has noticed a change in the United States and people have become more safety conscious.
“How we deal with it has changed. It’s actually getting a little lower key. The kids love to dress up and have the candy but we don’t trick or teat so much now. Our children go to shopping plazas now and go store to store to get candy. Many schools are no longer able to celebrate Halloween but they’ll call it a Harvest Party. ”
Kit also told us that some children are banned from attending Halloween events and have accused other children of worshipping evil. Oh dear, this sounds like this yearly activity of fun is all becoming a bit too serious. She also went on to say that the event is becoming a big religious activity in the United States with some people not celebrating it for that reason alone.
However, she did want to point out that she and her family do spend time together on October 31st carving pumpkins and enjoying the whole social occasion.
The most popular Halloween costumes in the United States are a Princess costume for the girls and a Superhero for the boys – again different from the UK where it’s a Witch or Dracula.
In the traditional sense Halloween, or Hallowe’en, is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31st. Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, ghost tours, bonfires, costume parties, visiting “haunted houses”, carving Jack-o’-lanterns, reading scary stories and watching horror movies. It’s also believed that Irish immigrants carried versions of the tradition to North America in the nineteenth century. Other western countries embraced the holiday in the late twentieth century. Halloween is celebrated in several countries of the Western world, most commonly in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Puerto Rico, Japan, New Zealand, and occasionally in parts of Australia. Plus, in Sweden the All Saints’ official holiday takes place on the first Saturday of November.
The most recognisable symbol is the carved pumpkin, lit by a candle inside, this is one of Halloween’s most prominent symbols in America, and is commonly called a jack-o-lantern. Originating in Europe, these lanterns were first carved from a turnip or rutabaga. Believing that the head was the most powerful part of the body containing the spirit and the knowledge, the Celts used the “head” of the vegetable to frighten off any superstitions. The name jack-o’-lantern can be traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer. He tricked the devil into climbing a tree and trapped him by carving a cross into the tree trunk. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack, condemning him to forever wander the earth at night with the only light he had: a candle inside of a hollowed turnip.
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Why We Celebrate Halloween
Rats I Have Known and Loved
RATS I HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED
What one has to understand about Rat people is that once you have made it clear that you know what they are up to, they shape up very nicely . . . or else they walk right out of your life forever. Halfway measures are not their forte.
It’s bizarre. But according to many Chinese, the most endearing quality of Rat people is honesty. I prefer to interpret this Oriental vari¬ety of honesty as something closer to fair play, or simply a high regard for justice. Rats do not like to witness happenings in which undue par¬tiality is exhibited—unless, of course, said Rat is the promulgator of the inequity.
The Rat person possesses a two-sided nature. Outwardly, he is generous and cheery; he seems calm, balanced. On the inside, Rats harbor an inordinate amount of self-interest in the form of greed and acquisitiveness. What differentiates Rat subjects from your ordi¬nary miser is their very profound regard for the equitable sharing-out of bounty with those they feel are worthy of it.
Rat standards are high. They are not easily seduced by small talk and chitchat. If a Rat person chooses to like you, he will not hide his feelings. Once he has decided to befriend someone, both his hospitality and benefaction extend across formerly uncrossable frontiers.
In view of this stringent set of rules that the Rat usually sets up
for himself, if one of his “chosen few” eventually betrays, or in any way attempts to dupe him, he is capable of both vengeance and unrea¬sonable demands for retribution. Rats never accept to be toyed with or taken lightly. In business as well as in love partnerships, they are ruth¬less when crossed.
Here is a telling Rat tale. Around the corner from my house in Paris, there lived two American expatriates, side by side in a pair of wooden houses. These houses were built from gardening sheds. Long ago, in the postwar forties (before the French building codes became as strict as they are today), one could still find such jewels within the city limits and with minimum investment, turn them into livable homes. Times have changed. Or, so I learned from my Rat lady neigh¬bor, Claire Augustus (b. 1948).
Claire came over to inform me that her husband Nick wanted to convert a third small tool shack in their garden into a guesthouse. Earnestly, she recounted, “While we were in Majorca this summer, the building organization met to discuss zoning. Our request for a con¬struction permit was refused. I am so angry, I could spit!” Claire heaved a sigh of controlled rage and went on. “From what I under¬stand, our next-door neighbor Paul Kradlow was at that meeting. He’s president of the copropriété [In France all buildings are condomini¬ums. Everyone owns his own flat. ] Ordinarily what Paul says goes. I just don’t understand it. We left it all in Kradlow’s hands. Paul insists it is not his fault. He claims he made a very persuasive speech in our defense. That little guest house wouldn’t disturb anybody. Except for Paul, nobody can even see that shack. The decision is unfair but we are legally unable to appeal it. ” Her eyes filled with the mist of home¬owner frustration.
Two weeks after hearing Claire’s diatribe against the unreason¬able vote, I ran into Paul Kradlow in a Montparnasse artists’ haunt. Paul is a painter. Although he has never been my favorite person, we have been neighbors for so long that we always smile and nod at each other in public places. That day, Paul uncharacteristically called me over to his table. “Sit down a minute, will you?” he said. I sat.
“Well,” said Paul. “I suppose you’ve heard about their wild plan
to turn their shed into a guesthouse?” I nodded. He blathered on, “Of course, as president of the copropriété, I have certain responsibilities to the building authorities. During the summer we had a meeting. The Augustuses were away, so I had to call a vote in absentia. Luckily, most of their supporters were out of town at the time. The vote came out negative. ” Paul’s ensuing sigh was not quite grievous enough.
“How did you vote, Paul?” He blanched, took a drink of his Bordeaux white, and winked at me as he said, “Negative. ” Then he smiled and winked again.
I wrenched my arm away from him. “Fine friend you are!” I railed angrily. “If I were Claire, I would—”
“She did,” he murmured sadly.
“She did what?” I demanded.
“She found out from one of the people at that meeting that I had spoken out against her request for a permit. ” His eyes began to search mine for some small flare of neighborly indulgence. Instead I glared back. He continued, “In the middle of last night, Claire did a terrible thing to me. ” Paul looked perfectly sound. No scratches, cuts, or bruises. He had no family for her to threaten, so I could not imagine what Claire could have chosen to do to avenge herself of his crime against her trust. Paul took out a felt marking pen and began to write on the paper tablecloth. “Here’s what she did,” Paul said. “She painted these words on the side of her own shed. In enormous white letters on the dark green wood. ” I looked at the message he had drawn on the cloth. It said: THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR! I burst into uncontrollable laughter. Only a Rat could think up such a trick. Paul’s kitchen-sink view was besmirched for life with a permanent reminder of the broken commandment.
Assuming the pose of the wronged artist, Paul said meekly, “I can’t even paint over it. That shed is on her property. Don’t you think that’s a ratty thing to do to an old friend?”
Rising to leave the table, I grinned widely and agreed. “Gotta watch out for Rats, Paul. They’re all around us. “
Rat people are charming. Even at their worst, they will manage to conjure up a welcoming “Hi there” or “How are you?” for a visitor
or passing acquaintance. Social gatherings are their life’s blood. Cloister a Rat person away from convivial companionship and he will wither and die of loneliness. Since this subject is blessed with an engaging personality and winning manner, he loves to entertain, throw parties, cook exotic dishes for the benefit of his guests, and, in general, lay on the festivities and merrymaking. If you ever get invited to a Rat bash, do accept with pleasure. You will not be disappointed. Moreover, unusual surprises may be in store, for people born under the sign of the Rat take great pride in finding new diversions for them¬selves as well as for their playmates.
One such astonishing fellow is my dearest male Rat friend of all, Richard Reventlow. When Richard gives a party or celebrates even the most minor of family birth dates, my curiosity barometer rises sharply.
Following his wife Sheila’s most recent birthday party, she asked me, “What will he think of next? Sometimes I think Richard has really gone round the bend. ” Sheila was stumbling around her disaster area of a living room, righting tables and chairs, picking up specks of con¬fetti, and wiping spilled ice cream from the carpet.
“You know, I really didn’t mind the first batch of monkeys. The brown ones were kind of cute the way they rode around on tricycles and performed tricks for the trainer. My mother-in-law looked a bit frightened when that black rhesus jumped into her coffee cup, but she ought to be used to Richard by now. I guess she’ll survive. “
From the kitchen, Sheila had to raise her voice to a yell, “But those chimpanzees! Did you see how dirty they were? Why Richard didn’t look at them before he hired them, I will never know. I mean, really, Suzanne, who ever heard of renting six wild beasts to ride around a Fifth Avenue living room on mini-motorcycles? The noise alone was terrifying. “
Sheila beckoned me to her room. “Let’s go into my bedroom and relax with a drink. We can watch a dumb movie on TV. Anything’s better than looking at this mess. “
When we had settled into our respective places in front of the television, Sheila on the bed and myself in a chaise longue, I thought of asking her what Richard had given her as a birthday gift.
“I don’t know yet. He says it’s going to be a surprise. Maybe he’ll bring something home tonight. For all I know, it could be a pet baboon. ” Sheila gave a loving laugh.
Turning on the TV with the remote, Sheila suddenly began to tremble all over. At first, I couldn’t help but laugh. She looked so silly, just sitting there shaking like that. I was convulsed with mirth. All I heard was her vibrato cry: “That damned Richard!” she quivered aloud. “He’s so loony. Do you know what he’s gone and done?”
Alarming as her strange appearance was, I could not stop bub¬bling up with laughter every time I tried to answer her. “What is it? Are you all right?” I managed to gasp between giggles.
Just as abruptly as the quiverings had begun, they stopped. The TV set went off. Sheila, in a fit of chuckles, was reading aloud from a note she had found pinned to the pillow. “My darling wife,” she read. “Hope you like this little present. It’s called Magic Fingers. Remember how much you liked it when we went to that funny motel in Ohio? The medium is the massage! Love you forever. Richie. “
I can assure you that Richard Reventlow is not a crazy man. He just acts like one. Last year, on the occasion of their tenth wedding anniversary, he awarded his wife a fireworks display. The year before, he gave himself a roller-skating birthday fete. He hired a rink for the evening, invited fifty friends, and followed up the skate-in with a hayride through Central Park.
Rat people have an undeniable preference for luxurious victory over the simple life. Every time I meet a new Rat, the first thing I notice is his clothing, fine jewelry, and elegant manners. Little matter the state of his bank account, background, or social standing. Rats like to look their best. They surround themselves with fine quality objects. The women of this sign have exquisite taste in both wardrobe and decorative accouterments. Their homes are often showpieces for delicate antiques or an array of jungle plants that nobody else ever seems able to grow.
This love of the good life notwithstanding, Rat people make con¬scientious parents. Every step of the way during a child’s development
captures the interest of a Rat mother or father. Be it physical or moral, if one of their own pack is hurt or feeling downhearted, the Rat will take great pains to see that the wrong is righted. Thus, Rat people can become what some of us describe as “do-gooders. ” They are forever being nominated president of “The Committee for Annihilation of Mental Health,” or serving on the board of directors of one charity or the other.
You will recall that one of our very own most famous Rats, Marlon Brando (b. 1924), took up the cause of the American Indian to the extent of refusing an Academy Award on television so that he could inform the public of his serious intention to help out.
Brando was a very good Rat case in point. He always knew how to put his Rat charms to excellent use. The variety of roles he played in his life, each of them with equal facility and talent, brought his fans much vicarious joy and heartbreak. Yet, like all Rats, Brando was not noted for his ability to compromise when dealing with directors or other actors and actresses. His on-the-set reputation was never very complimentary. Rats gripe a lot and are often dissatisfied with the efforts of others. It is difficult for them to tolerate the fact that nobody—even themselves—is perfect. This feeling of discontent some¬times results in grousing and complaints. Rats can make life very diffi¬cult for co-workers.
My mother used to talk about my Rat of an uncle this way: “Ed is an angel in the crowd. But he is a devil at home. ” It was true. My Uncle Ed was a misery to live with. He never came home on time for dinner. He worked long hours in his office in hopes of making that big killing in real estate (which he finally made). He snapped at his kids more often than he should have. And, according to my good mother, “Ed ran around with women. “
In part, my mother’s old-fashioned way of describing Uncle Ed says much about the Rat’s character. But those who knew Ed under¬stood implicitly his gift for participating in extra-household duties and charitable acts of patronage. The fact is, Ed never “ran around with women” in the way one normally thinks of that pastime. But he did organize fund-raising activities for the ladies auxiliary at his church.
And he drove piles of chattering nuns back and forth to country retreats and served on committees all his life for the betterment of con¬ditions in a senior citizens’ complex for women only. So, the Rat that he was did “run around” with women, but not in the classical sense.
Rats make a science of the art of impressing people. Nobody gets away with feeling lukewarm about a Rat. Half the time, he is hated (even feared), and the other half, he is blindly adored by those who know him. Yet, whatever the ambience surrounding him, the Rat is graceful.
Rats often deport themselves in a rather controversial manner. They are at home discussing politics with the visiting British prime minister, comfortable hobnobbing with the boys down at the local bar, and deft at convincing garage mechanics to take 20 percent off their repair bills. It is not fair to say that Rats are con artists. But they are extremely persuasive and will stop at almost nothing in order to have their way. Whether engaged in business or emotional negotia¬tions, Rat people are never entirely free of mental calculation. Their warmest feelings and gestures of generosity are tinged with overtones of self-interest. Rarely, if ever, does a Rat person bestow love or even friendship unless he feels it will ultimately be of use to him. Their motto, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” is valid. It is common knowledge among mature adults that nothing is for nothing. What is different about the Rat is his inability to deviate from that pat¬tern except for old time’s sake or because he wishes to indulge a former lover. Sentimentality of the sticky, sweet, sappy variety is very much out of the Rat’s line, but he is a pushover for memories and tradition.
To gain either affection or capital, Rats will bend over back¬ward. A Rat person, dedicated to a romance or to making a gain from a business venture, will ignore all emotional boundaries until he has reached his goal. For this reason, Rats make superlative profiteers. Sometimes, it seems as though everything they touch turns to gold. Rats are the troubleshooters of the world. They can move into a bank¬rupt venture, take it over on the spot, and in weeks have the whole thing in tiptop shape again. They see the loopholes, find snags, and uncover shady deals with ease and grace.
This capacity for seeing through walls and knowing just where
to look for the weakest link, if used wisely, will serve to make the Rat successful at almost any undertaking. If, however, a Rat person chooses to misuse this talent, he is capable of the lowest type of indo¬lence. If life is too easy, the Rat may become lazy.
Rats must be loved. Just because they take such enormous plea¬sure from social situations and are usually gifted for gab, does not mean that society’s pedestrian demands on their talents are not taxing to the spirit. The Rat soul is always hungering for closer contact, more intimacy, sharing of thoughts and desires. At home, he needs to talk things through. It is almost eerie the way Rats think on their feet or calculate coups while discussing them. Deep philosophical ponder¬ings almost never net them any benefit. Even if they spend much of their time reading or poring over documents, straightaway upon abandoning their books, they will need to discuss what they have read. If your love partner is born under the sign of the Rat, be pre¬pared to stay up many nights rapping about the different possible strategies, deals, friendships, etc. , which the Rat feels must be gone over before he sleeps.
Rat people are lovers of la bonne table. They almost invariably figure among those who know about wines and gourmet foods. They know how to set up beautifully appetizing spreads and they don’t balk when faced with the consumption of same. Most of the Rats I know have a weight problem. They simply can’t say “No” to themselves when it comes to ingesting tasty gourmandises. Rats are nibblers, noshers, and snackers.
Bargains and cut-rate sales leap at Rat people from shop coun¬ters, newspaper ads, and catalogs. If the A&P offered twenty jars of peanut butter for the price of ten, and you took a quick survey of the ladies who swarm in first thing in the morning, I’d be willing to bet that at least half of these “go-fers” were born in a Rat year. Popular belief has it that Rats hoard little bits of this and that in order to be sure of something to eat when times are lean. Mind you, Rat people are not stingy about sharing their booty. They simply like to be armed for bad times. They are savers, buyers of insurance, and planners for the future. And, if by some chance, they have not thought about who
will be paying that pension when they get to be old and gray, Rats will spend no small amount of their time worrying about same.
One Rat friend of mine is so preoccupied with security and get¬ting in her stores for the duration, I often accuse her of never having had a single spontaneous buying experience. If she doesn’t start collect¬ing next year’s Christmas presents in January, she fears she may not have any money left when that holiday looms on the horizon. Jayne buys her French wine, German beer, pâté de foie gras, and other non-perishables by the case or barrel. She has an extra tank of oil alongside her house in case the energy crisis takes a turn for the worse. No one is overjoyed at the thought of lacking for basics, but my Rat friend Jayne is even uneasy about the eventuality of running short of luxuries. Her home is a veritable air-raid shelter of gourmet provisions.
Much berated and attacked for not possessing the same set of priorities as other people, Rats have an unpleasant way of defending themselves. When cornered, they become most aggressive. In the midst of even a minor discussion of what should be done about a torn win¬dow shade, Rat people are capable of turning on their audience in the most offensive manner. Rat people think there is no defense like a good offense. So, when threatened (even in a small way), they strike out. Sometimes, they assume a haughty or authoritative tone and out of nowhere start snapping out platitudes of the “I’m the boss around here!” variety.
Because everybody who ever becomes involved with the malarial Rat is aware of his mercurial temper, those who know him well often avoid trouble by skirting the discussion of certain issues. Since touchy subjects can trigger the Rat to take umbrage or have one of his tantrums, a clever friend will be loath to jump in feet first and talk that point over. If the Rat realized how testy he was, he would proba¬bly be saddened by this knowledge. Rat people do enjoy debates and rap sessions, but since they are not always willing to admit their own errors or miscalculations, many people prefer not to argue with them.
Last year, I worked for a French Rat man who sold fireworks; not just caps and firecrackers, but displays, up-in-the-air high-in-the-¬sky showers of glorious color. Since he had decided to take the
American pyrotechnics industry by storm, and spoke not a word of English, Monsieur Lupin hired me as his interpreter. Together, we flew in to conquer the United States, but Lupin could not speak a word of English and not one prospective American fireworks client could utter a syllable of French. I didn’t know what I was in for, but who could turn down a job where the product presentation at any given business meeting takes place in an open field by night under a blanket of shooting stars and Roman candle?
In retrospect, translating for Lupin would have been a snap if it had not been for his singular inability to function alone. As I have said, Rats are communicators. They have to speak in order to believe that they are alive and thinking. Can you imagine spending three full weeks (including weekends) as the seeing-ear dog of a garrulous Rat suddenly made deaf and mute by confinement in a country where you are his only means of contact with humanity? What’s more, the psy¬chology of Rats includes a hefty portion of suspicion, and this particu¬lar Rat felt very left out each time I said “Good Morning, Mr. Jones” in English. By the time he left this side of the ocean, Monsieur Lupin had a spectacular case of paranoic Americanophobia.
Every time English words escaped my lips, Lupin was sure I was trying to dupe him or take over the world’s black powder supply sin¬gle-handedly. He actually thought at one point that I was in cahoots with his major competition in this country. Yet, he was paying me. He had hired me in France. I had never even seen a fireworks display up close before meeting him. My work, when it only consisted of inter¬preting what Monsieur Lupin wished to convey to a client or manu¬facturer, was most enjoyable. But those long nighttime talk-ins over whiskey after whiskey in all the gloomy hotel bars across America. . . . After one week, I honestly believed I would perish from overspeak.
Life for most Rats is actually little more than an extended game of chess. Much of their time is spent maneuvering into the offensive position. The remainder of Rat lives gets gobbled up by preoccupa¬tions with projected methods of aggressively exiting from the innumer¬able culs-de-sac that lie in wait beyond the next move.
Basically, the Rat is a kind soul. Though his uneasiness about his
own image may cause him to buffet or jostle those he fears will get the best of him, these shoves are but mild elbow jabs in the ribs of his adversaries. Rats are not the sort of tyrannical barbarians who walk over even their best friends in order to succeed. If they are somewhat promiscuous, their extracurricular escapades are only the result of self-doubt or anxiety about being attractive. When Rats lie, they sincerely believe their fibs are measures of self-defense. The whiter the lie, the more comfy the Rat.
Rats, no matter how great the scope of their success or impor¬tance, are capable of tremendous humility. No job is ever too menial for a Rat, no errand too piddling to be run for a friend.
Back a few years, when friends of mine introduced me to Rat movie star Keir Dullea (b. 1936), I learned a few facts about how lov¬able Rats can really be. Keir Dullea has cosmic-blue eyes the color of which varies with his mood from delft to Wedgwood. He’s gorgeous, famous, talented, and still has the “lost boy” look he bore in the film David and Lisa. Like all Rats, he is outgoing, amusing, and energetic.
Keir, too, is a devoted friend. He is one of those people of whom we say, “He would give you the shirt off his back. ” He’s generous and jolly, to boot.
The day I found a tiny studio in which to ply my writer’s trade was a victorious one for me. The room was small and dark, typically Parisian dank and ill-decorated. But it was mine. Keir was visiting Paris at the time and offered to help me refurbish the place. Aware of my lack of talent for manual labor, I was delighted by his willingness to pound a nail and paint a wall.
Aware also that the Rat’s ability to organize will always be supe¬rior to mine, I suggested that Keir plan the attack on my scruffy den on his own. I agreed to pitch in with the drudgery but admitted that I truly did not have the foggiest notion of where to begin.
First things first. Keir trundled us off to the local Parisian carpet shop where we purchased enough indoor/outdoor carpeting to cover the shoddy linoleum floor. I asked to have the rug delivered, but Keir said, “They’ll never get it there on time. I’ll just carry it back to your place. ” And, with that, he heaved the giant roll of red carpet onto his
shoulder and crashed into the ceiling light fixture, breaking it into a million pieces.
After we had laughed and paid the nice shopkeeper for his lamp, Keir walked through the streets of Paris for about a kilometer, whistling as though he were one of the seven dwarfs. Parisians, unac¬customed to do-it-yourselfers, pointed and giggled as he trudged along under his weighty burden. Needless to say, French ridicule went unno¬ticed by our Rat hero. Keir had bagged a carpet and that was enough reason to drag it single-handedly to its destination. Besides, Rats love spectacle, especially when they create it.
In short, I am now the only living American writer in Paris who works in a studio decorated by a movie star’s own hand. Keir worked for three days fixing, painting, sticking contact paper on shelves, and fitting his carpet into crannies with a bread knife. All the Rat’s persis¬tence and meticulousness went into his endeavor and the end result is both pleasing and practical.
Richard Nixon (b. 1912/13) was a Rat. Until he began to mix it up with his own brand of slick politician, Dick Nixon was considered by many Americans to be a kind of smiling nobody whom the bigwigs felt they could push around and mold into their own idea of a Presidential candidate. But I don’t think the world was ready for Brother Rat’s tendency to want all the power for himself. If they had read this book, Nixon’s cronies would have guessed well in advance that when a Rat feels trapped or stymied by his peers, he takes one of two escape routes. Either he slinks away to become a hermit, or he turns into a dreadfully boorish bully. In the case of Richard Nixon, both avenues were employed. When aggressiveness failed, he disap¬peared into the woodwork.
Besides Marion Brando (b. 1924), whom we spoke of before as a prize Rat, our times have been graced by many famous Rat figures. Adlai Stevenson, Sr. was born in 1900. The year 1912 brought us playwright Eugene lonesco. In 1924, we netted a quartet of celebrated Rat people: actress Lauren Bacall, novelists James Baldwin and Truman Capote, and Brando himself. A bumper crop arrived in 1936, among them Richard Bach of Seagull fame, Dick Cavett, actors Keir Dullea
and Dennis Hopper and French couturier Yves Saint Laurent. Singer-songwriter James Taylor was born in 1948, and so was Peggy Fleming, the figure-skating champion.
Rats have a vast capacity for aggressively falling upon a task. They attack pleasure, money-making, and love affairs with equal verve. If you are lucky enough to be witness to the charming Rat’s pursuit of life’s rewards, you will always be assured of a great show at a very low price. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE GO TO http://www. suzannewhite. com
How to Achieve Immortality by Professionally Editing Your Home Movies!
How to Achieve Immortality!
Times of your Life
You hear stories all the time about when someone’s house burns down, the first thing they grab are the family photo albums and home movies before the go running out the door. But in fact, while these items may be the first thing they grab, most people’s home movies and photo collections are stored in assorted boxes locked away in a dusty closet or slopped together in cheap photo albums that lay strewn on the bottom of a basement bookshelf where they rarely see the light of day. What people do with their home movies would make Steven Spielberg cry.
Your family media can be more then just a scattered collection of pictures and video tapes. Put together properly they can become more valuable then the world’s largest diamond or a fancy sports car. When all is said and done, your diamonds end up being fought over by greedy relatives and your sports car ends up in the used car lot. But your family media has the potential to live on and influence people for eternity. In a sense, it is the closest thing that we have at this point to immortality. Something that we can offer the next generation in regards to passing down little bits and pieces of our lives.
The Cold Hard Reality of Home Movie Editing
Editing home movies is a bitch. Sorry to phrase it that way, but there is really no other way to state what is a cold hard cruel fact of life. Editing and organizing home movies is one of those projects that we always say were going to do that somehow never seems to get done, and by the time we’ve resolved ourselves to the actual task of doing it, the mountain of home movies socked away in the closet has grown to Everest size proportions that the sight of defeats most of us before we even begin to properly edit and organize our home movies. Hence, the pile grows, the video degrades and our memories are cast off into the sea of digital oblivion.
The task of organizing and editing home movies is usually so overwhelming that it does not get properly done, if ever done at all. And that’s a crying shame. These memories are one of the most valuable possessions that you have. It’s extremely discouraging that most people put more time and money into purchasing and maintaining a new car then they do in preserving the videos of their kid’s first spin on a bike without training wheels. These are the times of our lives and if we don’t do something to properly maintain and store these digitally perishable items, they will be lost for the ages.
We are the first generation that has the technical ability to capture these moments for prosperity. A few years back, all you had, if you were lucky, was a shoe box full of handmade three minute films where you or our relatives usually danced in front of the camera doing something incredibly stupid in splendid scratchy, washed out silence. Now with the technology available to the masses, it is possible to record and document some ones entire life.
So, how do you take this great concept of documenting your family’s life, a shoe box of unmarked videos collecting dust in the closet, and put them together to make a great DVD that won’t bore people to tears. It’s not easy, but it is definitely worth it to try. Consider this. Would you rather give a gift that falls apart after a few years and crumbles back into the earth, or give your family a beautifully edited DVD of all the wonderful moments that you shared together raising them, that they in turn will hopefully pass down to their kids. It is, in a sense, one of the few things that you will leave behind that has the potential to be your living legacy. There are few things in life that one can give that offer this. But the reality of that gift is that you have to make the effort to do it for it to take effect.
I just spend a few weeks researching this article and unfortunately the bottom line is, this article included that if there is a need there is someone there trying to sell you something to do something, that even if you do buy whatever it is that they are selling, you’re not going to be able to do. Problem with editing and organizing home movies, is that just like everything else, there are more hucksters and rip off artist then there are actually people who can do what you need done, well.
When it comes to editing and maintaining your home movies, the first thing that you need that nobody can sell you, is time. So beware before you buy anything related to editing you own home movies. The market is swamped with products that claim to make this task simple. It is not a simple task. To properly put together your home movies, you are going to have to pay someone, or take the time to learn how to do it yourself. The key ingredient here is time. Time to install hardware, time to install software, time to digitize, time to log material and time to actually sit down and do the editing.
Motivating yourself to do it and getting started is probably the biggest obstacle you will have to overcome. IM a professional video producer and it took me a year and a half to get my ass motivated enough to sit down and do the actually dirty work of editing together a family video about our beach vacations. What it actually involved, once I got started was daunting, even to a seasoned pro like me.
For starters, there is the collecting of all of the material that you are going to need to produce a decent production. This is where you go around the house looking for all of those home movies that you are your family has shot over the years. It is also at this point you may want to sit down and decide what it is that you are attempting to do. If you are planning on tackling your whole home movie collection in one sitting, forget it. This won’t happen overnight. It’s better to take on the task of editing home movies in small manageable chunks.
Then after you have collected all of your home movies and sill photo’s you have to make sure that you have the technical means to complete the project. It is at this point that you will probably find that you are missing something and you will need to spend money to purchase what is needed to produce whatever it is that you want to do. Let me repeat, spend money! Just like everything else in life, you’re going to get what you’re willing to put into it. And to properly edit your home movies you’re going to spend some cash. There’s really no way around it.
There’s several ways of going about the process of creatively editing and storing your home movies. Except of one exception, all these options require a large time commitment and extreme effort. Any publication or sales pitch promising you that this process is easy, and simple, should be avoided, shredded and sent back to the publisher. If someone tells you that the process of producing a family documentary and family media management is easy, then they are lying to you and trying to get you to buy something. Should you spend your cash on anything that has these two words “easy and simple” in their advertisement or web site, then you have been or are going to be ripped off.
What I’m trying to outline here in this article, is information that you can use to make a decision that will change your life forever. Why? Because if done properly, home movies can be a medium that you can use as an extension of yourself that can transcend generations. It is a way for you to communicate feelings that we have to people who do not even know us yet. Imagine for a moment the warmth and joy that you feel watching your child take his or her first steps. Now imagine being able to convey those feelings to that child ten years later. We now have the technology to make ourselves immortal.
Ten, twenty years from now, we are not going to be the same people that we are now. The home moves we share can, if used properly, allow us to traverse those spans in time and give us a chance to express just exactly who it is that we were. That said doesn’t make the task or organizing and creating those memories any easier. So let’s begin.
Getting Started
A well produced home movie can convey all of those wonderful feelings that we just discussed and they can also cause people to want to kill and maim themselves if they are subjected to watching home movies that are not creatively edited. There is nothing more dreaded by visitors to your home then hearing you ask “anyone one to see some of our home movies?” It is usually at this point that people begin complaining about food poisoning or some other ailment, or they claim to hear their mothers calling and have to go home. Home movies the way they are usually presented, flat out suck the life out of a friendly gathering and are a real evening killer. Personally I would rather stick forks in my eyes then watch some ones unedited home movies of a trip to Disneyland. But, on the other hand, a well edited home movie can be a work of art and a pleasant surprise for everyone watching.
Twenty years from now do you want to watch something that makes you want to stick forks in your eyes or something that will make you remember the wonderful life that you have hopefully lived? Just remember this when you are making the decisions that will effect your videos.
OPTIONS
Leave it to the professionals.
The first option is that you pay a company like “Times of Your Life” to do it for you. If you can afford it, and not many of us mortals can, I highly recommend this for numerous reasons, too many to list them all here. If you can afford it, then by all means, let some highly creative producer put it together for you. Yes, you will pay a lot of money, but in the end you will have a quality documentary about your family delivered to you on a DVD that can be shared with everyone. You will also get all of your family media stored and organized onto hard drives that you can access later for your own use. Once this is done correctly the first time, updating the files is not that difficult and can be done yearly. Compared with what most people can do on their own, the results of letting a professional do it for you, pale in comparison.
Problem with this option is that there are not too many companies out there who can really do the job well. But if you are fortunate enough to have the expendable cash and access to a producer, like myself (A little shameless self promotion here for our company Times of Your Life Media), then this is the ultimate option which will provide you with the highest quality production, the most organized delivery of your digitized media, and what we Americans like most, and that is it is the easiest way for you to do it.
Now, just like buying that expensive car, the above option presents two major hurdles. Funding, and finding someone who can do it well. The market is swamped with wedding photographers who claim that they can also edit and organize your home movies for you. Don’t you believe it! Most wedding photographers are amateur hacks who think because they bought a semi-professional camera on e-bay that it entitles them to call themselves professional video producers. Just like any other profession, you get what you pay for. Go cheap, and then pass out the forks with the pop corn when you show people the results.
If you are going to spend the cash to have someone produce your family home movies, spend it wisely and on someone who knows what the hell they are doing. Find someone who is a real television producer/editor and someone who is passionate about what they do. After all, these are the times of your life. Your home movies no matter what the quantity or quality can be transformed into family heirlooms if properly produced.
Also, if you are laying out the cash for this option, make sure that you get your media back in a way that you can access it yourself, preferably on hard drives with everything organized into bins that you can add future home movies into.
The do it yourself route.
There are plenty of do it yourself options available to anyone with a powerful computer, lots of disc storage space, the right software and access to whatever machine it is that you need to playback whatever format it is that you shot your home movies on. And let’s not forget the main ingredient, lots of time.
The easiest do it yourself route is to buy a computer that is equipped with all of the proper video and audio cards, memory and whatever else it is that it needs to be compatible with the editing software your going to use. The key word here is fire-wire and converting analog to digital. Fire-wire is a god send when digitizing your home movies. For the most part all you have to do is plug in the fire wire from your camcorder to your computer, start up the software and you’re in business. Since most of us have home movies that are more then five years old, somewhere in the process, unless all of your video is digital, you will have to convert from analog to digital. God has his plan, and converting analog to digital was not one of them. If you are not familiar with the word analog, then add more time to the learning curve. More on this later.
Unless all of your video and media is in the digital domain, then you have quite a job ahead of you in terms of getting your home movies into a useable format that can be used by you and your computer and then finally onto a DVD or some other digital storage medium. This means that you must ask this question to whomever it is that you are dealing with in terms of setting up your computer. How can I convert analog to digital?
Digitizing Home Movie Home Movies
16 mm, 8 mm and super 8 film home movies, the kind that your dad or grand dad used to shoot on those short three minute reel silent movie cameras need to be transferred to a DVD or some other digital file before they can be used by you and your computer. To do this process correctly means that you have to send out the film to be digitized onto a DVD. The cost of this is usually around 15 to 30 dollars per reel, depending on whom and where it is done. Same goes for any other type of film you might want to have transferred.
One trick that might work to get these movies into the digital domain is to lock the camera down on a tripod and shoot the images off of a wall using your digital camcorder. Sometimes this idea works, but only if you have a halfway decent camera that shoots well in low light. You’ll know if it works when you look into the viewfinder. If it looks crappy in the view finder, it’s going to look worse when you put it into your home movie masterpiece.
Usually I hate to offer these tips, because people will then substitute good production values for saving a buck. The rule here is that if you can do it, and it looks good then do it. But the best fail safe way of doing things, is to spend the time and money to do it right in the first place. Whenever possible, send out these films and have them professionally transferred to DVD.
A lot of people have had their film home movies transferred to VHS tape. While it does preserve the film home movies, the quality of VHS transferred home movies leaves a lot to be desired. If possible, for quality purposes have the film transferred to a DVD. It looks better, and once you have it done you can easily make multiple copies for yourself and future generations. It also makes loading your home movies into your computer a hell of a lot easier. If this is not an option, then the VHS copies are better then nothing. But remember, the VHS tape, like any other tape source will eventually degrade. Tape is not a long term solution to your home media storage solution.
Tape Formats and Digital Oblivion
Thanks to corporate competition and built in obsolescence, we the consumer ended up with several different video tape formats throughout the eighties, nineties and the new millennium. Now, we the consumer are about to pay the price, once again, for corporate greed and our own stupidity in terms of family media storage. One of the biggest problems facing a lot of us is that our home movie collections are spread out on several different formats. Problem number one. The tape we shot these precious memories on is in danger of falling apart.
The problem with video tape of any format is that it wears out. Don’t believe me? Ask the networks that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to digitize decade’s worth of video tapes and finding that a lot of the stuff has degraded to the point of not being usable. Don’t kid yourself; at some point your tape and what is on them are history. Once the video on those tapes is gone, it is gone forever.
As a rule of thumb, if your tape is over six years old, you had better check it to see if it’s degrading. You’ll be able to see just how bad it is degrading by the number of hit marks on your television screen. A lot of hits and drop outs, then your tape is already in the process of degrading. The hits, by the way, are caused by the oxide coating on the tape actually coming off of the tape due to the shrinking of the actual tape. This problem will increase as the tape ages. It not only degrades the quality of your video, it also clogs the heads of the device you are using to transfer the video.
If your tapes are over ten years old there’s a better then 50/50 chance that the tapes are probably damaged to the point of not being usable. I recommend that if your tapes are over five years old that you at least begin the process of transferring them to some other format remembering that once these tapes are gone, they are gone. Now that you know the risk and are running to your closet to begin the preservation process, the fun part begins.
Since most of us no longer have the original device that was used to shoot our home movies to play the tapes back on, your first task will be to find a way to get your home movies onto a different type of media which you can use to edit and watch your home movies. That means you repair the old device, buy a new device, or hire us (Times of Your Life Media), or some other company to do it for you. Either way, depending on the number of tapes that you have, you can plan on dropping some pretty big bucks to do it. The longer you wait, the better the chance that your tapes will become completely unusable.
Most of my family members have home movies that were shot on Hi 8 tapes that were in their time, considered state of the art. Now none of us have a working device to play them back. In other words our home movies are sitting in a closet rotting away, and none of us can enjoy them because we do not have a machine to watch them on. In the mean time, these tapes are in the process of degrading.
If you shot your movies on a “Hi-8 or an 8 millimeter, unit, there are only a few companies left that manufacture these machines. Those few companies know that most of us are going to be desperate to own one of their machines and they price their product accordingly. Last time I checked, the cost of a new Hi-8 machine was almost a thousand dollars. If your format is VHS, you’re in luck because there are still a lot of VHS machines on the market. VHS-C, the same, assuming that you have the adapter. If your media is on some other format, and you do not have access to a machine to play your tapes back on, then you’re going to pay to get your home movies back into a format that you can access. The only recommendation here is to go on e-bay or some other online auction site and see if you can find an old unit that still works so you can at least get your home movies backed up into some other format.
Even if you’re not ready to edit your home movies, get them backed up some how, some way onto a DVD. Give up the latté’s, and whatever other vices you may have and spend the time and the bucks to do this before it’s too late!
Your computer.
The manufactures would have you believe that maintaining your home movies is as simple as clicking your mouse. Sure it is. Till you get home, plug in your computer and have it tell you that what you want to do can not be done without buying something else to make it work. The truth is that you need to ask someone who knows, and not someone who is trying to sell you something. Research first, then make a list, and then buy whatever it is that you need to put together a system that can edit, and organize your home movies and digital media. One of the best place’s to do this is PC world magazine.
Hard Drives
You will need lots and lots of hard drive space to properly edit your home movies. You will need even more hard drive space if this is where you plan to store your home movies. I recommend that you store your media on hard drives, and make DVD back up copies. That way, you have two copies of your media just in case your hard drive crashes, which it will at some point, or you damage your DVDs.
Hard drives are a weird gadget of life. Go cheap with these babies, and you’ll be crying later when all the home movies you spent hours to digitize end up in digital oblivion. Once again, research and buy the most hard drive space you can afford from a reliable company.
When digitizing home movies, keep in mind that you will want to maintain the highest level of resolution possible. That means digitizing at the highest resolution possible. And with the advent of HDTV that means you will need double the space necessary if this is the format you are editing on. Sound confusing? It is, but the main thing to be concerned about is to get your material into the digital domain. Once your material is in the digital domain, you can work with it and transfer it to different formats. And unless you are currently shooting your home movies in the HDTV format, then don’t worry about it.
So how much digital storage space do you need? The answer to this will depend on just what it is that you want to do with your home movie collection. If you’re looking to back up the whole collection, then simply count the number of tapes you have times the minutes on the tapes, then divide by five minutes per gigabyte. This will give you some sort of idea of how much storage space you will need to back up your entire collection. The other option is to load up ten hours of home movie material, edit it down, consolidate it, then delete the master material, and begin again with a new batch.
One of the things to consider is to clip your home movies into best of bins, and then delete the unused material off of the hard drives to make space for unedited material that you can clip into best of sequences. Keep in mind, that once you delete the original material, that the only thing that you will have is the best of material. Should you want to access the original material you will have to re-digitize it. Sound confusing? Not really considering that once you edit your home movies into best of bins, that this is the material you will want to keep anyway. But if for some reason you decide that you want to keep all of your material, then you will have to purchase the hard drives to accommodate the material.
One thing about living in the digital domain is that all of this material is subject to technology changes, format changes and digital loss of material due to equipment failure or technical glitches. Most media, if properly handled, should last as long as your lifetime, if you stay on top of the technology and perform data back of your home media. But the risk of losing your media is still there. One thing that you can do to help prevent loss of media is to back it up your home media at a few different sources.
For most people a few DVD back ups should suffice, just as long as you keep those DVDs in a safe place. But at some point you should consider either sharing your DVDs with a family member to save for safe keeping, or an off site storage server. The off site server offers some protection but your best bet is to scatter DVD copies amongst family members and hope that everyone does not misplace their DVDs at the same time.
Since the digital domain is fairly new, it is difficult to gauge the long term storage capacity of the medium. Is there a permanent way to record your media? No, not really. But if you back up, safely store and maintain your media it should last a life time, and maybe by that time your kids and grand kids will have access to something a bit more stable. But until then, be careful and back up your media.
Editing Software
There is a lot of editing software out there. Some of it is good, a lot, not so good. One thing for sure, is that unless your are semi familiar with the editing process, most of them are confusing and unless you read the instructions thoroughly you could end up spending a lot of time learning by trial and error. Despite the claims by the manufacturers of these so called, “easy to use software packages”, I have found that most of the lower priced software is incompatible with the better editing software packages and using the cheaper software will cost you later when you upgrade and want to change the format of what it is that you are working on. Depending on your project, keep in mind that what you do today will not necessarily work with a different computer or software set up later on. So once again, do your home work when buying your hardware and software.
I have found that the Avid line of editing software to be incredibly reliable and the best as far as it works most of the time without crashing your computer. Avid software is semi easy to learn, and the company looks as though it will be around for a while to support its software.
Avid is one of two platforms, the other being Final Cut Pro, that seem to be the industry leaders and destined for long term company survival. This is an important factor when considering what to buy. The long-term life of your home movies will depend on it. Edit on software from a cheap fly by night operation, then your home movies stand a good chance of being doomed to digital oblivion should your software become corrupted or lost with no way to replace it.
Since you already waited this long to begin the project, it’s probably a good idea to give up lattés for a few months and use the cash you save to buy yourself some decent editing software. You will not regret this decision especially when you’re sitting up at two in the morning asking yourself why your $ 49. 99 editing software ate your child’s first Christmas and won’t give it back.
Regardless of what they tell you to get you to purchase their products, the learning curve for editing software is high. Depending on whatever brand you purchase you will spend at least a weekend or more mastering the basics needed to use the software. You will also probably end up pulling your hair out figuring out how to get your video into the computer.
In the digital domain, anything fed with a fire wire is good. But if you plan on using video that is analog, which needs to be converted to digital, then you will soon discover what I’m saying about learning curves.
Windows Movie Maker comes installed in a lot of the newer systems, and while fairly easy to use, it is extremely limited in what it can do as far as giving professional results. Which brings us to a very important point and that is, what are the results that you want to achieve.
Creatively Editing Home Movies. . .
Problem with home movies is that they are for the most part boring. I just had a look at a website that showcased people’s raw home movies, and man I got to tell you, the Pentagon should really consider forcing terrorist suspects to watch unedited home movies as a form of extracting information. No offense but beside seeing people that you recognize dancing around on New Years, with lampshades on their heads, a home movie, in it’s raw state is not really what I would consider a entertaining way to spend a evening. Now on the other hand, a properly edited, creatively produced home movie can be a valuable keepsake that can be handed down from generation to generation. The key words here are creatively produced.
This past summer I took fifteen years of beach vacation home video and edited it into an hour long mini documentary about our family’s vacations at the beach. In my production I used home movie material and I went around interviewing people in my family and asking them to tell me there best beach stories. I also added still pictures and our favorite music. The final result was a highly produced program that told the story of our family’s trips to the beach. The finished program looked great, sounded great, and is now a permanent record of some of the greatest moments of our lives. Each year all I have to do is edit what was shot during subsequent vacations and update copies for my family members. Not only is it a permanent record of some of the greatest times of our life, it is also entertaining to watch, even to people who are not part of the clan.
What it took as far as labor and time is something that you will have to consider when approaching your project. For just the summer vacations I had to digitize over 46 hours of various format home movies. This involved five 300 gigabyte hard drives. Countless hours of dealing with video that would not capture, and finding machines that I could use to playback dated video material that had to be converted from analog to digital.
Then all of this material had to be labeled, sorted into bins, trimmed and color corrected. Then there was the sorting and scanning of hundreds of family photos and finding the music that I wanted to use. On top of all of that I went around and interviewed most of my family members about their favorite beach moments, and digitized this material as well. All in all the process took almost 5 weeks of full time work. And this was before the actual editing process even began.
Once the material is digitized it is fairly easy to edit. But once again, depending on what kind of result you are trying to achieve, the creative editing process can take a while. In the end, it is the editing and how you put it together that will make or break your finished product.
When capturing and digitizing material, avoid being lazy by not properly labeling the clips that you are storing into the hard drives. Failure to do this properly will add hours to the editing process which will be spent searching for files that you have no idea what they contain. Same goes for music files. Label and organize.
It’s a good idea to decide on titles before you start editing. What I mean by titles are the graphics you are going to use. I find that as far as titles go that less is better. A few simple chapter cards, like a black screen with white letters saying, “This is my Life” is all that you need. Fancy, flashy graphics usually take away from the production.
The Creative Process of Editing Home Movies
Before you actually begin editing, it’s a good idea to decide what it is that you want to edit. The choices vary between a full blown Discovery Channel family documentary, a single edited event like a wedding or an anniversary, the birth of a child or whatever you topic that you want. Each project has to be approached differently. Some people will be satisfied with just having edited home movies that are in no particular order, while others will opt for more ambitious projects like a detailed history of how grand mom or grand pop came to America and started the family.
Personally, IM currently editing a project for my daughter. I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of being married and being a father. IM now experiencing the best times of my life and I have made a concerted effort to document those moments to share with my daughter and her children. I want her to know just how much I and her mother loved being her parents. I want to share with her the joy of being a parent, so that when she grows up, and decides to have her own children she can share that joy with them as well. This medium offers me the opportunity to share with her moments that I will remember, and now see again, for the rest of my life. Nothing substitutes for the love of a parent, but this medium defiantly allows us to share with others who and what we are and to share them with others. I firmly believe that this will have a positive effect on my daughter’s life and how she sees herself, and the relationships she develops throughout her life.
So when preparing for your production keep in mind what your message is and stays on track. One great way to enhance any production is to conduct interviews with yourself and other people in your family about the events you see in the home movies. A great way to make otherwise boring video come to life is to use those interviews with video laid on top to help tell the story. It’s also a great way to communicate the way you feel about people.
The point IM trying to make here is that when planning a production, spend a little time figuring out what you want it to look like. Design some graphics, use a combination of video and still shots interlaced with music. When possible, let the pictures and the words of the people in the home movies tell the story.
The actual editing…
All one has to do is take a look at all of the video material that is on You Tube. Most of the material posted is footage of people beating each other up, vomiting, peeing, burping or doing other stupid things that most other people could care less about. Oh from time to time you see a good video or two, but for the most part it is a waste land. Same goes for most of our home movies.
One of the problems when editing home movies is that it is extremely hard to detach yourself from the material. My goal was to edit together a video that could be viewed and enjoyed in an hour or less. Try taking fifty hours of video material and compressing it into an hour when you think everything that your kid did was the cutest thing in the world.
Assuming that all of your video has been successfully digitized, and is resting comfortably in your hard drives and all of your software is functioning properly, the first thing that has to be done, is that you watch all of the material and do what they call a rough cut. That means you begin the process of selecting the shots that you want to include in your finished production.
What I suggest doing is setting up bins and clip files. For example if your video is covering multiple years, organize your bins by the year, season or event. Then as you’re going through all of your home movies, clip out the best birthday shots, Halloween shots, etc. . . and collect them into these bins. Same goes for other events like beach vacations, Christmas, etc. . You may also find it helpful to set up bins for cute moments, and other outstanding best of shots that you like. This process takes a while, so be patient. Sometimes finding the good shots is like finding a needle in the hay stack so to speak. If you go through the material too fast, you’re going to miss something that will probably never be seen again. So take your time and enjoy.
When you’re finished clipping your reels, it’s probably a good time to make back up copies of the clipped material. So while you’re in between editing sessions, burn off a copy of the clipped files and put them away. This serves two purposes. One, you have back ups just in case something should happen during the edit process. And two, these are your condensed versions of your home movies for you to enjoy later.
The editing process for a creatively produced home movie is tedious and slow. That is if you want a decent product that will not bore people into burying their heads into the wall from boredom. You will find, especially if you can not stand back from the footage and view it as a producer, verses a proud dad, that you want to keep everything. As an editor and a producer, this is not a good. The whole idea about doing a video project like this is to produce something that is not painful to watch. Your main goal at this point should be to produce an entertaining and heartfelt family heirloom that can be passed down through the ages without disappointing the fans.
When editing, keep in mind, that you are trying to tell people a story about you and your family. If necessary use voice over’s of yourself and others laid under the pictures to help tell the story. Remember this while filming future home movies. Try to get people to explain what they are doing while they are doing it. But the main thing is that you want the end product to tell your family story without boring people to tears. This is not an easy task for a professional let alone someone who is a weekend editor, but it can be done.
A good home movie production is a work of art. For it to be produced well takes a creative soul who is able to organize, prioritize and finally complete what they started. For those about to embark on taking on such a project, we salute you.
The ultimate option? Let a professional do it for you.
Should you not be so inclined, let me leave you with this final option. Let a professional do it for you. That’s what my company “Times of your Life” does. We are a full service production company producing high quality, documentary style videos for consumers. What it means is that we take peoples home movies, pictures and actually develop a scripted documentary about someone’s family that looks as good as anything that you see on regular television. This means that we use the same approach that we do for our network clients like Discovery, TLC and Court TV to produce a finished television production. The results are impressive.
Times of You Life, produces anything from a full blown family documentary, to short professionally produced video projects that include a “Day in Your Life videos, or an anniversary tape for grand parents. We also produce projects that cover specific home movie productions for family events like vacations, kids birthdays and holidays.
In the past we have produced short projects that cover the life of a child or a relative that can be given to loved ones as mementoes. These projects cover specific time periods and are not as involved as the production of family documentaries, but the results are, once again impressive. Give us a call and either my self or one of our producers will fill you in on the details.
I do not take this business of home movies lightly. For me, it is one of the few things that I will be able to give my daughter that will allow her to understand who I was and the role I played in her life. When I’m gone, she will have these collections in which to learn about where she came from, and who I was. So in a way, I will be able to be with her
For most of us mortals, producing a project like this is out of reach financially. But if you are interested, give us a call or visit our web site a www. timesofyourlifemedia. com. For the rest of us, we will have to make do with the means available.
A few closing notes. . .
Protecting and preserving your home movies should be the first thing that you do. If you’re a family person, then those video tapes should be treated like gold. Except this gold will end up worthless unless you take proper care to make sure that it maintains its value.
Back up your back ups.
It’s a good idea to make multiple copies of home movies regardless of format. If it’s a DVD, then while you’re burning one copy, burn another and stash it away. If possible make a copy of the more important DVDs, such as a child’s birth or first birthday, then burn off a few extra copies and give them to responsible relatives to hold on to.
In this digital age, the memories of all those wonderful family moments are on your hard drives, flash drives, memory sticks and whatever other digital storage devices you use. Eventually these hard drives will crash. The only way to really protect them is to make backing up the media a part of your life. So back them up every few years. Spend a few bucks now, and you’ll be crying over watching your kid’s first ride without training wheels instead of crying over a smoking hard drive. You owe this to your children and their children.
It’s All in Your Hands
So, it’s all in your hands. The good news is, that once you get started, the process gets easier. Once your home movies are properly maintained it’s just a matter of taking a few moments each month to update your family media files. After you’re done shooting a tape, or a DVD, take an hour or so and edit down the material and keep the best of material on a clip reel, or even better yet. Keep adding to the epic that you have already started.
In the end
Think about it. You are part of the first generation that is able to hand down a visual record of the life that you are living. Without that, you’re just a deleted social security number and a tomb stone. I just finished editing the home movies for the first four years of my daughter’s life. I love my child more then I ever thought possible, and I have from time to time, sat in front of the camera and told her just how wonderful it is to be her father. Now thanks to this medium, and the fact that I took the time and made the effort to produce her video, I can share those feelings of joy with her now and for the rest of our lives.
The Family Media that I have produced is something that will live on beyond my mortal life. And someday, when my daughter becomes her own person and shows these video productions to her children, I too will live once more.
www. timesofyourlifemedia. com
Making Bath Time Special
Bath time is the perfect opportunity for parents and children to really get to know each other and spend quality time together. How you view “bath time” is up to you. Many parents choose to treat it as a chore and dread the evenings – as do their children. In many homes, bath time is about as boring as brushing teeth. You, however, can choose to turn bath time into something special, which both you and your child will look forward to every day. For a child, bath time should be a transition between the noisy, busy world of day and the peaceful, cosy world of bed. With very little effort on your part you can make it a magic time for both of you. How do you inject some magic into bath time? Firstly, by prioritizing it. Fix a time for baths that works around meals, cooking, welcoming home your spouse, making evening telephone calls and relaxing – and establish that time for both you and your child. If the phone rings, leave the answer machine to pick it up. Try to do a quick tidy-up with your child before bath time, so that you aren’t faced with a horrible mess afterwards – that way it becomes a transition between day and evening for you too. Make sure that you set aside enough time so that you aren’t rushing and nagging your child to hurry. Now, to make bath time fun! Here are some suggestions for adding magic. Bubbles: Have an assortment of bubble baths suitable for your child. As long as you don’t choose anything too harsh, you don’t have to stick to children’s products, which can have very unnatural scents and colors. Include basic baby bubble bath and some therapeutic bath salts for energetic, sporty days. Display your different bottles and make a show of choosing which bubbles you will use each night. Perhaps if your child has been helpful tidying up, they can choose? Essential Oils: Two drops of lavender or chamomile essential oil (no more!) added to the bath and stirred in well will soothe and calm a fractious child after a long day. For variation, and to be sure that the oil disperses well, you can also add the drops to a cup of milk before adding to the bath. We sometimes use an unscented mild bubble bath with the essential oil. Candle light for special occasions: This is obviously only suitable for well-supervised bath times – but kids really do love the atmosphere of a candle lit bath. We would suggest that candles are lit only when the children are in the bath, and are extinguished before they climb out to be completely safe. Warm towels and pyjamas: Especially pampering in the winter months, children love to get out of the bath into a warmed towel and pyjamas! Little touches make all the difference. Poetry night: In our household, every Friday night bath time was poetry night. We chose Friday night because we often had other children round to play on a Friday afternoon and that meant that our kids were often over-tired and irritable when it came to bath time. We found suitable poetry in the library and on the internet, stored any printed pages in plastic file folders to keep them splash proof, and tried to introduce an interesting variety of poems to the kids. In reality, we read the same favorite poems over and over again! Bath toys: Rotate bath toys ruthlessly so that there is always something interesting to play with! Every so often you can raid the kitchen for suitable implements too – children love playing with sieves, whisks, measuring cups and jugs. Our kids would play endlessly with a plastic funnel, plastic bottles (some with holes punched in them) and a couple of plastic jugs. If you don’t want to use your own kitchen equipment, you can find these things very cheaply at garage sales and dollar stores. A plastic colander doubles as an excellent storage basket. Fun foam toys: You can buy fun foam shapes in buckets, or you can buy the foam at the craft store and cut your own shapes. Perhaps you could change your shapes to match holidays and seasons – flowers for spring and summer, Christmas trees at Christmas, bunnies and eggs at Easter? There are many possible learning activities too: cut pieces to teach colours, shapes, numbers or the alphabet, and practice matching, grouping, sorting, ordering and so on. Shaving foam sculpture: Squirt a few large blobs of shaving foam onto the side of bath or into your child’s hands (warn him to keep it away from his eyes) and let his imagination take over! Music and story tapes: Bath time is a good opportunity to introduce music of all kinds or to listen to a special story on tape or CD. Blowing bubbles: For a special treat, bring some bubble blowing mixture into the bathroom. Make sure that it doesn’t get into anyone’s eyes! Colorful baths: A few drops of food coloring will transform the bath into something exotic! Try orange or green at Halloween, red or green at Christmas, red for Valentine’s Day and so on. Keep the bottle well out of children’s reach! Language night: A friend used bath time once a week as “language night”, teaching her kids French by listening to French tapes and singing French songs. She decorated the room with small colorful posters, made by cutting up old exercise books or printing pages off the net and laminating them, which she stuck around the bath with sticky-tack. Any bath toys used that night were objects that could be named in French (plastic vegetables from her child’s shop, plastic boy and girl dolls, and so on). Finally, remember that in a few short years the whole ritual of bath time will be long gone and your children will be old enough to shower or bath on their own – resisting any attempt from you to interfere! Have you noticed how eagerly a grandmother runs her grandchild’s bath and splashes and plays for much longer than necessary? If you asked her she would tell you to make the most of bath time while you can. Whatever you do now to make bath times magic will be repaid a thousand times in memories for you and your children in the future!
LEADERSHIP
WAYNE FIELDS –“The best six doctors anywhere and no one can deny it are sunshine, water, rest, and air Exercise and diet. These six will gladly you attend If only you are willing your mind they’ll ease your will they’ll mend and charge you not a shilling. ” WB YEATS –“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are Jull of passionate intensity. ” WC FIELDS –“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ” WCLEMENT STONE –“There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative. ” WELSH PROVERB –“Three things give hardy strength: sleeping on hairy mattresses, breathing cold air, and eating dry food. ” WEMHER VON BRAUN –“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing. ” WEN JLABAO –“Please just hold on, people are going to get you out of here. ” WENDELL BERRY –“Energy is superhuman in the sense that humans cannot create it. They can only refine or convert it. And they are bound to it by one of the paradoxes of religion: they cannot have it except by losing it; they cannot use it except by destroying it. . . ” WENDELL BERRY –“Men may dam it and say that they have made a lake, but it will still be a river. It will keep its nature and bide its time, like a caged animal alert for the slightest opening. In time, it will have its way; the dam, like the ancient cliffs, will be carried away piecemeal in the currents. ” WENDELL BERRY –“We are far more concerned about the desecration of the flag than we are about the desecration of our land. ” WENDELL PHILIPS –“Difference religion breeds more quarrels than difference of polities. ” WENDELL PHILLIPS- “Difference of religion breads more quarrels than difference of politics. ” WENDELL PHILUPS –“Low is nothing unless close behind it Stands a warm living public opinion. ” WENDY MARSTON –“Once you have the chance to be anything you want, you face the really tough question: What do you want?” WERICK THE GREAT –“All religions must be tolerated. Every man must get to heaven in his own way. ” WERNER VON BRAUN –“Use the word “impossible” with the greatest caution. ” WERNHER VAN BRAUN –“Don’t tell me that man doesn’t belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go— and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there. ” WES NISKER –“if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own. ” WH AUDEN –“A poet is a person who is passionately in love with language. ” WH AUDEN –“No human being can make another one happy. ” WH AUDEN –“No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games. ” WH AUDEN –“We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for; I don’t know. ” WH AUDEN –“We must love one another or die. ” WHITE –“In antiquity, every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. . . Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying animism, we have only ended up exploiting nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. ” WHITE HOUSE –“The sound of the Shafer heralds the beginning of a new year and a time of remembrance and renewal for the Jewish people. During these holy days, men and women are called to reflect on their faith and to honour the blessings of creation. ” WHITMAN –“The untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find. ” WHITNEY HOUSTON –“It’s about believin’ when you ain’t got anything to believe in. ” WHITTIER –“The smile of God is victory. ” WHOOPI GOLDBERG –“It never occurs to me that there are things I can’t do. ” WIKIPAEDIA –“Researchers reason that all living humans descend from Africans, some of whom migrated out of Africa and populated the rest of the world. If the mitochondrial analysis is correct, then because mitochondrial Eve represents the root of the mitochondrial family tree, she must have predated the exodus and lived in Africa. Therefore many researchers take the mitochondrial evidence as support for the “single-origin” or Out-of-Africa model. ” WIKIPAEDIA –“As Mahalakshmi, the supreme Goddess of Love and Delight, she lends grace and charms everything divine or human. As Mahasaraswati, the Goddess of Divine skill and Knowledge, she is the firefighter and trouble-shooter for the entire universe. ” WIKIPAEDIA –“Hypertextuality is the interconnectedness of all literary works and their interpretation. A woven fabric of cultural consciousness is imitated and, in fact, investigated. ” WIKIPAEDIA –“Primordial Parashakti is the ultimate dynamic energy of transcendental Brahmn. . . Brahmn is attributeless whereas Parashakti has many attributes. While, Brahmn has only to be cognised, Parashakti can be worshipped with name and form. She is Divine Will personified. She isconscious power beyond everything. She is the invisible and constant presence that sustains the world, linking form and name, holding them in interdependence. There is nothing impossible for Her She is the Universal Goddess. She is all knowledge, all strength, all triumph and all victory she is the Goddess Supreme, Maheshvari, who brings to us the total state of illumination. ” WIKIPAEDIA “Shakti is Mother of the universe. She creates, preserves, dissolves. She is the sat and so creates. She is chit, so she is life. She is ananda or bliss. He is also possessor and controller of opposite qualities: Destruction, death and terror as Mahakali, Goddess of Supreme Strength. ” WIKIPAEDIA –“Space-time entails a new concept of distance. Whereas distances are always positive in Euclidean spaces, the distance between any two events in space-time — called an “interval” — may be real, zero, or even imaginary. ” WIKIPAEDIA –“The real purpose of the Paryushan is to purify our soul by staying closer to our own soul, to look at our faults, to ask for forgiveness for the mistakes we have committed, and take vows to minimise our faults. We try to forget about the needs of our body and our business so that we can concentrate on our-self. Swetambers celebrate eight days of Paryushan and the last day is called Samvastsari. In these eight days most of Jains keep fast in many ways and all Jains keep fast on Last day of Paryushan. The process of shedding our KARMAS really begins by asking for forgiveness with true feelings and to vow not to repeat mistakes. The quality of the forgiveness requires humility and suppression of anger. ” WILCOX AND MUMFORD –““I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich. ” WILFRED B L TROTTER –“The dispassionate intellect, the open mind, the unprejudiced observer, exist in an exact sense only in a sort of intellectualist folklore; states even approaching them cannot be reached without a moral and emotional effort most of us cannot or will not make. ” WILFRED PETERSON –“The best leaders are very often the best listeners. They have an open mind. They are not interested in having their own way but in finding the best way. ” WILILAM JAMES –“There is only one thing a philosopher can be truly relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. ” WILL AND ARIEL DURANT –“The future never just happened. It was created. ” WILL DURANT- “Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. ” WILL DURANT –“In my youth, I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order. ” WILL DURANT –“The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife. ” WILL DURANT –“The trouble with most people is that they Think with their hopes or fears or, wishes rather than with their minds. ” WILL ROGERS –“An onion can make people cry but there’s never been a vegetable that can make people laugh. ” WILL ROGERS –“Even you’re on the right track, you won’t get anywhere if you’re standing still. ” WILL ROGERS –“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. ” WILL ROGERS –“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. ” WILL ROGERS –“One revolution is just like one cocktail, it just gets you organized or the next. ” WILL ROGERS –“Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees. ” WILL ROGERS –“There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail. ” WILL ROGERS –“We don’t give our criminals much punishment, but we sure give them plenty of publicity. ” WILL ROGERS –“We don’t know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it. ” WILL ROGERS –“You can’t say civilisation isn’t advancing, in every war they kill you in a new way. ” WILL SCHUTZ –“Man’s self-concept is enhanced when he takes responsibility for himself. ” WILLA CATHER –“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something completely great. ” WILLA CATHER –“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before. ” WILLA CATHER –“Where there is the greatest love, there are always miracles. ” WILLA GATHER –“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. ” WILLA GATHER –“Where there is great love, there are always miracles. ” WILLA GATHER –“Where there is great love, there are always wishes. ” WILLARD MARRIOTT –“Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger the wind the stronger the tree. ” WILLIAM A WARD –“Another fresh new year is here. . . / Another year to live!/To banish worry, doubt, and fear, to love and laugh and I give!/ This bright New Year is given me/to live each day with zest. . . /To daily grow and try to be/my highest and my best! I have the opportunity/ once more to right some wrongs,/ to pray for peace, to plant a tree,/ and sing more joyful songs. ” WILLIAM A WARD –“Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work. ” WILLIAM A WART –“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records. ” WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD –“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. ” WILLIAM ASHWORTH –“Children of a culture born in a water-rich environment, we have never really learned how important water is to us. We understand it, but we do not respect it. ” WILLIAM BENNETT- “There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. ” WILLIAM BLACK- “A truth that’s told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“A dog starv’d at the master’s gate/ Predicts the ruin of the State. / A horse misus’d upon the road/ Calls to heaven for human blood. / Each outcry of the hunted hare/ A fibre from the brain does tear,/ A skylark wounded on the wing,/ A cherubim does cease to sing. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“Ancient poets animated all sensible objects with gods or geniuses. . . choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounced that the gods had ordered such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“He who binds himself to a joy Doth the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in Eternity’s sun rise. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“I care not whether a man is good or evil; all that I care/ Is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go! put off holiness,/And put on intellect. . . Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“I have mental joys and mental health, Mental friends and mental wealth, I’ve a wife that I love and that loves me; have all but riches bodily. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe I told it not, my wrath did grow. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“Man’s Desires are limited by his Perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceived. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“Scientists, in trying to decipher that which should remain indecipherable, would turn that which is soul and life into a mill or machine. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“The strongest poison ever known/ Came from Caesar’s laurel crown. ” WILLIAM BLAKE –“The voice of honest indignation is the voice of God. ” William borah- “The marvel of the history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. ” WILLIAM BRAMWELL –“There is too much meat and drink, too little fasting and self-denial, too much taking part in the world. . . and too little self-examination and prayer. ” WILLIAM BUTLERYEATS –“Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire. ” WILLIAM CHANNING –“To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony. ” WILLIAM CLAYTON –“The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they’re going to be when you kill them. ” WILLIAM COFFIN –“Only reverence can restrain violence — reverence for human life and the environment. ” WILLIAM COWPER – “Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God. ” WILLIAM COWPER –“But war’s a game, which, were their subject wise,/ Kings would not play at. ” WILLIAM COWPER –“God made the country, and man made the town. ” WILLIAM COWPER –“The bud may have a bitter taste,/But sweet will be the flower. ” WILLIAM COWPER:- “Nature is a good name for an effect whose cause is God. ” WILLIAM DRUMMOND –“A man who cannot reason is a fool, a man who will not reason is a bigot, and a man who dare not reason is a slave. ” WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING –“Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt. ” WILLIAM FAULKNER –“Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. ” WILLIAM FAULKNER- “Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other. ” WILLIAM FEATHER –“A determination to succeed is the only way to succeed that I know anything about. ” WILLIAM FEATHER –“Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious. ” WILLIAM FEATHER –“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. ” WILLIAM FEATHER –“We always admire the other person more after we’ve tried to do his job. ” WILLIAM FREDERICK HALSEY –“There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet. ” WILLIAM GARTNER –“What separates the entrepreneur from others is that entrepreneurs act on what they see. ” WILLIAM GLADSTONE –“Duty is a power that arises with us in the morning, and goes to rest with us in the night. It is co-extensive with the action of our intelligence. It is the shadow that cleaves to us, go where we will. ” WILLIAM GLADSTONE- “Justice delayed is justice denied. ” WILLIAM HAVARD- “Our country welfare is our first concern, and who promotes that best, best proves his duty. ” WILLIAM HAZLITT –“Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity. ” WILLIAM HAZLITT –“Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul. ” WILLIAM HAZLITT –“Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts. ” WILLIAM HAZLITT –“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. ” WILLIAM HAZLITT –“The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are the more leisure we have. ” WILLIAM HAZLITT –“There is heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion. ” WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING – “Error is the discipline through which we advance. ” WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING –“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. ” WILLIAM HENRY CHANNING –“To live content with small means, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never, in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common, this is to be my symphony. ” WILLIAM HOCKING –“Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt. ” WILLIAM HOMADY –“What I am inside determines the issue in the battle of life. ” WILLIAM J. BENNETT:- “There are no menial jobs, only menial attitudes. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“Believe life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“If you care enough for the result, you will almost always attain it. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“Then you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it. ” WILLIAM JAMES –“This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. ” WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN –“Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for it is a thing to be achieved. ” WILLIAM JONES –“Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference. ” WILLIAM L GARRISON –“Are right and wrong convertible terms, dependant upon popular opinion?” WILLIAM L. SHIRER –“Most true happiness comes from one’s inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. ” WILLIAM LANDBURG –“Modern portfolio theory allows for the fact that financial markets are by their nature unpredictable. An infinite array of events that are, impossible to foresee or control affect returns — currency meltdowns, earthquakes, terrorist attacks and 100-year storms (which have a way of occurring every five years!). Logic and rational thinking rarely factor into the mix. As was seen in the dot corn era, a company’s underlying strength, reflected by such variables as profitability, earning prospects and market share, may have far less effect on share price than mindless exuberance. How else can we account for the swings and gyrations in the stock market in recent years?” WILLIAM LANGLAND –“We should be low and love like and lean each man to the other And patient as pilgrims, for pilgrims are we all. ” WILLIAM LANGLAND –“We should be low and love like and lean each man to the other And patient as pilgrims, for pilgrims are we all. ” WILLIAM LAW –“A life devoted to the interests and enjoyments of this world, spent and wasted in the slavery of earthly desires, may be truly called a dream, as having all the shortness, vanity, and delusion of a dream; only with this great difference, that when a dream is over nothing is lost but fictions and fancies; but when the dream of life is ended only by death, all that eternity is lost, for which we were brought into being. ” WILLIAM LAW –“All other sacrifices that we make whether of worldly goods, honours, or pleasures, are but small matters compared to that sacrifice and destruction of all selfishness, as well spiritual as natural, that must be made before our regeneration hath its perfect work. ” WILLIAM LAW –“For Heaven is as near to our souls as this world is to our bodies. ” WILLIAM LAW –“Love and pity and wish well to every soul in the world; dwell in love, and then you dwell in God; hate nothing but the evil that stirs in your own heart. ” WILLIAM LONDON –“To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life. ” WILLIAM M THACKERAY –“Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children. ” WILLIAM Mc FEE –“The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps cool. ” WILLIAM MCDONOUGH –“Don’t get me wrong: love nuclear energy! It’s just that i prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there’s an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about eight minutes. And it’s wireless!” WILLIAM MCGONAGALL –“Beautiful city of Glasgow, with your streets so neat and clean, Your stately mansions, and beautiful Green! Likewise your beautiful bridges across the river Clyde, And on your bonnie banks I would like to reside. ” WILLIAM MOMS –“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life and elevating them to an art. ” WILLIAM MORRIS –“Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship’s sake that ye do them. ” WILLIAM MOTHERWELL –“Men say that in this midnight hour, the disembodied have power to wander as it liketh them, by wizard oak and fairy stream. ” WILLIAM ODOUGLAS –“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. ” WILLIAM PENN –“Death is only a horizon, and a horizon is only the limit of our sight. Open your eyes to see more clearly. ” WILLIAM PENN –“He that does good for good’s sake seeks neither praise nor reward, though sure of both at least. ” WILLIAM PENN –“No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; r no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown. ” WILLIAM PHELPS –“We look backward too much and we look forward too much; thus we miss the only eternity of which we can be absolutely sure — the eternal present, for it is always now. ” WILLIAM PITT –“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants. ” WILLIAM PURKEY –“Dance like no one is watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening and live like it’s heaven on earth. WILLIAM R INGE –“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. ” WILLIAM RANDOLPH –“A politician will do anything to his job –even become a patriot. ” William S. Burroughs- “Be just, and if can’t be just, be arbitrary. ” WILLIAM S. GILBERT- “And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends up on whose solicitor has given me my brief. ” WILLIAM SAFIRE –“Never assume the obvious is true. ” WILLIAM SAROYAN –“Every man in the world is better than someone else and not as good as someone else. ” WILLIAM SAROYAN –“No man’s guilt is not yours, nor is any man’s innocence a thing apart. ” WILLIAM SEWELL –“We shall be judged, not by what we might have been, but what we have been. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – “Hell is empty and all the devils are here. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE – “We are such stuff as dreams are made of; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety; other women cloy The appetites . they feed. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Alas! How should you govern any kingdom, That know not how to use ambassadors. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Fear no more the heat of the sun, Not the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hath done, Home art gone, and taken thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Have more than thou showest, / Speak less than thou knowest, /Lend less than thou owest, / Ride more than thou goest, / Learn more than thou trowest, / Set less than thou throwest; / Leave thy drink and thy whore, / And keep in-a-door, / And thou shalt have more / Than two tens to a score. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Here comes one with a paper: God give him grace to groan!” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang And churiish chiding of the winter’s wind, Which, when it bites and blows upon my body. Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, “This is no flattery”. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“How poor are they that have not patience What wound did ever heal but by degrees?” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“If she be made of white and red,/ Her faults will ne’er be known,/ For blushing cheeks by faults are bred/ And fears by pale white shown:/ Then if she fear or be to blame,/ By this you shall not know,/ For still her cheeks possess the same/ Which native she doth owe. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Love all, trust a few: Do wrong to none. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE -“Love asks me no questions. And gives me endless support. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“My crown is in my heart, not in my head, Nor decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen; my crown is called contentment. A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Poor and content is rich and rich enough. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Reflection is the business of man; a sense of his state is his first duty: but who remembereth himself in joy? Is it not in mercy then that sorrow is allotted unto us?” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Some rise by sin, some by virtue fall. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“The gods approve the depth, and not the tumult, of the soul. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“The miserable have no other medicine but only hope. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“When icicles hang by the wall,/ And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,/ And Tom bears logs into the hall,/ And milk comes frozen home in pail,/When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,/ Then nightly sings the staring owl,/ Tu-whit; Tu-who, a merry note,While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms. ” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE –“You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments. ” WILLIAM SHEDD –“A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for. ” WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM –“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned. ” WILLIAM STYRON –“A good book should leave you. . . slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. ” WILLIAM THOMAS- “No statement can be profound once it has been repeated by others. ” WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY- “Blindness we may forgive but baseness we will smite. ” WILLIAM WARD –“The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain—he is inspired by it. The persistent winner is not discouraged by a problem — he is challenged by it. ” WILLIAM WORDSWORHT –“Wisdom is often near when we stop than when we soar. ” WILLIAM WORDSWORTH –“And, when the stream Which overflowed the soul was passed away, A consciousness remained that it had left, Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory images and precious thoughts That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed. ” WILLIAM WORDSWORTH –“I made no vows, but vows/ Were then made for me; bond unknown to me/ Was given, that i should be, else sinning greatly/ A dedicated spirit. ” WILLIAM WORDSWORTH –“The World is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; little we see in Nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not — Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; so might I, standing on this pleasant lea, have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. ” WILLIAM WORDSWORTH –“Wisdom is often nearer when we stoop than when we soar. ” WILLIAN ERNEST HOCKING –“Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt. ” WILLIS HARMAN –“By deliberately changing’ the internal image of reality people can change the world. ” WILLIS PLATER –“A liberal is a person whose interests aren’t at stake at the moment. ” WILLIS WHITNEY –“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can. ” WILLS DURANT –“India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages. India was the mother of Our philosophy, of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in Christianity. . of self-government and democracy In many ways, Mother India is the mother of us all. ” WILLS DURANT –“It is the function of the youth to defend liberty and innovation; of the old to defend order and tradition, and of middle age to find a middle way. ” WILMA ASKINAS –“A friend is one who sees through you and still enjoys the view. ” WILMA RUDOLPH –“No matter what great things you accomplish, somebody helps you. ” WILMA RUDOLPH –“No one goes alone to the heights of excellence. Whether your business is building a loving family, a great idea, a meaningful career, a work of art, or a vast commercial empire, your success will depend on others, and theirs will depend on you. ” WILMA RUDOLPH –“When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God: Why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn’t just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that. ” WILT ROGERS –“It’s not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts. ” WIN PE –“Monk-poet Shin Maha Thilawuntha wrote poems on the thoughts in the Dhamma like the deep tone of a palace drum heard in the far end of the realm. Shin Maharathathara wrote of the nature of kingship and of matters secular in poems like an ensemble for an anyein or like the warble of a karaweik. I marvel at their use of language and a vocabulary both precise and rich. From which deep intellect did they draw it. By which attrition are we losing it. I feel sad for our collective forgetfulness. ” WINNIE THE POOH –“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart I’ll stay there forever. ” WINNIE THE POOH –“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL – “There are a lot of lies going around . . . and half of them are true. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL – “There are a lot of lies going around . . . and half of them with out socialism is slavery and brutality. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Democracy is the worst form of government Except for all the others that have been tried. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“During my life, I have often had to eat my own words, and on the whole I have found them a wholesome diet. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“I am ready to meet my maker, but whether He is prepared for the ordeal is another matter. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“I do not resent criticism even if for the sake of emphasis it parts for the time with reality. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“If you are going through hell keep going. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL -“If you have an important point to make don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack”. WINSTON CHUECHILL –“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again, Then hit it a third time, a tremendous whack. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“In war, you can only be killed once, but in polities, many times. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Kites rise highest against the wind – not with it. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter, let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures. . . ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing happened. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“One voyage to India is enough; the others are merely repletion. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Play the game for more than you can afford to lose. . . only then will you learn the game. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“The empires of the future are empire of the mind. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“The price of greatness is responsibility. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young grow wild oats, the old grow sage. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Without measureless and perpetual uncertainty the drama of human life would be destroyed. ” WINSTON CHUECHILL –“Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. ” WINWOOD READE –“And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the air is Saharas that separate, planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land that will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe. ” WITHROP ALDRICH –“The price of power is responsibility for the public good. ” WM LEWIS –“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. ” WOLF BLITZER –“You always give the aggrieved party the chance to respond before you publish or go to air. ” WOLFDYKE B KING –“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you. ” WOODROW T WILSON –“All things come to him who waits – provided he knows what he is waiting for. ” WOODROW T WILSON –“I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose. ” WOODROW WILSON- “It is not an army that we must train for war, it is a nation. ” WOODROW WILSON- “There must be, not a balance of power, but community of power, not organized rivalries, but an organized peace. ” WOODROW WILSON –“You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. ” WOODY ALLEN – “How it is possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size. ” WOODY ALLEN – “Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. ” WOODY ALLEN –“Don’t let your mind go wandering, its too small to go out by itself. ” WOODY ALLEN- “Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. ” WOODY ALLEN –“Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. ” WOODY ALLEN –“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens. ” WOODY ALLEN –“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. . . I want to achieve it through not dying. ” WOODY ALLEN –“If you’re not failing, you’re not trying anything. ” WOODY ALLEN –“I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. ” WOODY ALLEN –“I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. ” WOODY ALLEN –“I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens. ” WOODY ALLEN –“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. ” WOODY ALLEN –“No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is not saying. ” WOODY ALLEN –“People who drink to drown their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim. ” WOODY ALLEN –“Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experience go, it’s one of the best. ” WOODY ALLEN –“The heart wants what it wants. There is no logic to those things. ” WOODY ALLEN –“The heart wants what it wants. . . . There’s no logic to those things. ” WOODY ALLEN –“To you I’m atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition. ” WOODY ALLEN –“You see me as an atheist. God see me as the loyal opposition. ” WORLD BANK –“If you are not reforming, another country will overtake you. ” WORLD BANK –“Reform is like repairing a car with the engine running— there is no time to strategise. ” WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION, 1948 –“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ” WORLD SCRIPTURE –“In a family, parents are responsible for the welfare of children and offer children an embracing, unconditional love. ” WRITINGS OF BAHA WTAH –“No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth. ” WRITINGS OF BAHA’u’LLAH –“That seeker must at all times put his trust in God, must renounce the peoples of the earth, detach himself from the world of dust, and cleave unto Him Who is the Lord of Lords. If anyone revile you, or trouble touch you, in the path of God, be patient, and put your trust in Him Who heareth, who seeth. He, in truth, witnesseth, and perceiveth, and doeth what He pleaseth, through the power of His sovereignty. ” WTPURKISER –“Not what we say about our blessings, but how he uses them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. ” XENOCRATES –“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. ” XHARYA MAHAPRAJNA –“The principle of anekanta symbolizes the fact that no element is either different or same as the total. It is both separate and integrated. A person is not entirely different from this universe; yet, he is not the same. We are undeniably connected — that is why we lead both dependent and independent lives. ” XUN ZI –“A person is born with desires of the eyes and ears, and a liking for beautiful sights and sounds. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to immorality and lack of restriction, and any ritual principles and propriety will be abandoned. ” Y V REDDY –“In India our mandate encompasses both growth and stability. ” Y. B. YEATS –“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of fire. ” YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO –“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. Everyone lets the present moment slip by then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear it in mind. When one understands this settling into single- mindedness well, his affairs will thin out. ” YAMANA ESKIMO –“Do not seek to benefit only yourself; think of other people also. . . If you were lucky in hunting, let others share it. Moreover, show them the favourable spots. . . let others, too, have their share. If you want to amass everything for yourself other people will stay way from you; no one will want to be with you. If you should fall ill one day no one will visit you because, for your part, you did not formerly concern yourself about others. Grant other people something also. The Yamana do not like a person who acts selfishly. ” YANN MARTEL –“To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. ” YASNA –“All these, indeed, gather unto Thee, 0 Mazda! They who have done Thy work, whose actions accord with the Truth, Whose words proceed from the Good-Mind, Whose Inspirer art Thou from the very beginning. ” YASNA –“At the last turning of life to the faithful making the right choice according to his norm doth Ahura Mazda, the Lord Judge, in His sovereign power Bestow an end better than good. But to him who shall not serve the cause of good, He giveth an end worse than bad, at the last turning of life. ” YASNA –“He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, he who Upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed, he, indeed, is thy most valued helper, 0 Ahura Mazda!” YASNA –“I shall take the awakened soul to the exalted abode with the help of the Good-Mind, Knowing the blissful rewards of the Wise Lord for righteous deeds. As long as I have power and strength I shall teach all to seek for Truth and Right. ” YASNA –“May the true-spoken word triumph over the false-spoken word. ” YASNA –“Through Thy power, 0 Lord, Make life renovated, real at Thy will. ” YASNA –“With Truth moving my heart, With Best Thought inspiring my mind, with all the might of spiritual force within me, I venerate Thee, 0 Mazda, with songs of Thy praise. And at the last when I shall stand at Thy Gate I shall hear the echo of my prayers from Thy Abode of Songs. ” YASSER ARAFAT- “Choose your friend carefully. Your enemy will choose you. ” YASSER ARAFAT –“I extend my congratulations to the Israeli people towards the Jewish new year. I hope this holiday will be the beginning of a new era of peace and security between the two peoples — the Israelis and Palestinians and other people m the region. ” YASSER ARAFAT –“Whoever stands by a just cause cannot possibly be called a terrorist. ” YEHUDI MENUHIN –“Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous. ” YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO –“Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy. ” YIDDISH PROVERB –“The whole world is a dream, and death the interpreter. ” YIDDISH PROVERB –“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul?” YIDDISH PROVERB –“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too. ” YITTA HALBERSTAM & JUDITH LEVENTHAL –“At times, all we have to do in life is show up, be present, and allow the magic to unfold. ” YOGA SUTRAS –“When one is established in non-injury, beings give up their mutual animosity in his presence. ” YOGI BERRA –“You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there. ” YOGIBERRA –“You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours. ” YOHYA B. MU’AD AL RAZI- “Paradise is the prison of the sage, just as the world is the prison of the believers. ” YOKA DAISHI –“The Mind like a mirror is brightly illuminating and knows no obstructions, It penetrates the vast universe to its minutest crevices; All its contents, multitudinous in form, are reflected in the Mind, Which, shining like a perfect gem, has no surface, nor the inside. ” YORUBA PROVERB –“Lack of respect to the constituted authority is the source of most conflicts in the world. ” YORUBA PROVERB –“Lying does not mean that one could not be rich; Treachery does not mean you may not live to old age; But it is the day of death (judgment) about which one should be baffled. ” YORUBA PROVERB –“Offend me and I will question you — this is the medicine for friendship. ” YORUBA VERSE –“Only few people act in our interest in our absence, When we are not around. But in our presence, all display their love for us. ” YOSHIDA KENKO – “Ambition never comes to an end. ” YOSHIKO NOMURA –“The law of cause and effect without exception rules all events that take place in the phenomenal world. There is no effect without a cause and each effect becomes a new cause. ” YUL BRYNNER –“Girls have an unfair advantage over men: if they can’t get what they want by being smart, they can get it by being dumb. ” YURI GAGARIN –“To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature—could one dream of anything more? When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is, Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!” Z. A. BHUTTO- “Democracy is a flexible art. What appears impossible today is possible tomorrow. ” ZACHARY SCOTT –“As you grow older, you’ll find the only things you regret are the things you didn’t do. ” ZADOK RABINWITZ –“A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness. ” ZAFARNAMA -“God is the Master of the earth and the sky: He is the Creator of all men, all places. He it is who creates all — from the feeble ant to the powerful elephant, and is the Embellisher of the meek and Destroyer of the reckless. His name is: “Protector of the meek”, And Himself He is dependent upon no one’s support or obligation. He has no twist in Him, no doubt. And, He shows man the Way to Redemption and Release, From the Guru’s. ” ZAHARIAS –“Winning has always meant much to me, but winning friends has meant the most. ” ZARATHUSTRA –“Courage begets strength by struggle with hardships. Courage grows from fighting danger and overcoming obstacles. Develop the courage to act according to your convictions, to speak what is true, and to do what is Right. ” ZARATHUSTRA –“Seek your happiness in the happiness of all. Regard the sorrows and sufferings of others as yours and hasten to assuage them. ” ZARATHUSTRA –“These two Primordial Principles in One, Of Light and Darkness, Good and 111, that seem Apart from one another, yet are bound Inseparably together, each to each In Thought, in Word, in Action, everywhere. Are they in operation; and the wise Walk on the side of Light, while the unwise follow the other until they grow wise? These ancient Two, in mutual wrestle-play Give birth to Twin- Desires, high and low, that shape as Hate-Mentality in some, in others as the Better Mind of Love. 0 Mighty Lord of Wisdom, Mazada! Supreme, Infinite, Universal Mind!, Ahura! thou that givest Life to all!,/ Grant me the power to control this , mind,/ This Lower Mind i of mine, this egoism, And put an end to all Duality,/And gain the reign of One as is desired/ Unconsciously by even the graceless ones,/ The evil sinners, in their heart of hearts. ” ZARATHUSTRA-“Courage begets strength by struggle with hardships. Courage grows from fighting danger and overcoming obstacles. Develop the courage to act according to your convictions, to speak what is true, and to do what is right. ” ZAUQ- “An increase in love increases the light in the world. ” ZELDA FITZGERALD- ‘I don’t want to live – I want to love first, and live incidentally. ” ZELDA FITZGERALD –“I don’t want to live- I want to love first and live incidentally. ” ZEN –“Life is the only thing worth living for. ” ZEN BUDDHISM –“A University Professor went to see Nan-in, a Zen Master, to find out more about Zen. As their meeting continued Nan-in was pouring Tea and continued to pour even though the cup was overflowing. The Professor cried. “Enough! No more will go in!” Nan-in replied, “Like this cup you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?” ZEN BUDDHISM –“The world is like a mirror, you see? Smile and it smiles back. ” ZEN MASTER KYONG HO –“Accept the anxieties and difficulties of this life … Attain deliverance in disturbance. ” ZEN SAYING –“To know and not to do is not yet to know. ” ZEN STORY –“One day it was announced by Master Joshu that the young monk Kyogen had reached an enlightened state. Much impressed by this news, several of his peers went to speak with him. “We have heard that you are enlightened. Is this true?” they inquired. “It is”, Kyogen answered. “Tell us”, said a friend, “how do you feel?” “As miserable as ever”, replied the enlightened Kyogen. ” ZEN THOUGHT –“Before enlightenment —chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment — chop wood and carry water. ” ZHUANG ZI –“Life is finite, While knowledge is infinite. ” ZIG ZIGLAR – “If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them every where. ” ZIG ZIGLAR – “Many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side. ” ZIG ZIGLAR –“A lot of people have gone farther than they thought they could because someone else thought they could. ” ZIG ZIGLAR –“All of us perform better and more willingly when we know why we’re doing what we have been told or asked to do. ” ZIG ZIGLAR –“Kids go where there is excitement. They stay where there is love. ” ZIG ZIGLAR –“Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR –“A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR- “Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR –“Husbands are like fires. They go out if unattended. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR –“I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR –“I know nothing about sex because I was always married. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR –“I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire. ” ZSA ZSA GABOR –“I’m an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the home. ”
DISPEL DARKNESS
RAJEEV MALIK –“India’s economic reforms remain a story of incremental changes at a glacial pace. ” RAJENDRA PRASAD –“It is not altogether impossible for man to achieve happiness without the usual paraphernalia, which passes for his everyday necessities. . . It was by practising ’simple living and high thinking’ that Mahatma Gandhi could enjoy that happiness which a humble follower of his is unable to have even in the palatial Rashtrapati Bhavan. Let us be sure that our will to progress and rise high will materialise in the true sense only after we have realised that the source of our happiness does not lie outside us but is enshrined within our own: hearts. ” (1st PRESTDEN) RAJINDER SINGH JI –“Where there is love, there is no anger. Where there is love, there is no lust. Where there is love, there is no greed. Where there is love, there is no attachment. And where there is love, there is no ego. ” RALPH CHARELL –“It is thought cooperation and consultation that conflicts can be resolved with success. ” RALPH CRAW SHAW –“Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing first-hand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way. ” RALPH ELLISON –“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free. ” RALPH MARSTON –“Don’t lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality. ” RALPH T FLEWELLING –“We cannot impose our will on nature unless we first ascertain what her will is. Working without regard to law brings nothing but failure; working with law enables us to do what seemed at first impossible. ” RALPH W SOCKMAN –“The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority. ” RALPH W. EMERSON –“What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. ” RAM CHANDRA –“The hard and fast rules of life and tiring practices prescribed by teachers for realization have really made matters so complicated that people are led to believe it to be beyond their power and capacity. . . Iron will to achieve the goal together with proper means and guidance is the only thing required for complete success. ” RAM DAS –“Ramdas from his own experience can boldly assert that there is God. Until you yourself get the experience, it is natural that you should deny Him. But a time will come when you too will have faith in Him. ” RAM DAS –“The only way to control the mind and free it from the evils you mention is always to take the Name of God, meditate upon His great attributes and surrender all your actions to Him. ” RAM DASS –“The game is not about becoming somebody, it’s about becoming nobody. ” RAM DASS –“You may have expected that enlightenment would come Zap! Instantaneous and permanent. This is unlikely. After the first ah-ha experience, it can be thought of as the thinning of a layer of clouds. . . ” RAM DOSS –“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everybody should follow one path. Listen to your own truth. ” RAM KRISHAN PARAMHANSA-“If you must be made, be it not for the things of the world. ” RAM KRISHAN PARAMHANSA-“It a thorn has entered your feet, get another thorn to take out the first, then the row away the second. ” RAM V CHANDRAN –“The role of ego in worldly life differs from its role in spiritual life. Ego means self-esteem, pride, vanity etc. To lead a successful worldly life, self-esteem is a positive virtue, but vanity is a negative quality for spiritual practice, ego is the barrier and should be crushed. ” RAMA DAS –“First a person should learn to lead a life of righteousness, discharge one’s duties to self and neighbours and then think of the other (spiritual) side of life. One who strives to establish Dharma is alone a godly person. ” RAMCHANDRA GANDHI –“Only when we misconstrue nothingness as a limitless something, and misconstrue ourselves as limited things, Buddha says, does nothingness appear to us as a devouring, annihilatory, malevolence. Nihilism and egotism preached by Keshakambalin and Goshala are merely caricatures of Nirvana and self-realisation. . . A rediscovery of pauranika wisdom in general may close the gap between life and thought, aboriginality and advaita (so that) the embrace of Guha and Rama becomes visible and intelligible and irresistible again. . . “ RAMCHANDRA GANDHI –“We don’t know what our birth is like, we don’t know death, but everyone remembers his childhood and associated with childhood is the feminine figure, a mother or a dai. We have forgotten the girl child as being the reflection of the Atman. ” RAMESH MANOCHA –“Dharma is our true place in the cosmic process: in time, space, awareness, thought, deed and desire. . . . In order that we fulfil our role in the divine play we must behave within our Dharma. That is, we ought to do the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, and for the right reason. By this we attain balance. ” RAMESH S BALSEKAR –“True meditation is when, by the grace of God and the destiny of the individual, gradually the meditator disappears into meditation so that at the end of the meditation there is no remnant of any ego doing meditation with expectation. ” RAMOLA KUMAR –“ You are there, hence am I, You are in me and hence I in you, There be none else within, without, All around I sense your presence So permanent yet so transient. The reality fixture is such a mirage, Where the spirit provides the charge; Thank you oh Divine for showing me Thy presence is Not such a facade. ” RANDALL MCBRIDE –“Success will not lower its standard to us. We must raise our standard to success. ” RANDLE COTGRAVE –“Fools are wise until they speak. ” RANI RAOTE –“Perhaps it is time to review our life and relationships to make the changes we have been putting off for another time. In addition to working on relationships, it can also be a time to work on inculcating deep spiritual beliefs which can anchor us in emotionally difficult times. ” RAPHAEL –“The particular event thing giving you happiness and well-being did not belong to an absolute reality but to a relative, contingent truth. Now do you want fleeting, discontinuous happiness that comes and goes, or do you want to be constant bliss?” RAUL JUAREZ- “Love is a decision, not an emotion, that if made from the heart will outlast anything. ” RAY BRODBURY- “There are worse crimes then burring books. Out of them is not reading them. ” RAY CHARLES –“I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great. ” RAY LYMAN WILBUR –“Unless we think of others and do something for them, we miss one of the greatest sources of happiness. ” RAY S BAKER –“I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year And thus I drift along into the holidays — let them overtake me unexpectedly—waking up some fine morning, saying to myself: “Why this is Christmas Day!” RAYAVACAKAMU –“To acquire wealth: Make people prosper. To make the people prosper: Justice is the means. Justice is the treasury of kings. ” RAYJOHNSON –“Ordinary people can spread good and bad information about brands faster than marketers. ” RAYMOND ARON –“Man should not try to resemble a beast of pray because, when he does so, he is only too successful. ” RAYMOND BURR –“Try and live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs. ” RAYMOND CHANDLER- “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third routine. ” RAYMOND CHANDLER –“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. ” RAYMOND CHANDLER- “Oh the hell with it. Ideas are prison. The more you reason, the less you create. ” RAYMOND CHANDLER- “Oh the hell with it. Ideas are prison. The more you reason, the less you create. ” RAYNITSCHKE –“Football is more mental than physical, no matter how it looks from the stands. ” RDHUCHCOCH –“It is a luxury to learn; but the luxury of learning is not to be compared with the luxury of teaching. ” reading them. ” REBAMCENTIRE –“For me, singing sad songs often has a way of healing a situation. It gets the hurt out in the open into the light, out of the darkness. ” REBEKAH FAITH –“When you have an idea in your head, you have created. When you write it down, you give it the breath of life. When an idea is free, it lives. You have created. It is exponentially easier to destroy than create. The cycle is an endless one. One destruction dominoes to another, one creation creates another it is an endless cycle—from the beginning of time until the end. So anything that is done must be done with consciousness and awareness, lest one destroys while trying to create. ” RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN –“If we have confidence in our own beliefs, we should not fear freedom of thought. ” RED AUERBACH –“The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology. ” REETA KUMAR –“The Chaitra Navratra heralds the beginning of summer, Fasting is common and many people eat cereal-free foods. The ninth day marks the birth of Vishnu’s incarnation, Rama, and is known as Ram Navami. ” REGGIE LEACH –“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. ” REHANA HAKIM –“We are here to see ground reality. . . the only way to serve the people of India and Pakistan is to provide to all the true picture of happenings on both sides. ” REINHOLD NIEBUHR –“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. ” REINHOLD NIEBUHR- “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclinations to injustice makes democracy necessary. ” REINHOLD NIEBUHR –“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, Therefore, we are saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; Therefore, we are saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. ” REMA BINDU –“It’s the run-up to the annual pilgrimage to Sabarimala temple, the shrine of Lord Ayyappa. Ideally, austerities (vrutham) are followed for 41 days when the devotee leads a simple and pious life. Vrutham starts from the day the devotee wears the Tuisi or Rudraksha mala (chain) with a locket of Lord Ayyappa and continues till he makes a pilgrimage to Sabarimala and removes the mala. He is called ‘Ayyappan’ or ‘Swami’ as he keeps his mind and body clean and pure, refraining from worldly pleasures. Care is taken to not hurt anyone. The austerities help the inner cleansing process and aids reflection and rejuvenation. ” REMAIN ROLLAND –“If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living man have found a home from the very earliest days of man’s existence on earth, it is India. ” REMAINS ROLLAND –“If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. ” REMYDE GOURMONT –“The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man who suddenly regained his sight, who first noted natural beauty. ” RENAULT –“I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here. ” RENE DESCARTES –“If you would be a real seeker after Truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. ” RENE DESCARTES –“Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow. ” RENE DESCARTES –“Reading all the good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries. ” RENE DESCARTES –“Travelling is almost like talking with those of other centuries. ” RENE DESCARTES –“We ought to give the whole of our attention to the most insignificant and most Sea silly mastered facts, Sand remain a long time in contemplation of them until we are accustomed to behold the truth clearly and distinctly. ” RENE DUBOS –“Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival. ” REUBEN FINE –“Combinations have always been the most intriguing aspect of Chess. The masters look for them, the public applauds them, the critics praise them. It is because combinations are possible that Chess is more than a lifeless mathematical exercise. They are the poetry of the game; they are to Chess what melody is to music. They represents the triumph of mind over matter. ” REVASKENDALLIL –“From motives of habit of prejudice economic advantage or perhaps even laziness, some people would give blind support to an unworthy political candidate. ” REVELATION –“He that leads into captivity shall go into captivity, he that kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. ” REVEREND DEB OLIVE –“Experiencing new growth means having a willingness to feel and share our feelings. ” REX STOUT –“There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you make up. ” RHEA SEDDON –“Consider risks carefully, then hold firm the courage of your own conviction. ” RHONDA BYRNE –“ An affirmative thought is 100 times more powerful than a negative one. Decide what you want. . . believe you can have it, believe you deserve it, believe it’s possible for you. ” RHONDA BYRNE –“ Close your eyes and visualise having what you already want — and the feeling of having it already. ” RHONDA BYRNE –“Every thought has a frequency Thoughts send out a magnetic energy. People think about what they don’t want and attract more of the same. Your thoughts cause your feelings. Thoughts that bring about good feelings mean you are on the right track. Thoughts that bring about bad feelings means you are not on the right track. ” RHONDA BYRNE –“Focus on being grateful for what you have already. . . enjoy it!! Then release into the universe. The universe will manifest it. ” RHONDA BYRNE –“We are mass energy. Everything is energy. EVERYTHING. Don’t define yourself by your body. . . it’s the infinite being that’s connected to everything in the universe. ” RHONDA BYRNE –“Whatever is going on in your mind is what you are attracting. We are like magnets—like attract like. You become AND attract what you think. ” RHONDA HANSOME –“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. A woman must do what he can’t. ” RICH TAYLOR –“Borrowing ideas, scripts and remaking them in different cultural contexts is a part of international cinema. But there is a right way of going about it. ” RICHARD ADAMS –“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. ” RICHARD ARMOUR –“I’ve suffered from all of the hang-ups known, and none is as bad as the telephone. ” RICHARD BACH – “Here’s test to see if your life is on the earth has finished: If you are alive, it has not. ” RICHARD BACH – “Here’s test to see if your life is on the earth has finished: If you are alive, it has not. ” RICHARD BACH – “Wrong turns are as important as right ones. More Important Oaths. ” RICHARD BACH –“I think our learning lies along the path of whatever it is we love. ” RICHARD BACH –“In order to live free and happy you must sacrifice boredom, it is not always an easy sacrifice. ” RICHARD BACH –“That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning. ” RICHARD BACH –“The simplest things are often the truest. ” RICHARD BACH –“There’s no disaster that can’t become a blessing, and no blessing that can’t become a disaster. ” RICHARD BACH –“We generated our own environment. We get exactly what we deserve. How can we resent a life we’ve created ourselves?” RICHARD BACH –“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. ” RICHARD BACH –“Wrong turns are as important as right ones. More important sometimes. ” RICHARD CARLSON –“Many people don’t allow themselves to be enthusiastic, lighthearted, inspired, relaxed, or happy — especially at work. It seems they are frightened at what a happy demeanour would be like to other people, including co-workers, clients, and employers. They assume, “Someone who is relaxed (or happy) must not be a hard worker. ” If you dare to be happy, your life will begin to change immediately Your life and work will take on greater significance and will be experienced as an extraordinary adventure. ” RICHARD CARLSON –“These days, it seems that almost all of us are too serious. . . Understand the link between your expectations and your frustration level. Whenever you expect something to be a certain way and it isn’t, you’re upset and you suffer. But when you let go of your expectations, when you accept life as it is, you’re free. To hold on is to be serious and uptight. To let go is to lighten up. ” RICHARD CECIL –“It is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false. ” RICHARD DALEY –“I enjoy getting things done. My philosophy is the edge, the edge of something. There’s where we have to go in local government, in not only the philosophy but the creativity in people around you. They have to go to the edge. ” RICHARD DAWKINS –“However many ways there is of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead. ” RICHARD DEHMEL –“A little kindness from person to person in better than a vast love for all humankind. ” RICHARD FARSON –“Real creativity always violates the rules. ” RICHARD FAULDS –“The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what’s been called the relaxation response. When you do yoga you initiate a process that turns the fight-or-flight system off and the relaxation response on. The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases. Healing mechanisms get turned on. ” RICHARD FEYNMAN –“Scientists have come up with a fantastic invention for looking through solid walls. It’s called a window. ” RICHARD FEYNMAN- “The first principle is that you mustn’t fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. ” RICHARD G LUGAR –“One more important step toward a vibrant and exciting relationship between our two great democracies. ” RICHARD HOOKER –“Change is not made without inconvenience even from worse to better. ” RICHARD HOVEY –“Spring in the world! And all things are made new!” RICHARD JAFFOLA –“Every situation with which we are confronted, whether it be in our body or in our outer affairs — every situation — contains somewhere within it the seed of our good. ” RICHARD LEWIS –“It may be that the venture into space is the product of biological determinism which impels us to explore a new environment when we are technologically ready. ” RICHARD LOVELACE –“Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage. Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage. ” RICHARD M. NIXON- “A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits. ” RICHARD MOSS –“The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention. ” RICHARD NIXON –“With all the power that a president has, the most important thing to bear in mind is this; You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else, he has character. Character is the most important qualification the president of the United States can have. ” RICHARD OF ST VICTOR –“If the mind would fain ascend to the height of science, let its first and principal study be I to know itself. ” RICHARD P. FEYNMAN –“I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy. ” RICHARD ROWLAND –“The lunatics have taken charge of the asylum. ” RICHARD WAGNER –“I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that any who can feel these vibrations is inspired. ” RICHARD WAGNER –“Joy is not in things; it is in us. ” RICHARD WILBUR –“Consider your own life — what power had I before I learned to yield? Shatter me Great Wind! I shall possess the field!” RICHARD WILBUR- “Giving up doesn’t always mean you are weak; sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go. ” RICHARD WILBUR –“What power had I before I learned to yield? Shatter me Great Wind! I shall possess the field! “ RICHTER –“Nothing is more beautiful than cheerfulness in an old face. ” RICK BERMAN –“’If obesity is a disease, it is the only one you can cure by keeping your mouth shut. ” RICKY MARTIN –“I love what I do, I love music. I love being on stage. . . I just hope that with my music, people feel free. It’s about letting go of the tension in your body, and just daring to look ridiculous when you’re dancing. Just be yourself. ” RIDE THE WILD TIGER –“Life is like a tiger. You can either lie down or let it lay its paw on your head — or you can sit on its back and ride it. ” RIG VEDA –“Fresh from her toilet, conscious of her beauty, She emerges visible for all to see. Dawn, Daughter of Heaven, lends us her lustre, dispersing all shadows of malignity. . . Bright Usha, when your rays appear, all living creatures start to stir, both four-footed and two. ” RIMER DAMS –“The first and great commandment is, never let them scare you. ” RINNRVNOR –“ “I always take refuge in Lord Guha (Lord Subramanya) of six faces, who is of deep red colour and infinite knowledge, who has the divine peacock to ride on, the son of Lord Shiva and the leader of the army of the Devas. ” RISHI MARKANDEYA –“Terrible wars and demonic diseases will decimate the human race, and savage cold and scathing heat, scorching droughts and sweeping floods will terrorise the people. . . . ” RISTOTLE –“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal. ” RITA MAE BROWN –“Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself. ” RITA MAE BROWN –“One of the leys to happiness is a bam memory. ” RITA NEGI –“Said the setting sun to the lamp “Now it is your turn to glow, Soon it will be dark and damp. So spread light steady and slow. “With the universe, He created me. My strength is the strength ‘to be’, The earth sleeps and wakes with me But in the dark they need thee. “Your steady light gives courage not to falter, not to be afraid. You can help to gather knowledge You are not small”, he said. ” RITA RODNER –“I love being married. It’s great to find that one person you want to annoy all your life. ” RITA RUDNER –“You can’t love anyone until you understand that you can’t love everyone. ” RITAMAE BROWN –“One of the key to happiness is a bad memory. ” RK MADHUBIR –“At the courtyard where grow my Flowering plants of all kinds I could see buds on every branch; They only cannot bloom forth into flowers. ” RK MADHUBIR –“Fall, fall relentlessly, you January snow Shivering, I will bear it still As soon as Spring buds break into smiles Tigers and animals will seek prey ruthlessly. Each quietly resting peak Without a hair’s breadth will become sparks. ” RK MADHUBIR –“Mosque, church and from the temple —We hear devotional songs every day Accompanied by a slaughter, clashes, burning down of houses — We hear hair-raising news without end. . . ” RK MADHUBIR –“Tens of thousands of guns were fired Without a pause from every direction Pillar, wall, the entire roof is perforated But my dog sleeps on, doesn’t bark. ” RK MADHUBIR –“The meandering lean rivers Warm, stale blood will flow brimming its banks. If the master of the house where I live, upon his arrival. Wakes me up when it’s still peaceful With much repose I will breathe; I’ll also entrust this house, unbroken and undamaged to him. ” RK MADHUBIR –“Who persuaded me to stay Whose home is this where I live Till today I don’t know a thing No one has told me to live here. ” RL STEVENSON –“For my part, i travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for ‘ travel’s sake. The great r affair is to move. ” RL STEVENSON –“Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank you for this place in which we dwell, for the love that unites us, for the peace accorded us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow, for the health, the work, the food, and the bright skies that make our lives delightful; for our friends in all parts of the earth. Amen. ” RM LALA –“In the public mind, business ethics is mainly connected with financial integrity Important as that is, the real meaning of the word ‘ethics’ goes far beyond that. It is “the science of morals in human conduct, a moral; principle or code”. ROALD DAHL- “The little nonsense now and then is cherished by the wise men. ” ROB GILBERT –“Quitting is a permanent solution to a temporary situation. ” ROB GILBERT –“The best team doesn’t win nearly as often as the team that gets along best. ” ROBART HERRICK – “Men are not born kings, but are men renown’d ; Chose first, confirmed next and at last are crown’d. ” ROBER FROST –“The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. ” ROBERT A. HEINLEIN- “I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. ” ROBERT ANTHONY –“Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. ” ROBERT ANTON WILSON –“It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ” ROBERT ARDREY –“If man in time of need seeks deeper knowledge concerning himself, then he must explore those animal horizons from which we have made our quick little march. ” ROBERT ARDREY –“The miracle of man is not how far he is sunk but how magnificently he has risen. ” ROBERT BENCHLEY –“Behind every argument is someone’s ignorance. ” ROBERT BENCHLEY –“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous. ” ROBERT BENCHLEY –“The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. ” ROBERT BRAULT –“Most people would rather defend to the death your right to say it than listen to it. ” ROBERT BROWING –“I give the fight up: let there be an end, a privacy, an obscure nook for me. I want to be forgotten even by God. ” ROBERT BROWNING- “A touch divine- and the scaled eyeball own the mystic rod: Visibly through his garden walketh God. ” ROBERT BROWNING- “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for. ” ROBERT BROWNING –“All we have gained then by our unbelief is a life of doubt diversified by faith, for one of faith diversified by doubt: we called the chess board white, we call it black. ” ROBERT BROWNING –“Good to forgive, best to forget. ” ROBERT BURNS –“For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, well tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syn. ” ROBERT BURNS –“The heart generous and kind most resembles God. ” ROBERT BURTOA –“Cornelia kept her in talk till her children came from school, and these, said she, are my jewels. ” ROBERT BURTON –“A blow with a word strikes much deeper than a blow with a sword. ” ROBERT BYRNE –“The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose. ” ROBERT CREELY –“I did however used to think, you know, in the woods walking, and as a kid playing the woods, that there was a kind of immanence there—that woods, a places of that order, had a sense, a kind of presence, that you could feel; that there was something peculiarly, physically present, a feeling of place almost conscious. . . like God. It evoked that. ” ROBERT D BLACKWILL –“With tears as first in her class She knew the fears —That if you ask too much of it Metal shrieks, tears, Falls apart in pieces. A technical fact to her. All the world to us. Fire consumes a nation’s heart. This Karnal girl sought the skies. Space shuttles ROBERT DALLEK –“If you’re not pragmatic, not responsive to changing realities, then you don’t succeed. ” ROBERT DE NIRO – “You’ll have the time to when you’re dead. ” ROBERT DOISNEAU –“A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there — even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity. ” ROBERT ESTABROOK- “He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation. ” ROBERT FALCON SCOTT –“Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred every heart. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale. ” ROBERT FROST -“Nobody was ever meant To remember or invent What he did With every cent. ” ROBERT FROST –“Blood has been harder to dam back than water. / Just when we think we have it impounded safe Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),/ It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter. / We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;/ But power of blood itself releases blood. / It goes by might of being such a flood/ Held high at so unnatural a level. / It will have outlet, brave and not so brave. / weapons of war and implements of peace/ Are but the points at which it finds release. / And now it is once more the tidal wave/ That when it has swept by leaves summits stained. / Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained. ” ROBERT FROST –“Half of our mistakes in life arise from thinking when we ought to feel and feeling when we ought to think. ” ROBERT FROST- “Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. ” ROBERT FROST –“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks. ” ROBERT FROST- “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. ” ROBERT FROST –“I shall be telling this. . . Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. ” ROBERT FROST –“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. ” ROBERT FROST –“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. ” ROBERT FROST –“My apple trees will never get across/and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him/ He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbours. ” ROBERT FROST –“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office. ” ROBERT FROST –“The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. ” ROBERT FROST –“The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. ” ROBERT FROST- “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I … I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. ” ROBERT FROST –“You can’t love anyone until you understand that you can’t love everyone. ” ROBERT FROST –“You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness. ” ROBERT FULGHUM –“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge — myth is more potent than history — dreams are more powerful than facts — hope always triumphs over experience — laughter is the cure for grief — love is stronger than death. ” ROBERT FULGHUM –“Living things have been doing just that for a long, long time. Through every kind of disaster and setback and catastrophe. We are survivors. ” ROBERT FULGHUM –“Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away!” ROBERT G INGERSOLT –“Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of a republic than to introduce religion into politics. ” ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL –“In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds. ” ROBERT H JACKSON –“Freedom to differ is not I limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. ” ROBERT H SCHULLER –“Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost. ” ROBERT HALF –“Delegating works, provided the one delegating works, too. ” ROBERT HALF –“Persistence is what makes the impossible possible, the possible likely, and the likely definite. ” ROBERT HALF –“There is something that is much scarcer, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. ” ROBERT HEINLEIN- “Never under estimate the power of human stupidity. ” ROBERT HEINLEIN –“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. ” ROBERT HEINLEIN -”A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. ” ROBERT HERRICK –“Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt, nothing so hard but search will find it out. ” ROBERT HERRICK –“God doth not promise here to man, that He Will free him quickly from his miseries; But in His own time, and when He thinks fit, He will give a happy end to it. ” ROBERT HERRICK –“Men are not born kings, but are men renown’s; Chose first, confirmed next and at last are crowned. ” ROBERT HERRICK –“Truth by her own simplicity is known. ” ROBERT HERRICK –“When once the Soule has lost her way 0 then, how resdesse do’s she stray! And having not her God for light, How do’s she err in endlesse night!” ROBERT HUTCHINSON –“Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though its apt to give a person wind and self-righteousness. ” ROBERT INDIANA –“Some people like to paint trees. I like to paint love. I find it more meaningful than painting trees. ” ROBERT JOHNSON –“When the train left the station/ with two lights on behind Well, the blue light was my bines/and the red light was my mind. ” ROBERT KIYOSAKI –“If you keep the faith in yourself, the race of life will be yours. ” ROBERT KIYOSAKI –“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way. ” ROBERT L HEILBRONER –“Myths have their magic power because they cast on the screen of our imaginations, like the figures of the heavenly constellations, immense projections of our own hopes and capabilities. ” ROBERT L STEVENSON –“It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonder fully changes and renews a weary spirit. ” ROBERT L STEVENSON –“The rain is raining all around, it falls on field and tree. It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea. ” ROBERT L STEVENSON –“To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to live a good life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbour. ” ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON –“Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary. ” ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON –“WE ALL KNOW WHAT PARLIAMENT IS, AND WE ARE ALL ASHAMED OF IT. ” ROBERT LYND –“ No doubt there are other important things in life besides conflict, but there are not many other things so inevitably interesting. The very saints interest us most when we think of them as engaged in a conflict with the Devil. ” ROBERT LYND –“It is in games that many men discover their paradise. ” ROBERT MAYNARD GHTCHING –“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their life. ” ROBERT MC NAMARA –“Brains, like hearts, go where they are appreciated. ” ROBERT NATHAN- “There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday. ” ROBERT NOZICK –“Instead of trying to prove your opponent wrong, try to see what sense he might be right. ” ROBERT OPPENHEIMER- “The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true. ” ROBERT ORBEN –“Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work. ” ROBERT ORBEN –“Love is so confusing- you tell a girl she looks great and what the first thing you do is? Turn out the lights. ” ROBERT ORBEN –“There is so much pollution in the air now that if it weren’t for our lungs there’d be no place to put it all. ” ROBERT PIRSIG –“Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is. ” ROBERT REDFORD –“Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together. ” ROBERT RUNCIE –“When a man realizes that he is a beloved child of the Creator of all, then he is ready to see his neighbours in the world as brothers and sisters. ” ROBERT SARDELLO –“The soul requires duration of time — rich, thick, deep, velvety time ‘—and it thrives on rhythm. Soul can’t be hurried or harried. . . We may go through many events in the day and experience nothing because the soul has not had the opportunity to feel them from many different points of view. ” ROBERT SCHULLER –“Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly. ” ROBERT SCHULLER –“Giving never moves in a straight line — it always travels in circles. ” ROBERT SCHULLER –“High achievers spot rich opportunities swiftly, make big decisions quickly, and move into action immediately. Follow these principles and you can make your dreams come true. ” ROBERT SCHULLER –“Tough times never last, tough people do. ” ROBERTA ASSAGIOLI –“Without forgiveness life is governed by. . . an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation. ” ROBERTA ASSAGIOLI –“Without forgiveness life is governed by. . . an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation. ” ROBERTSON DAVIES –“Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground— Not a flying carpet to set you free from probability. ” ROBIN GREEN –“I started concentrating so hard on my vision that I lost sight” ROBIN S SHARMA –“A new question has arisen in modern man’s mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living. . . No sensible answer can be given to the question. . . because the question does not make any sense. Discipline ‘tough love’ because getting tough with yourself is actually a very loving gesture. . . The tougher you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you. . . When you consistently flex your will power by making choices that you know are the right ones — rather than the easy ones— you take control of your life. Who will cry when you die?” ROBIN WILLIAMS – “Love is a gift. If you receive it, try and appreciate it. If not, don’t worry. Someone is still wrapping it for you. ” ROCHEFOUCAULD –“As we grow old we become both more foolish and more wise. ” ROCHEFOUCAULD –“Old age is a tyrant which forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death. ” ROCHEFOUCAULD –“Youth changes its tastes by the warmth of its blood; age retains its tastes by habit. ” ROCHEFOUCAULD –“Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason. ” Youth changes its inclinations through heat of blood; old age perseveres in them through the power of habit. ” ROD Mc KUEN –“A soulmate is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you forgotten the words. ” ROD STERLING –“There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. ” ROD STEWART –“Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and just give her a house. ” RODNEY CROWELL –“If you’re dedicated, if it’s something that lives and breathes in your heart, then you’ve simply got to go ahead and do it. ” ROGE BOESCHE –“Kautilyamthe, Arthasastra offers wideranging. . . discussions on war and diplomacy, including. . . the king’s willingness to make treaties he knew he ‘would break, his doctrine of silent war. . his approval of secret agents who killed enemy leaders and sowed discord among them, his view of women as weapons of war, his use of religion and superstition to bolster his ^’troops and demoralize enemy soldiers, the spread of disinformation, and his humane treatment of conquered, soldiers and subjects. . ” ROGER BABSON –“It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final. ” ROGER CARAS –“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. ” ROGER CASEMENT –“Where all your rights become only an accumulated wrong; where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think then- own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labors. . . then surely it is a braver, a saner and truer thing, to be a rebel in act and deed against such circumstances as these than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men. ” ROGER DAWSON –“Have you blamed people or factors outside of yourself? It’s important to understand that all problems are rooted inside us. Even the blocks that appear to be outside of us are only reflecting back an issue we have inside that we have not yet owned. Once we address our inner issue, the outer situation no longer troubles us. ” ROGER de BUSSY –“When we can’t have what we love we must love what we have. ” ROGER MCCOUGH –“Winter has been sacked/ for negligence/ It appears he left/ the Sun on all day. ” ROGER MILLER –“Some people walk in the rain, other just gets wet. ” ROGER VON OECH –“Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. ” ROGER WILLIAMS –“God requireth not uniformity of religion. ” ROGER WILLIAMS –“The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping others. ” ROGERBANNISTER- “The man who can drive himself further, once the effort gets painful is the man who will win. ” ROMAN POLANSKI –“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don’t show it realistically, then that’s immoral and harmful. ” ROMAN TOMBSTONE –“Do not pass by my epitaph, traveller. But having stopped, listen and learn, then go your way There is no boat in Hades, no ferryman Charon, No caretaker Aiakos, no dog Cerberus. All we who are dead below Have become bones and ashes, but nothing else. I have spoken to you honestly, go on, traveller, Lest even while dead seem loquacious to you,” ROMANS –“God will credit righteousness — for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. ” ROMANS –“The kingdom of God not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. ” ROMANS –“Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; as it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God”. So each of us shall give account of himself to God. ” RON WILD –“Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child. ” RONALD KNOX- “It is stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil, when he is the only explanation of it. ” RONALD REAGAN –“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man. ” RONALD REAGAN –“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire; it wafts across the electrified borders. ” RONALDO –“I don’t consider myself as the best player in the world. I’m not obsessed with individual titles. I’m much more interested in being part of a team which wins trophies. ” RONANJARD –“The summation of all things is not God; it is man’s limited perception of God. ” RONEN SEN –“Sixty years after independence, we have not grown up. ” RONNIE SHAKES –“I fear one day I’ll meet God, hell sneeze and I won’t know what to say. ” ROSA LUXEMBURG- “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. ” ROSABETH MOSS KANTER –“To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings. ” ROSALIE WRIGHT –“January is the quietest month in the garden. . . But just because it looks quiet doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. The soil, open to the sky, absorbs the pure rainfall, while micro-organisms convert tilled-under fodder into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants. The feasting earthworms tunnel along, aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome the seeds and bare roots to come. ” ROSANNE CASH –“The key to change. . . is to let go of fear. ” ROSE FRANKEN –“Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly. ” ROSEMARY VEREY “Colours change: in the morning light, red shines out bright and clear and the blues merge into their surroundings, melting into the greens; but by evening the reds lose their piquancy, embracing a quieter tone and shifting towards the blues in the rainbow. Yellow flowers remain bright, and white ones become luminous, shining like ghostly figures against a darkening green background. ” ROSS PEROT –“The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river. ” ROUSSEAU –“Agriculture is the earliest and most honourable of arts. ” ROY CAMPBELL –“I hate ‘Humanity’ and all such abstracts: but I love people. ” ROY L SMITH –“Each morning puts a man on trial and each evening passes judgment. ” ROY L SMITH –“The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the man. ” RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM –“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires. ” RUCHI GOYAL –“Sometimes I wonder why the sky is blue, How the sun comes every morn shining through. . . The answer gradually comes to my mind. It certainly was easy, not hard to find. He wants to show, how deep his love is, And for all to enjoy : these moments of bliss. ” RUDOLF STEINER –“Meditation is the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential centre of our being. ” RUDOLF STEINER –“When we raise ourselves through meditation to what unites us with the spirit, we quicken something within us that is eternal and unlimited by birth and death. . . Meditation is thus the way to knowing and beholding the eternal, indestructible, essential centre of our being. ” RUDOLPH STEINER –“Every word that is not bathed in thought is a stone tossed in our path. ” RUDOLPH VALENTINO –“I am beginning to look more and more like my miserable imitators. ” RUDRA SAMHITA –“Shiva: Although Nirguna (formless), I am Saguna (with form) too and the author of dissolution, maintenance and creation. I am the Supreme Brahmn without decay and change. Existence, knowledge and bliss are my characteristics. . . I manifest myself in the forms of Brahma, Vishnu and Hara. ” RUDY GIULIANI –“Don’t be discouraged. Don’t be cynical. We’ll see an end to global terrorism. I can see it. I believe it. I know it will happen. ” RUDYARD KIPLING –“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They Are!” RUDYARD KIPLING –“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody – it saves so much trouble. ” RUDYARD KIPLING –“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same. . . ” RUDYARD KIPLING –“There’s times when you’ll think that you mightn’t,/ There’s times when you know that you might;/ But the things you will learn from the Yellow and Brown,/ They’ll ‘elp you. a lot with the White!” RUPA BHAWANI –“I am beyond primordial universal self and the individual self, / I am the Supreme Consciousness. ” RUPERT BROOKE –“One may not doubt that, somehow, good shall come of water and of mud: And, sure, the reverent eye must see a purpose in liquidity. ” RUSKIN –“Make your national conscience clean and your national eyes will soon be clear. ” RUSKIN- “They are the weakest minded and the hardest hearted men, that most love variety and change. ” RUSKIN BOND –“Fields make way for factories, The trees succumb To real-estate, The rivers plunge Silt laden To our doom. . . Too late to do a thing About it now, For we have grown Too many, And the world’s no bigger Than before. Do-gooders, don’t despair! Nature will repair Her own, long after We are dust. ” RUSSEL LYNES –“Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it. ” RUSSELL DAVENPORT –“Progress results only from the fact that there are some men and women who refuse to believe that what they know to be right cannot be done. ” RUSSELL H. CONWELL –“Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas; they are in your own backyard, if you but dig for them. ” RUSSELL SCHWEICKART –“As you pass from sunlight into darkness and back again every hour and a half, you become star tingly aware how artificial are thousands of boundaries we’ve created to separate and define. And for the first time in your life you feel in your gut the precious unity of the Earth and all the living things it supports. ” RUSSIAN PROVERB –“He who digs a hole for another may fall in himself. ” RUSSIAN PROVERB –“It is not the horse that draws the cart, but the oats. ” RUSTY BERKUS –“There comes that mysterious meeting in life when someone acknowledges who we are and what we can be, igniting the circuits of our highest potential. ” RUSTY SILVEY –“Romance is the fuel that keeps love burning hot. ” RUTH E. RENKI –“You live more fully once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasteful. ” RUTH GENDLER –“Commitment has kind eyes. He wears sturdy shoes. Everything is vivid when he is around. It is wonderful to sit and have lunch in his gardens around harvest time. You can taste in the vegetables that the soil has been cared for. ” RYOKWDN –“The past is already past; the future is not yet here. The present never abides; Things are constantly changing, with nothing on which to depend. . . ” RYONIN –“One man is identical with all and all with one. One religious practice is the same as all others, and all others the same as any one of them. This is what explains the experience of birth into the Pure Land by reliance upon Amida’s power. All living beings are included in one thought. ” S J PERELMAN –“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century. ” S K VASISHTA –“Life dances upon death, Death dances upon life. No one wins and no one loses. For there are participants; all are spectators, all are moving, all are silent. There is neither birth nor death in Creation. No success and no failure, No coming, no going. Water extinguishes fire and fire evaporates water. Both turn into air and air is now fire and now water. Nothing perishes and nothing is born, For Creation is always a continuous ‘is’. ” S MERRIAM –“No one who is fit to live need fear to die. . . . To us here, death is the most terrible word we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves. ” S PAUL –“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“After urging worldly considerations, Krishna declares that the task has to be undertaken in a spirit of equal-mindedness. Without yielding to the restless desire for change, without being at the mercy of emotional ups and downs, let us do the work assigned to us in the situation in which we are placed. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“Dama or self-restraint, dana or self-sacrifice, and day a or compassion help us free ourselves from the sway of craving, greed and anger. When the Buddha asks us to put out in our hearts the monstrous fires of infatuation, greed and resentment, he is emphasising the three virtues enjoined by the Upanishads. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“Dharma literally means mode of being. It is the essential nature of a being that determines its mode of behaviour So long as our conduct is in conformity with our essential nature, we are acting in the right way Adharma is nonconformity to our nature. If the harmony of the world is derived from the conformity of all beings to their respective natures, the disharmony of the world is due to their nonconformity God does not stand aside, when we abuse our freedom and cause disequilibrium. He does not simply wind up the world, set if on the right track and then let it jog along by itself. His loving hand is steering it all the time. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“Human nature is not altogether unchanging but it does remain sufficiently constant to justify the study of ancient classics. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“Liberation pre-supposes bondage and in most people even this awareness is not there. Self-awareness is possible only in human beings, and knowledge and education are the sources of making one Self-conscious. The sociological definition of educationas ‘that which rescues the individual from the mass of collectivity and gives him an identity’ contributes to the development of ego and conflict. Formal education creates roles for the individual without developing his personality” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“No one knows the father except the son as only one who loves deeply has an insight into the true nature of God as father, whose character is suffering love. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“The truly great men are not the men of wealth, not men who gain name and fame, but those who testify to the truth in them and refuse to compromise whatever the cost. . . We may punish their bodies, refuse them comforts, but we cannot buy their souls, we cannot break their spirits. Whoever possesses this invulnerability of spirit even to a little extent deserves our admiration. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“The worst sinner has a future, even as the greatest saint has had a past. No one is so good or so bad as he imagines. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“What looms over us is no dark fate but our own past. ” S RADHAKRISHNAN –“Without yielding to the restless desire for change, without being at the mercy of emotional ups and downs, let us do the work assigned to us in the situation in which we are placed. When we acquire faith in the Eternal and experience Its reality, the sorrows of the world do not disturb us. He who discovers his true end of life and yields to it utterly is great of soul. ” S SAHATMA GANDHI –“It is a sin to open free kitchens for those who are capable of physical labour. To provide work for them is meritorious. . . When a man lives in submission to any authority, it means he is paying the price of personal freedom. ” S. WHITE –“If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people?” S. N. BEHRAM –“At the end of every road you meet yourself. ” S. P. CADMAN-“We can see a thousand miracles around us everyday. What is more supernatural than an egg yolk turning into a chicken?” S. P. CADMAN-“We can see a thousand miracles around us everyday. What is more supernatural than an egg yolk turning into a chicken?” S. P. HINDUJA –“Our businesses may be run on principles of Mahabharata but our family is conducted on principles of Ramayana. ” S0REN KIERKEGAARD –“Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hum/past it. ” SAADAT HASAN MANTO –“There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India and behind more barbed wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. ” SABITA DIESH –“They say God is everywhere but, truly speaking, when we perceive Go
VOICE of FREEDOM
BILL BURTON –“It makes no sense to wait/or the next attack. ” BILL CLINTON -“… The decision to have an abortion generally should be between a woman, her doctor, her conscience, and her god. ” BILL CLINTON –“Globalization cannot be turned off. It’s the economic equivalent of a force of nature like wind or water. ” BILL CLINTON –“I want to build a bridge to the 21st century that we can all walk across together. ” BILL CLINTON –“If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. ” BILL CLINTON –“That whether you are British, American or some other nationality, the No. 1 task is to move from interdependence —which can be good or bad— to an ; integrated global community in which there is a shared future, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity and, most importantly, shared values. . . The only way we can live together is if we say the celebration of our differences requires us to say that our common humanity matters more. ” BILL CLINTON –“The future is not an inheritance, it is an opportunity and an obligation. ” BILL CLINTON –“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. ” BILL CLINTON –“When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old. ” BILL CLINTON –“You live in the age of interdependence. Borders can’t count for much or stop much, good or bad anymore. ” BILL CLINTON, -“Though more than 500 years have passed since the. birth of Guru Nanak his life and teachings still hold great power and meaning for humanity in the 21st century This annual Sikh observance reminds all Americans that throughout our history, we have drawn strength from many religious institutions and people of diverse faiths have made important contribution to the life of our nation. ” BILL COSBY – “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please every body. ” BILL COSBY –“Any man today who returns from work, sinks into a chair, and calls for his pipe is a man with an appetite for danger. ” BILL COSBY –“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ” BILL COSBY –“You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humour in anything, even poverty, you can survive it. ” BILL GATES –“In my parents I saw a model where they were always communicating, doing things together. They were really kind of a team, I wanted some of that magic myself. ” BILL GATES –“Never before m history has innovation offered promise of so much to so many in so short a time. ” BILL GATES –“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose. ” BILL HICKS –“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And, when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: “Is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say “Hey don’t worry don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride. ” And we kill those people. “ BILL MAKER –“Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease. ” BILL MAULDIN –“Law and order is like patriotism. Anyone who comes on strong about patriotism has got something to hide, it never fails. They always turn out to be a crook or. . . a traitor or something. ” BILL MCGLASHEN –“Faulty meditation. Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in one ahead. ” BILL NEIDJIE KAKADU –“Listen carefully this, you can hear me. I’m telling you because earth just like mother and father or brother of you. That tree same thing. Tree for working when you sleeping and dream. ” BILL SHANKLY –“Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that. ” BILL VAUGHAN –“A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election. ” BILL WATTERSON –“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. ” BILLIE BURKE –“Age is something that doesn’t matter, unless you are a cheese. ” BILLIE HOLIDAY –“They think they can make fuel from horse manure — Now, its sure gonna put a stop to siphoning. ” BILLIE HOLODAY –“When in love, sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose it. ” BILLIE JEAN KING –“A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning. ” BILLIE JEAN KING –“Why shouldn’t women make good coaches? We were brought up to listen, to nurture, and to observe. ” BILLINGS –“I’ve never known a person to live to 110 or more, to be remarkable/or anything else. ” BILLY GRAHAM – “Hot hands and cold hearts never solve anything. ” BILLY GRAHAM –“an has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness. ” BILLY GRAHAM –“Billions and billions of stars and planets out there, and behind them all are God. ” BILLY GRAHAM –“Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness. ” BILLY JOEL –“Music is an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music. ” BILLY JOEL –“Out of respect for things I was never destined to do, I have learned that my strengths are a result of my weaknesses, my success is due to my failures and my style is directly related to my limitations. ” BILLY JOEL –“Shades of grey wherever I go The more I find out the less that I know Black and white is how it should be But shades of grey are the colours I see. ” BILLY SUNDAY –“Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first. ” BING CROSBY –“There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do for Hope, and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for me. . . We spend our lives doing nothing for each other. ” BISHOP DESMOND TUTU –“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. ” BISHOP WCMAGEE –“The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. ” BKS IYENGAR –“Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open. ” BLACK DIAMOND –“We have to keep finding new ways to promote peace and encourage the people. ” BLACK ELK –“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realise that at the centre of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this centre is really everywhere, it is within each of us. ” BLACK ELK –“Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all and I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the centre grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy. ” BLACK ELK –“We regard all created beings as sacred and important, for everything has a wochangi or influence which can be given to us, through which we may gain a little more understanding if we are attentive. ” BLACK ELK –“We should know that all things are the works of the Great Spirit. We should know that He is within all things the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and all the four-legged animals, and the winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that He is also above these things and peoples. ” BLACK ELK –“We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, grass, rivers, mountains, the fourlegged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends. ” BLACK ELK –“Why is the drum often the only instrument we use in our sacred rites? it is because the round form of the drum represents the whole universe, and its steady strong beat is the pulse, the heart, throbbing at the centre of the universe. It is the voice of Wakan Tanka, and this sound stirs us and helps us to understand the mystery and power of all things. ” BLACKFOOT –“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. . . ” BLAISE PASCAL- “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believes and enough shadows to blind those who won’t. ” BLAISE PASCAL –“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much. ” BLAISE PASCAL –“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. ” BLAISE PASCAL –“Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. ” BLAISE PASCAL –“The heart has its reasons to which reason knows nothing. ” BLAISE PASCAL –“The perfection of Nature shows that she is the image of God; her defects show that she is only His image. ” BLAISE PASCAL –“There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees, which are falsehoods on the other. ” BLANCHARD AND JOHNSON –“The best minute you spend is the one you invest in people. ” BLOGGER –“At every moment in our lives, perhaps, we are to some extent actors, or performers, as well as spectators. When performers and spectators “connect” it creates a very special quality of theatre that both transports and transforms all those involved. In India we cherish this strong link between reality and fantasy first through theatre and now through film. All this age-old mimicry of life somehow affects us and in return this mimicry is in itself a self-definition of the society we live in. . . Through a little imagination and snap of a finger we are somewhere else. Taking it a step further many forms of classical dance in India imbibe the same values of theatre mixing them till we get operaish dance put to music. ” BO BENNETT –“While we are focusing on fear, worry, or hate, it is not possible for us to be experiencing happiness, enthusiasm or love. ” BO DEREK –“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping. ” BOB BROWN –“Behind every successful man there’s a lot of unsuccessful years. ” BOB DOLE –‘When it’s all over, it’s not who you were … it’s whether you made a difference. ” BOB DYLAN – “SOME PEOPLE SEEM TO FED AWAY, BUT THEN WHEN THEY ARE TRULY GONE, IT’S LIKE THEY DIDN’T FED AWAY AT ALL. ” BOB DYLAN – “Steal little and they throw you in jail. Steal a lot and they make you king. ” BOB DYLAN – “We sit here stranded, though we’re all doing our best to deny it. ” BOB DYLAN –“At times I think there are no words but these to tell what’s true. And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden. ” BOB DYLAN –“If you got to go, go now or else you gotta stay all night. ” BOB DYLAN –“I’ve dined with kings, I’ve been offered wings/And I’ve never been too impressed. ” BOB DYLAN –“I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that. ” BOB DYLAN –“Man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. ” BOB DYLAN –“She knows there’s no success like failure. And that failures no success at all. ” BOB DYLAN –“To live outside the law, you must be honest. ” BOB DYLAN –“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. ” BOB FITZSIMMONS –“The bigger they come, the harder they fall. ” BOB GELDOF –“When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you’re going to get it to these people. ” BOB HOPE –“A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove you don’t need it. ” BOB HOPE –“I do benefits for all religions — I’d hate to blow the hereafter on a technicality. ” BOB HOPE –“If you haven’t any charity in your heart you have the worst kind of heart trouble. ” BOB HOPE –“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?” BOB LEY –“If character is what you do when no one is watching, then perhaps sportsmanship is conduct with everybody watching? Frankly, the sports industry would probably survive without sportsmanship. It’s so large and so well financed, but it would be refreshing if more players realised there is room to win with flair and style and even get rich and still keep the values that first brought us here to the games. ” BOB MARLEY -“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery None but ourselves can free our minds. ” BOB MARLEY –“Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts. Put your vision to reality. . . Don’t forget your history Know your destiny in the abundance of water the fool is thirsty. Rat race, rat race, rat race. . . ” BOB MARLEY –“Hey mister music, sure sounds good to me I can’t refuse it what to be. ” BOB MARLEY –“One Love! One Heart! Let’s get together and feel all right Hear the children cryin’ (One Love!); Hear the children cryin’ (One Heart!), Say in’: give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right; Sayin’: let’s get together; and feel all right. ” BOB MARLEY –“You ain’t gonna miss your water until your well runs dry. ” BOB MOAWAD –“You can work miracles by having faith in others. To get the best out of people, choose to think and believe the best about them. ” BOB NEY –“Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge stands to not only increase the United States’ oil reserves by nearly 50 per cent, but it will create thousands of good US jobs. ” BOB PACKWOOD –“Good judgement comes from experience. Experience carries from bad judgement. ” BOB RICHARDS –“There is greatness all around you — welcome it! It is easy to be great when you get around great people. ” BOB RICHARDS –“You are what you think. You are what you go for. You are what you do!” BOB THAVES –“I don’t know if I can live on my income or not — the government wont let me try it. ” BOB WELLS –“Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with. ” BOBBY FISCHER –“All I want to do, ever, is just play Chess. . . Your body has to be in top condition. Your Chess deteriorates as your body does. You can’t separate body from mind. . . I give 98 per cent of my mental energy to Chess. Others give only 2 per cent. . . I like the moment when I break a man’s ego. ” BOBBY UNSER –“Nobody remembers who finished second but the buy who finished second. ” BOEHME –“The chaste virgin signifies in the philosophic work the clear Deity. ” BOETHIUS –“Nothing is miserable unless you think it is so. ” BOLOZOFF –“We’re all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment. ” BONNIE RAITT –“Religion is for people who are scared to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there. ” BONO –“It’s no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a past. It’s no secret ambition it’s the nails of success. ” BONO –“The Church has its problems. but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. ” BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER –“God is our hope and strength. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth is moved: and though the hills are carried into the midst of the sea?” BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER –“Here we offer and present unto thee, 0 Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto Thee. ” BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER –“The folds shall be full of sheep: the, valleys also shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing. ” BOOK OF GENESIS –“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. ” BOOK OF RITUAL –“The art of government simply consists in making things right, or putting things in their right places. When the ruler himself is right, then the people naturally follow him in his right course. ” BOOK OF SONGS –“He makes no show of his moral worth, Yet all the princes follow in his steps. ” BOOKER T WASHINGTON –“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcoming. ?” BOOKER T. WASHINGTON –“There are two ways of exerting ones strength — one is pushing down, and the other is pulling up. ” BOOKER T. WASHINGTON-” Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him and let him know that you trust him. ” BOOKER WASHINGTON –“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ” BORGEET OF SHANKARDEV –“I beseech you, beg of you, oh, Hari Let Life unto me be infused, Liberate me from addictions, I’m in life utterly confused! Putrid is my pelf, my youth, my life, Restless is my world, I frown, All are meaningless, my progeny, my wife, Whom should I call my own! My soul quivers like drops on lotus petal I am not placated for a bit, every second of my life is fatal I seek your eternal feet! “This ocean of pang”, Shankara spake, “Oh, Lord Hrisheekesha, help me cross, Motivate Shreepati, you’re the path I take, in thou spirit, trail and advice, I engross!” BORIS PASTERNAK –“As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth. ” BORIS PASTERNAK –“As for those in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth. ” BORIS PASTERNAK –“Man is born to live, and not to prepare for life. ” BORIS PASTERNAK –“No deep and strong feeling, such as we may come across here and there in the world, is unmixed with compassion. The more we love, the more the object of our love seems to us to be a victim. ” BORIS PASTERNAK –“The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s a part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity. ” BORIS PASTERNOK- “Man is born to live and not to prepare to live. ” BOVEE –“Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. ” BOY GEORGE –“An actor is a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, he ain’t listening. ” BR AMBEDKAR –“History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them. ” BR AMBEDKAR –“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved. ” BR AMBEDKAR –“The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual. ” BR AMBEDKAR –“Unlike a drop of water, which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man’s life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self. ” BRAD ARROWSMITH –“Boundaries don’t protect rivers, people do. ” BRAD PITT –“The three terrible karmas are beauty, wealth and fame. They’re the things that stop you from finding true happiness. ” BRAIN ALDISS –“Keep violence in the mind where it belongs. ” BRAIN TRACY –“Look for the good in every person and every situation. You’ll almost always find it. ” BRANCH CABELL-“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true. ” BRANDI SNYDER –“ To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world. ” BRENDA UELAND –“Since you are like no other being created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable. ” BRENDA UELAND –“So you see, imagination needs moodling—long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. ” BRENDA UELAND –“We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very well true, and serious. ” BRET NICHOLAUS AND PAUL LOWRIE –“Get away from the city lights and take some time to look at the stars as they appear out in the country. Consider how small your problems really are as you ponder the expanse of the universe. ” BRET NICHOLAUS AND PAUL LOWRIE –“Try something you once vowed you would never be willing to do. ” BRHADARANYAKA –“The god of rain in truth is a sacrificial fire; its fuel is the year, the clouds are its smoke, lightning is its flame, the thunderbolt its coals, thunder its sparks. In this fire the gods offer King Soma. From that offering rises rain. ” BRHDARANYAKA UPANISHAD –“The Self is the honey of all beings and all beings are honey for the Self. As the one wind, once entered into a house, Takes on the forms of all that is in it, So the One inmost Self of every being Takes on their several forms (remaining) without (the while). ” BRIAN BATES –“We can see from the experience of Odin that the image of the tree was the template within which all of the sacred world could be apprehended. The tree was the framework within which one “flew” to these Other worlds. And since the exploration of sacred space was also a quest into the nature of human consciousness, the tree was regarded as an image of the ways in which we, humans, are constructed psychically. It was a natural model for our deepest wisdom, our highest aspirations. ” BRIAN BIRO –“Teamwork is less “ego” and more “we go!” BRIAN LARA –“ I’ve had my ups and downs but I’ve stuck it out. . . mental strength is important. . . It’s testimony to the longevity I’ve had in the game. ” BRIAN LARA –“I’ve always wanted to be one of the top cricketers in the world and I wouldn’t want to be in any other situation. I’ve worked hard and given myself to the game, and this is the result. ” BRIAN LUKE SEAWARD –“Stressed is just desserts spelt backwards. ” BRIAN TRACY –“I have found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more ^chances. Be more active. Show up more often. ” BRIAN TRACY –“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. ” BRIAN TRACY –“The predominant quality of successful people is optimism… Your level of optimism is the very best predictor of how happy, healthy, wealthy, and long-lived you will be. ” BRIAN TRACY –“You have within you right now, everything you need to deal with whatever the” BRIAN W. ALDIS –“When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. ” BRIAN W. ALDISS- “When childhood dies, its corpses are called adult. ” BRILLAT-SAVARIN-” Tell me what you eat, I will tell you what you are. ” BRITNEY SPEARS –“You will never know happiness until you have been in love, and you will never understand what pain really is until you lose love. ” BRITTANSGIRL –“To feel happy is to feel good about your self and smile a lot. ” BROOKE SHIELDS –“smoking kills. if you are killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life. ” BROOKS ATKINSON –“After each war, there is a little less democracy to save. ” BROOKS ATKINSON –“The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Life is growth and motion; a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one. ” BROOKS ROBINSON –“I’ll play out the string and leave baseball without a tear, A man can’t play games his whole life. ” BROTHER LAWRENCE –“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament. ” BRUCE BARTON –“When you re through changing, you’re through. ” BRUCE JENNER –“I always felt that my greatest asset was not my physical ability it was my mental ability. ” BRUCE LEE –“As long as I can remember I feel I have had this I great creative and spiritual force within me that I is greater than faith, I greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. ” BRUCE LEE –“Empty your mind, be formless. . . When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style. ” BRUCE LEE –“Flowing water never goes stale, so just keep flowing. ” BRUCE OLDFIELD –“Fashion is more usually a gentle progression of revisited ideas. ” BRUCE PATTERSON –“The sun in the morning. Like a protective mother she rises and brings warmth to everything she touches. Artists try to harness her beauty, scientists study to find her secrets. Every being feels more alive when she is there sad when she is shrouded by a cloud, She leaves each day with a promise to return that is never broken. ” BRUNSON Mc KINLEY –“Our choice lies in the policies we develop and pursue to channel migration into safe, orderly, humane and productive avenues. ” BRUNSON Mc KINLEY –“The only million Indians living in the US accounts foe 0. 1% of Indian population but earn the equivalent of 10% of India’s national income. ” BRUYERE –“We hope to grow old, yet we fear old age; that is, we are willing to live, and afraid to die. ” BRYAN SINGER –“We don’t live in the world of reality; we live in the world of how we perceive reality. ” BRYANT- “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again. ” BRYON- “But grief should be the instructor of the wise. ” BUCK RODGERS –“There are countless ways of attaining greatness, but any road to reaching one’s maximum potential must be built on bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity. ” BUCKMINSTER FULLER –“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. ” BUCKMINSTER FULLER –“People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things. ” BUDD SCHULBERG –“Living with a conscience is like driving a car with the brakes on. ” BULLEH SHAH –“Repeating the name of the Beloved I have become the Beloved myself. Whom shall I call the Beloved now?” BULLEH SHAH –“This transient world is neither thine nor mine; all is finite. . . Let us go 0 Mullah let us go then you and I to the kingdom of the blind; where none debates our caste, or creed, none respects us thus. . . Mullah and the torchbearer are both alike, professing to light the path for others, themselves dwell in darkness. Seek solace in silence; the world tolerates not him who utters truth, shows no magnanimity —nor suffers him who values truth, yet beloved is he who speaks the truth. . . ” BULLHE SHAH –“Law says: Go to the mulla and learn the rules and regulations; Love says: One letter is enough, close your books and put them away. The place of Love is the highest heaven, the crown of creation; Out of love He has created Bullha, humble, and from dust. ” BULWER –“Youth, with swift feet, walks onward in the way; the land of joy lies all before his eyes. ” BULWER-LYTION –“When the people have, no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one. ” BULWER-LYTTON –“If a good face is a letter of recommendation, a good heart is a letter of credit. ” BULWER-LYTTON –“Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the sincerity and truth accomplishes no victory without it. ” BULWER-LYTTON –“Three things are never silent- Thought, Destiny and the Grave. ” BUMPER STICKER- “Be thankful only one of them can win. ” BURKE –“When will young and inexperienced men learn caution and distrust of themselves?” BURMESE PROVERB –“Ode to Family In time of test, family is best. ” BURNET, W. R. –“Crime is just a left handed from a human endavour. ” BUSENBAUM, H –“When the end is lawful, the means are also lawful. ” BUTLER:- “He that imposes an oath, makes it, not he that for convenience takes it ; Then how can any men be said To break an oath he never made?” BUZZ ALDRIN –“Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age. ” BYLLYE AVERY –“Acceptance and awareness are the first stages of gaining the courage to change. ” BYLLYE AVERY –“Divinity is the special quality that makes us unique — our presence, our love, our creative energy, and the ways in which we transform our environment. ” BYRON –“And if I laugh at any mortal thing/ is that I may not weep. ” BYRON –“I may stand alone, but would not change my free thoughts for a throne. ” BYRON KATLE –“Would you rather be right or free?” C S LEWIS –“Friendship is unnecessary like philosophy, like art. . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. ” C S LEWIS –“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. ” C. SCOTT –“The human spirit is stronger than anything that happens to it. ” C. A. OGLEUREN –“What is the joy of getting old if we are compelled to act young. ” C. A. BARTOL- “Hope is the parent of faith. ” C. F. DOLE- “Democracy is on trial in the world, on a more colossal scale that ever before. ” C. G. JUNG –“A person is afraid of growing old to the extent that he is not really living now. ” C. H. SPERGEON-” A lie will go round world while truth is pulling its boots on. ” CABE RUTH –“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up. ” CAESAR- “In war events of impotence are the result of trivial causes. ” CAJAL –“The brain is a world consisting of a number of unexplored continents and great stretches of unknown territory. ” CALVIN & HOBBES –“You can’t just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood. ” CALVIN COOLIDGE –“Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong. ” CALVIN COOLIDGE –“Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. ” CALVIN COOLIDGE –“I have never had to explain something that U didn’t say. ” CALVIN COOLIDGE –“Nothing is easier than the expenditure of public money It doesn’t appear to belong to anyone. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody. ” CALVIN COOLIDGE –“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime. ” CALVIN COOUDGE –“One of the first things a President learns is that everything he says weighs a ton. ” CALVIN TRILION – “Marriage is not merely shaving the fettuccini, sharing the burden of finding the fettuccini restaurant in the first place. ” CAMPBELL –“The patriot’s bloods’ seed of freedoms. ” CARA VICHKO- “These days, the wages of sin depend on what kind of deal you make with the devil. ” CAREY Me WILLIAMS –“Planned economy: Where everything is included in the plans except economy. ” CARL BUECHNER –“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. ” CARL G JUNG –“Any attempt to create a spiritual attitude by splitting off and suppressing the instincts is a falsification. Nothing is more repulsive than a furtively prurient spirituality; it is just as unsavoury as gross sensuality. . Both (spirituality and sensuality) must live, each drawing life from the other. ” CARL JUNG –“ The shoes that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. ” CARL JUNG –“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. ” CARL JUNG –“Conscious and unconscious are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but complement one another to form a totality, which is the Self. ” CARL JUNG –“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. ” CARL JUNG –“Every victory contains the germ of future defeat. ” CARL JUNG –“God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my path violently and recklessly, all things which alter my plans and intentions, and change the course Of my life, for better or for worse. ” CARL JUNG –“It is only through the mystery of self-sacrifice that a man may find himself anew. ” CARL JUNG –“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ” CARL JUNG –“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. ” CARL JUNG –“We can keep from a child all knowledge of previous myths but we cannot take from him the need for mythology. ” CARL JUNG –“We cannot change anything unless we accept it. ” CARL JUNG –“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens. ” CARL MARX –“Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity. ” CARL MARX –“Reason has always existed. But not always in a reasonable form. ” CARL MARX- “The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain. ” CARL ROGERS –“ When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I’m optimistic. ” CARL SAGAN –“But we have also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and our children’s children, a desire to learn from history, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. ” CARL SAGAN –“If only a network of canals existed (on Mars) the habitability of Mars would become plausible. . . Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred, and there are few notions more stirring than the idea of a neighbouring planet inhabited by intelligent beings. ” CARL SAGAN –“If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. ” CARL SAGAN –“If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. ” CARL SAGAN –“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without It We Go Nowhere. ” CARL SAGAN –“National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinism are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light. ” CARL SAGAN –“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense. ” CARL SAGAN –“There is, we’re told, an infinite hierarchy of universes. . . an idea that surpasses the endless number of infinitely old cycling universes in Hindu cosmology. . To enter them, we would somehow have to penetrate a fourth physical dimension. ” CARL SAGAN –“We are the children equally of the sky and the Earth. In our tenure on this planet we have accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage, hereditary propensities for aggression, submission to leaders and hostility to outsiders, which place our survival in some question. ” CARL SAGAN –“Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our vision and understanding and prospects are bound exclusively to the Earth — or worse, to one small part of it. ” CARL SAGAN –“You have to know the past to understand the present. ” CARL SANDBURG –“”How do you do, my farmer friend?” “Howdy. ” “Nice looking country you have here. ” “For them that likes it. ” “Live here all your life?” “Not yet. ” CARL SANDBURG –“Something began me And it had no beginning; Something will end me And it has no end. ” CARL SANDBURG –“The Sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is colossal scavenger slang and has no respect. ” CARL SANDBURG –“The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring. ” CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ- “All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. ” CARLOS CASTANEDA –“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart?” CARLOS CASTANEDA –“You must push yourself beyond your limits, all the time. ”
Multidimensional Journeys With Extraterrestrials
In college, Thanksgiving was a great excuse for me to escape from the pressures of schoolwork. The traditional rituals of the holiday were secondary to my need to blow off steam and space out watching the latest action flicks. I never suspected my soul would cast me in an action movie of my own adventures featuring extraterrestrials and inner space.
Lisa, Sylvia, Jacob, Chris and I were good friends and fellow film students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We were very thankful for the chance to skip town and reconnect with living as normal human beings instead of college students. When the holiday neared, we went our separate ways across the country to spend time with our families and simply vegetate. As so often occurred in my young sojourn on the planet, my inner coach had a special, secret agenda for me on this particular holiday.
Returning to Ann Arbor after the school break, I discovered my friends and I had independently latched onto the same idea for a co-created film. Each of us came back to town wanting to do a documentary on “multidimensional travel. ”
As was my usual manner regarding spiritual breakthroughs, I backed into this one with no idea of what I was getting into. If I had suspected the divine disruption of my life lying ahead, I probably would have postponed this adventure another few lifetimes!
My friends and I didn’t consider ourselves spiritually inclined people. We were an unlikely crew of metaphysical explorers. None of us had ever heard of multidimensional travel before. Nonetheless, in diverse ways in different parts of the country, we were each connected with the same esoteric topic at the same time.
One member of our group, Lisa, picked up a book on “astral projection. ” Jacob met a new acquaintance who shared her theories about “journeying to different levels of awareness. ” Chris was fascinated by a lecture on “past life regression. ” Sylvia came back from vacation bubbling with enthusiasm about “communicating with your Future Self,” which she read about in a metaphysical magazine. I, personally, was riveted by a film documentary on “multidimensional realities. ” Reuniting after the holiday, we marveled at the synchronicity of our separate, independent discoveries and took it as a sure sign this subject was meant to be our next film project.
A few days later, I was hanging out with my rock musician friend Rhone who, in an intoxicated state, let slip that he had a relative in Montreal who was part of a very unusual organization. “My Uncle Gaston is the head honcho of a real mysterious group,” he blurted out. “It’s an international, secret spiritual society that teaches yoga and meditation publicly and more esoteric, mystical arts behind closed doors. ” Seizing the opportunity, I told Rhone about our documentary project.
“Uncle Gaston knows a lot about multidimensional travel,” Rhone replied. “He refers to it as ‘soul travel. ’ He even showed me how to do it. But it got too scary for me, man. Too weird. I stopped seeing him and quit answering his phone calls. ”
As much as I inquired, Rhone wouldn’t share the details of his paranormal experiences with his uncle. In fact, the subject was closed by Rhone as quickly as it was opened by a few cans of Bud. Undaunted by Rhone’s fear, my friends and I wanted to contact Rhone’s uncle in Montreal immediately. We weren’t intimidated by the nature of the subject because our interest—so we believed at the time—was purely artistic and journalistic. It never occurred to us for one moment we would actually do any multidimensional travel.
Intellectually intrigued and psyched, we simply wanted to make a film about the fascinating topic. Our standard journalistic modus operandi was to not get personally involved in any way with the subject of our investigation. We considered ourselves professionals. We would be objective observers, not participants. Ah, the blind arrogance and naïveté of young journalists!
After the shattering effects of his past tutelage with Uncle Gaston, Rhone was loath to contact him ever again. Finally, after much pleading on our part, he agreed to give us his uncle’s telephone number. Since Rhone refused to call his uncle, I phoned the group leader in Montreal myself.
I rang Rhone’s uncle at his home. As soon as I mentioned my name, Gaston instantly replied, “Yes, we’ve been expecting your call. ” Being certain that Rhone had not previously phoned him to tell him about us, I felt the Frenchman’s super calm, knowing response was like an overused line from a cheap “B” horror flick.
Gaston added to the mystique of his reply by coupling it with an invitation that seemed overly hospitable to strangers. Before I had an opportunity to mention our connection with his nephew Rhone, or our interest in making a film, Gaston volunteered, “You can all come and stay at our house for as long as you like. ”
A red warning light went off within my suspicious personality. Why such over-zealous hospitality? Hiding my uneasiness, I responded to Gaston’s offer with polite, professional decorum, “Great. My four friends and I would like to meet everyone in your group and film a documentary about your endeavors. ”
Jovially, Gaston agreed to us visiting over our Christmas vacation and staying at his sprawling home in the suburbs of Montreal. It seemed almost too easy.
Gaston’s excessively gracious response should have been my first clue that my friends and I were getting involved in an adventure with greater implications for our future than the making of a documentary film. His words haunted me for days. Rhone confirmed he hadn’t told his uncle about us. “Why such a generous offer of his home to people he’s never met, before I even fully introduced myself and my motives for phoning?” I queried many close acquaintances. Nobody had an answer that quelled my uneasiness.
However, in keeping with my youthful innocence and inner trust, I ignored my personality’s urging to investigate further before I proceeded. Had I hesitated or inquired more, I may not have undertaken that fateful, fortuitous journey to Montreal.
A few days after Christmas Day, we five intent filmmakers drove from Ann Arbor to Montreal to shoot a journalistic record of the teachings and operation of an esoteric spiritual society. About halfway there, I became violently ill with nausea, dizziness and diarrhea. I chalked it up to a combination of over-excitement and intestinal flu. In retrospect, I realize my condition had nothing to do with the flu. My body was reacting with trepidation to the prospect of the total life upheaval awaiting me in Montreal.
When we arrived, we were warmly greeted by Rhone’s Uncle Gaston and Aunt Edith, who appeared to be a very unassuming, sweet, vibrant French couple. They could easily have passed for totally ordinary Quebecois. The two made a very cheery pair, alive with the Gaelic spirit and joie de vivre. They invited us into their typical suburban home, which we later discovered was called “the clubhouse,” a meeting place for an international spiritual group of about two hundred people.
A short time after we arrived, it began to snow . . . and snow . . . and snow. It snowed heavily all night. When we opened the front door in the morning, we found six feet of snow had blanketed the city overnight. The powdery white fluff had drifted up above the opening of the front door. The storm was severe, even by Canadian standards. The whole city was at a standstill. It would take days for city plows to clear the streets. We were, in effect, shut in with the extraordinary subjects of our film.
My co-journalists and I reasoned it was the perfect opportunity to better know the people who were to be the focus of the documentary. Rhone’s relatives, however, had other plans for us! Their intentions differed vastly from ours.
After a restful night’s sleep, my friends and I eased into our first whole day with the congenial couple. We were still under the comforting illusion that we were there to make a film. After breakfast, Gaston and Edith calmly confided that they headed a secret international, or, as they described it more accurately, “intergalactic” spiritual society. “Our group meets and operates in secret,” they shared, “because as an underground organization, we won’t attract a lot of attention and can function more freely. Our membership consists of a wide spectrum of ordinary citizens comprised of all ages, races and backgrounds that includes doctors, lawyers, bankers, artists, truck drivers, post office workers, housewives, college professors and students. Most of our members feel it’s best if their relatives, casual friends and work colleagues are unaware of their membership in such an extremely esoteric metaphysical society. ”
The talkative French pair elaborated on the inner workings of their society, and we were gathering a wealth of information for our film project. Listening politely, the five of us sent silent, bemused messages back and forth between us with our eyes. Their story had all the trappings of an old, classic mystery movie.
When Gaston offered to acquaint us with the group’s spiritual practices, we quickly accepted his offer. After all, the more we knew about what these people were up to, the more thorough, accurate and affecting our documentary would be.
Having our complete attention, Gaston then informed us that he and Edith were not human! We five humans took a collective, lengthy breath. We remained silent. What could we say to that! In a casual tone, with a straight face, Gaston stated, “We have taken human form for the purpose of increasing the comfort level of the people with whom we interact. Our intentional guise of familiar human appearance makes communication so much easier, you see. ”
“Yes, of course,” we agreed in stunned unison, attempting to hide the skepticism in our voices. My “flu” symptoms—read as “suppressed terror”—had been lessening up until I heard this mindblower. Now, my body as well as my mind was sent reeling! But, since the snowstorm had paralyzed travel in the city and trapped us inside with these folks for a few days, my friends and I felt we needed to reserve our opinions about the factual basis of these extraterrestrial revelations. Thus, we nodded diplomatically as Gaston began to unfold his version of the true history of Planet Earth and the cosmology of the universe. I was able to calm my nerves and nausea by reminding myself that I was only there to record and document. As a professional, I shouldn’t get personally involved, I reminded myself.
The essence of Gaston’s presentation was focused on the true nature and meaning of life. He declared, “All beings are, in essence, Spirit. As individualized aspects of the Oneness, people incarnate on Earth—and in other worlds and other dimensions—for the sole (soul) purpose of exploring creation. All beings leave the Unified Field of Consciousness, Oneness, by deliberately buying into the belief of separation and duality, the cosmic play of opposites: the polarities of right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, up and down, and yin and yang.
“This deliberate forgetting of our connection to the unity of all things in Spirit allows people to create and play in a world of front and back, visible and invisible, and form and essence. The front—visible form—is the universe of physical matter, which you can see, touch, smell, hear and taste. The background—underlying invisible, essence reality—is made of nonphysical energy, which you can contact through multisensory perception.
“The majority of people have yet to open their senses to this more fundamental, causative aspect of life—the nonphysical, vibrational level of reality. This behind-the-scenes energy is primal life force, which is the creative power that animates all forms of life. ”
In elaborate detail, the lively Frenchman described Planet Earth’s role in the cosmic unfolding of the Universal Plan or Game. He emphasized, “My explanation of the true nature of the universe will be heard and absorbed differently by each of you. Each person’s perception will vary according to his or her individual personality with its unique belief filters and cultural conditioning. Every year or so, I will reiterate this same basic information to you, but in different terms and on a higher level of understanding. As each of you grow in wisdom and personal power, you will be able to absorb more truth. And I will be able to explain the workings of the cosmos in a more and more accurate way. ”
“However,” he forewarned, “the account I, and other spiritual teachers, share with you at each successive, higher level will make the previous level of information seem to you, on the surface, like a lie. But each new, more accurate version of the human story will only appear to contradict the last version, because your understanding of the true nature of life will have changed so radically. You’ll be in such a new place—a place of greater clarity and truth—that your old ways of understanding life will seem overly simple, naïve—even false. You will be seeing life through new eyes—a fresh, expanded perspective that will render your old points of view obsolete. ”
I will interrupt my tale for a moment to tell you that, since my time with Gaston, I have, in fact, been told and retold essentially the same cosmology in many different forms. Not by Gaston, but rather by other spiritual mentors: Indian guru Sai Baba, Ascended Master St. Germain, macrobiotic leader Michio Kushi, spiritual teacher Lester Levenson, and Hopi medicine man Medicine Cloud, among others. As Gaston had predicted, each new depiction of the truth of existence made the preceding rendition seem like fiction to me. That aside taken care of, I will continue with our experience with Uncle Gaston.
Gaston talked to us for a full day, breaking only for one meal. After hours of trying to integrate the incredible human adventure Gaston was positing, we were finally excused. We crashed for twelve hours of heavy slumber.
The next morning found the city of Montreal at a standstill, frozen in the grips of the blizzard. But not Gaston! He had a momentous journey in store for the five of us. When we awoke, the cheery, avowed extraterrestrial announced he was going to assist us in experiencing the full spectrum of our soul’s cosmic existence. He was taking us “soul traveling,” also referred to as “astral projection,” “multidimensional awareness” or “exploring one’s Akashic Record. ”
Having come to Montreal specifically to film a story about this fascinating procedure, we readily agreed to give it a shot. Mind you, none of us really believed the otherworldly technique was valid, or that it would work for us, so we were fairly cool and collected about such a weighty undertaking. Imagine our shock when, under the skilled direction of Gaston, we spent the next five days soul traveling through the multidimensional universe!
While lying fully clothed on a bed, each of us was cajoled into allowing our inner coach, or soul, to open to an awareness of various lifetimes on Earth, on other planets and in other dimensions. In some of the lifetimes, we didn’t inhabit physical bodies as dense as our bodies on Earth; we had energy bodies that were translucent, very light and fluid.
Gradually over the next three days, the awareness dawned on us that we were no longer simply exploring our subject for objective investigative journalism. We were, in fact, undergoing a very subjective spiritual initiation and transformation. By the time we realized this, we were so thoroughly engrossed in the fantastic journey that it was too late to turn back, or to attempt to return to being solely objective, journalistic observers.
I was so absorbed in the adventure of it all that my physical and emotional discomfort almost completely vanished. The little bit of queasiness that remained actually assisted me to soul travel. Because being out of my body was so much more comfortable than being in it, I responded immediately to Gaston’s suggestions to travel to other lifetimes and dimensions.
Each of us went on a dozen or so of these extra-dimensional awareness journeys. Whether we were truly experiencing actual other lifetimes was not important to us at the time because whatever we were doing was very real and inspirational for us. We experienced being physically in each body and lifetime with a level of concreteness equal to that of our everyday reality. We were aware of a small portion of our consciousness in a body lying on a bed back in Montreal on Earth in 1969, but most of our attention was riveted to very realistic, sensory, emotional and physical events in another time and place.
The experiential authenticity of these adventures was teaching us profound emotional and social life lessons. We didn’t care if these other lifetimes were, in truth, our own previous or future existences, the lifetimes of someone else or something else altogether. The relevant wisdom and direct insights we were gaining from these explorations were so valuable, we gave little concern for the factual basis of our exploits. Our thoughts, feelings and sensations during the journeys were more pronounced and acute than those of our “normal” reality. This heightened awareness made our experiences during the soul travels even more genuine, engaging and enriching.
During each lifetime, Gaston would guide us through birth and death in that existence. The births were very visceral, tangible and emotional. The deaths were equally physical, palpable and dramatic. Over and over, we each experienced our soul coming into a physical body at birth and then leaving the corporal body at death.
We also connected with the interactions that generally take place for most people between lifetimes. We met with spiritual advisors, talked about what we learned during the last lifetime, and then chose our next lifetime. For the next round on Earth, we could elect to be a woman, man, farmer, artist, peasant or prince. The choices were as endless as the universe.
The cumulative effect of these realistic and fascinating journeys was immense. We were acutely aware that the purpose of each revisiting of a lifetime was for our soul to learn more about the true nature of life—the debilitating consequences of greed, selfishness, revenge, jealousy and dishonesty—as well as the nurturing influences of joy, innocence, humor and compassion. We’d stumbled into a treasure house of direct knowing about the most significant aspects of human existence.
Each lifetime allowed us to directly—and more consciously than in everyday life—absorb what happens when we stay overly focused on and obsessed with fame, power, money, sex or security for a whole lifetime. We saw firsthand how being stuck in a certain narrow point of view in one lifetime dominated and decimated our aliveness and humanity in that lifetime. We assimilated palpably the healing and liberating power of exchanging genuine kindness, intimacy and laughter with other people. The many soul journeys were explorations of all the various human strengths and frailties that exist on the planet—and in our personal past and future lives.
Every lifetime we visited also had significant, synchronistic relevance for the challenges we were, in fact, facing in our current life on Earth. Each of us intuitively chose issues to confront that were pertinent and timely for us to examine in terms of our weaknesses and strengths in our present daily lives. The lessons I learned were ones I’ve not forgotten. In fact, the revelations from those soul trips changed forever how I live my life.
After five days of soul travel, Gaston demonstrated how to open the chakra energy centers of the body. The chakras are an East Indian term for the specific areas of the body in which creative life force is stored. The vast inner reserve of natural vitality and raw aliveness released from these sessions was sublime. Each of us felt vibrant and open to the power and majesty of the universe in a way none of us had ever felt before in our lives.
As if the lifetime journeys and chakra revitalizations were not enough transformation for one week, Gaston then gave each of us an extensive, personal soul history. For hours, he candidly revealed to each of us who we really are as eternal spirits, what our souls have come to do on Earth this lifetime, and how well to date we were accomplishing our spiritual goals. Gaston did not pull any punches. He was blunt, direct and specific. He knew events in our lives none of us had ever told anyone before—not close relatives, not even our best friends. He spoke facts about our lives, and truths about our feelings, we hadn’t even admitted to ourselves! It was quite shocking to all of us that anyone could know these extremely intimate details. This wasn’t hit-and-miss fortunetelling. This was in-depth soul truth.
Gaston explained, “When the Oneness deliberately fragmented into separate aspects of consciousness, each individual being ended up embodying more of one aspect of consciousness than the other qualities of the Oneness. Some people mainly embody and emanate the vibration of love. Others radiate more the essences of strength, innocence, transformation or courage. We each carry all the different parts of the Totality, but express different aspects to varying degrees. We each have different jobs to do here. ”
My personal reading was most encouraging. The Gaelic seer told me I’m here on a multi-lifetime mission of peace. I’m here to observe humans and society to see how people behave and interact in a multitude of challenging, everyday human situations. “Then, when you’ve watched and learned enough, you’re going to apply your observations to help people deal better with their regular, daily lives. Using various psychological therapies, you’re destined to assist people to make peace with their inner demons, and in the process, with other people. You are also here to help develop successful approaches to conflict resolution in our society. ” Eventually, Gaston foretold I’ll embody and radiate the vibration of peace to such a degree that if people who are arguing come within five hundred feet of me, they’ll simply quit quarreling and move into a tranquil state. Gaston informed me that I was from a place, or timeless space, called Xeros, a planet of peace.
My closest friend in our group, Chris, also received a favorable reading. Gaston described to him in detail how he was progressing very well toward his life mission of sacred service. Chris’ reading tied together many seemingly disparate events in his life into a cosmic mosaic of purposeful design. Soon after our collective adventure in Montreal, Chris’ human journey would lead him to Findhorn, a spiritual community in Scotland. He went there initially to seek assistance in understanding the momentous events in Montreal. After integrating his radical tutelage with Gaston, Chris has been involved in spiritual healing and teaching in Great Britain ever since.
One particular aspect of Gaston’s soul readings impressed me: the content of his life readings was not entirely complimentary. In fact, for three members of the group—Sylvia, Lisa and Jacob—the revelations of the frank Frenchman were very unflattering and disturbing. From my perspective, Gaston’s appraisals of the soul expression of each of us were very loving and non-judgmental. However, my three friends felt they received very derogatory assessments of their lives.
Gaston was extremely honest and specific. My comrades weren’t ready to hear reckonings as direct, accurate and detailed as he shared. He was quite explicit about each of them being “caught this lifetime in a very narrow band of egotistical self-interest. ” In retrospect, I feel his intention in his harsh delivery was to shake up and shock my friends so they’d look inward and refocus the direction of their lives. At the time, his stark truth telling had the opposite effect. All three of them became intensely angry and resistant toward Gaston and his suggestion they go within to intuitively review their present lives. They’d definitely had enough self-truth reflected to them by the candid extraterrestrial. After their life readings, the three were ready to revolt and bolt!
Chris and I were ready to split the scene as well. We’d reached the “outer limits” of our ability to absorb any further social or personal revelation. By then, Montreal’s sturdy army of snowplows had cleared the streets of the city, and we could leave. As if of one intention, the five of us packed our belongings to return to Ann Arbor and familiar environs, both geographically and psychologically. It would be a gross understatement to say we felt completely overwhelmed by our experience with this secret, intergalactic society.
None of us had a way of adequately dealing mentally, emotionally or physiologically with the events of that week. What was left of our minds was blown into almost unrecognizable pieces. We were drained emotionally. Our bodies were reeling with the stress and strain of having our worlds rocked and exploded beyond recognition. Not having metaphysical backgrounds at the time, we’d never read or heard anything resembling the types of experiences we had just gone through. We had no frame of reference in which to fit our week of spiritual initiation. We’d totally forgotten our original plan to shoot a documentary film in Montreal. Our overriding desire was to put as much physical and psychological distance between us and the source of our overwhelming encounter as possible!
Driving the ten hours back to the good old USA, we had time to rehash the week’s dramatic events in detail. And the privacy of a car allowed us to recount the traumatic ordeal with great emotion and depth. Together, the five of us considered at length every conceivable way to view the preceding week’s extravaganza.
By the time we arrived back in Ann Arbor, Chris and I were awakening to a more compassionate and spiritual framework from which to view our life experience. However, the three who disliked their life reviews—Sylvia, Lisa and Jacob—reached a different point of view.
The three had concluded that Gaston and Edith were evil, or, at the very least, part of a cult that was very dangerous to their physical and spiritual safety. They reached a state of hysteria. Feeling they needed protection from the people in Montreal, they sought advice and defensive rituals from a “white witch. ” The day after our return to Ann Arbor, all three came over to the house where Chris and I lived. In a fervent frenzy, they sprinkled holy water and salt on our heads, and on every doorstep and doorsill in the house. They claimed being blessed by these sanctified natural elements would ward off the evil spirits connected with the “satanic” Montreal cult. They screamed and railed at Chris and me to awaken to the danger of the demonic spell cast on us by Gaston.
The frantic, bizarre scene unfolding in front of us resembled a skit from a cosmic, comic “Three Stooges” skit! Our three frightened friends had twisted every word of Gaston’s presentation into a fanatical, ironclad indictment of the whole Montreal group and their motives. Chris and I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Confused and bombarded by our friends’ frenzy, we alternated between reacting with horror and humor. Certainly, it wasn’t funny to witness our close friends in such a state of panic and terror. However, the extremely righteous and sanctimonious way they denounced the whole philosophy of the Montreal group verged on the absurd and ridiculous.
I might add here that throughout my subsequent decades of working with people undergoing spiritual initiations, I have discovered that the personality will often project an illusion of “evil” upon any person, event or source of information that rocks its boat, threatening its insulated, controlled world. I have also found that what people fear most is authentic love, which often comes in the form of radical truth telling.
Chris and I, conversely, were experiencing a spiritual healing and awakening from the initiation in Montreal. Our friends’ fearful overreaction to the miraculous spiritual gifts of Gaston was challenging us to evaluate our experience even more thoroughly. Yes, Chris and I were also freaked out on a psychological level. However, we viewed our mental resistance as a normal, expected reaction to a mind-blowing experience. Our everyday paradigm was busted wide open by Gaston. The familiar security of our mainstream perceptual framework was shattered. Stretching our cultural envelope beyond its limits, we were thrust way outside our box of normal experience.
Contrary to our three hysterical friends, Chris and I were extremely grateful. We were unnerved, but not undone, by our expulsion from ordinary reality. The stark truth telling was freeing us. And we were thankful at being liberated from the prison of our old, rigid, narrow world. When our alarmed friends burst upon our home, Chris and I were celebrating our spiritual emancipation, not seeking a way to invalidate and reverse the effects of the Montreal encounter.
Naïvely, Chris and I tried to intellectually discuss our different point of view with our three fear-stricken friends. Unfortunately, they were long past the point of a philosophical resolution to their perceived predicament. They felt their very survival was at stake. They were afraid their souls were in danger from demonic forces.
There was nothing Chris and I could say or do to mollify their terror. Before our metaphysical adventure in Canada, we felt our three friends were fairly strong, stable individuals. However, the experience totally shook their grasp on a safe reality. All three eventually sought psychiatric counseling to help resolve the disruption of their worlds caused by the Montreal trip. They broke off communication with us. Unfortunately, I’ve lost track of all three of my former cinematic compatriots.
I’ve not had any further contact with Gaston either—that is, that I am aware of! On other levels of consciousness, I’m certain he’s been assisting me. After my encounter with him, I needed an extensive period of time to absorb the expansive spiritual opening he afforded me—a pursuit that has become an ongoing project to this day. The only request Gaston made of us was to share what they revealed to us with whomever it felt intuitively right. As I integrate the wisdom and tools Gaston gave me in Montreal, I pass on these treasures through my workshops and personal coaching.
The central focus of the secret spiritual society in Montreal is the same purpose as that of my Dream Workshops. Our common goal is to bring people together as peers to assist them to awaken to their connection with the Infinite, and to empower them to use their natural spiritual powers for the good of humankind, as well as for their individual soul growth. The way Gaston helped us to open to direct communication and guidance from our inner coach laid the foundation for the intuitive soul journeys that are so valuable now for people in The Dream Workshops I facilitate across the country.
Why God Exists From a Scientific Point of View and Self Evolution?
Before going into a debate about the existence of God, I want you to understand how I was raised. I grew up in a Christian family. My dad is a part-time pastor and my mom is spiritual, but not religious. My grandfather is an in-your-face atheist, and my grandmother is a committed Christian. Anyway, we always celebrated Christmas and all the other Christian holidays mostly because its fun to celebrate the holidays, the kids love it, and it gave the family a reason to come together. I’ve been agnostic for most of my life, which means I believed there was most likely a God. However, I couldn’t be 100% certain, because I had no absolute proof to warrant a rational decision. I was never an atheist, which means you are certain there is no God. I’ve never really liked extremists whether they were atheists or religious extremists, because they seem very closed minded and judgmental; and they often allow their biases to twist their perception of reality to support their false beliefs even when the evidence in front of them is clearly not in their favor. Growing up my mom and dad didn’t really talk to me about religion. They thought I should have the choice to learn and decide on my own what to believe. Today my dad says things like “I’m praying for you” and “bless you” all the time. Initially, I took it like he was trying to force his religious beliefs on me and thought I’m praying for you meant I pity you, which annoyed me because I was very successful and wanted his approval. I also felt I had a whole bunch of sound scientific reasons why religion was a bunch of manmade fiction. Now I take what my dad says as a form of affectionate like saying I love you; and my thoughts have changed, because I have a valid reason to believe that God exists. My first real talks about religion happened when I was about 12, because my grandfather liked to debate everything from politics to religion. He’s a really smart guy, so I listened to what he said and became interested in learning more about religion in order to make an educated decision one way or the other. I never took the things he said for face value, because I really wanted to know the real truth. So I read the New Testament, the Old Testament, the I-Ching, and most of the other major and ancient religions. I even lived in Israel for a while to see all the sights, met the Pope, talked to the Dali Lama through email and listened to the preaching’s of every major religion from different speakers. The ones that impressed me the most weren’t trying to push their religious beliefs, and they did not act like fanatics who spoke in tongues, talked about blowing people up, discriminating against the non-believers or innocent people going to hell because they weren’t sure what to believe. Instead they used the teachings of their religion to help people and improve the lives of the followers, their community, their marriages, their families and their friendships. The ones I really listened to weren’t driven by money or getting their followers to believe in miracles; they were helping their followers create strong, happy families and avoid common problems that affect our personal lives and our careers. They did this by using stories and the teachings of their religion to paint the picture, inspire people, and help them develop into good citizens. They were trying to create a better world by leading people with their hearts and their minds, and there was a good reason for everything they said. I think that having faith and loving anything or anyone is a commitment. We shouldn’t be expected to commit to someone blindly or have faith in something we cannot prove. That’s why I’m writing this today. I’m also pretty unique. I not only studied religion; I also studied science to the existent that I know as much as anyone with a Doctorate would know about the conceptual side of physics and how the universe works. That doesn’t mean I’m a numbers guy or somebody that writes things on a chalkboard all day, but I can hold an intelligent conversation with anyone about physics without making myself look like an uneducated idiot. I was a numbers, chalk board guy at one point in college, but I decided to start using common sense to understand the universe I live in. This happened when the Nobel Laureate I worked for explained to me that people with PhD’s in Physics who work at NASA don’t make much; he also said they are typically close minded because they spent most of their life cramming so many facts and numbers into their heads that they have a hard time coming up with anything new on their own. That didn’t appeal to me with my big goals to help mankind. I also didn’t want to become the world’s biggest nerd. After all, if I’m successful in business, then I can afford to hire all the Nobel Laureates I need to crunch numbers for me and work on my science projects. Instead, I get to be the creative, common sense guy that solves problems like the fact that the neutron has the exact weight and charge as a proton and an electron combined, but all the nerds on the planet who spent 8 years of their lives in school couldn’t figure out that a neutron was just a proton and an electron stuck together. Sad, but true; I don’t mean any disrespect to people with more formal education in science, but this just shows us that the real value of an education are not the facts and figures we cram in our heads, but our ability to think critically, solve problems and be creative. I’m not trying to impress you or stroke my own ego by saying this, but the articles I’ve written about physics shock people, because they are completely unique and add value to our understanding of the universe. There were so many times I’ve been called a genius by college professors that you would think I’m the next Einstein or Steven Hawking. I’m also one of the few people on the Earth that could have an intellectually challenging conversation with either of them, while talking about common sense things in science that aren’t known by anyone – unless they’ve read my articles on physics. So I have a unique understanding of both sides. I’ve been an agnostic scientist, and now I’m a believer that’s still a scientist. I no longer have any doubt that God exists, because I have a good reason. If you’re interested in learning why, keep on reading and share this with your family and close friends. I learned that religions offered stories about God that were probably written by man to make a best effort to describe God throughout history and accomplish mutual goals. Some of these goals included overthrowing the Romans, teaching people morality and ethics, using religion to cultivate power over the masses, starting holy wars and influencing the politics of earlier times. As societies learned and changed, old religions were replaced or evolved to meet the needs of the people. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that any religion that did not adapt to the changing needs of society, and what we know to be true about the universe, would eventually be replaced by man’s search for a better fit as he approaches a more complete understanding of the universe. After all, new religions are created everyday that have slight differences in their beliefs. Christianity itself has literally hundreds of unique sects that have slightly different beliefs about God, the Bible and Jesus. Even the beliefs of Christians vary significantly from person to person. I think the most valuable things I learned from giving myself an excellent education are keeping an open mind, understanding how personal bias effects our decision making, and tolerance and acceptance for the beliefs of others. Realistically, we are all probably wrong to a certain extent, but we can work together to discover the truth. Almost everyone has something valuable to offer as long as they are tolerant and open to understanding the beliefs of others. I also learned that no religion presented any significant proof of the existence of God, so I turned to science to find the answer to my question. The first thing I want to mention is the Theory of Infinite Complexity, which states with enough time, humans will evolve their understanding and mastery of the universe until they appear to be Gods. Let’s start by considering what our caveman ancestors would think of modern man with all his understand and gadgets. To them he would be some type of God to be worshiped for his mastery of fire and his ability to strike down dinner or a dangerous animal by shooting thunder at it with a stick. He might even show up with a Hummer, a laptop, DVDs, an iPod, and any number of things that would appear to be magic. You get the idea, right? Now here comes the part that most people will disagree with initially, because they don’t keep up on breakthroughs in science and the potential of technology. Already we know how to control the flow of time and bend space based on Einstein’s work decades ago, and today we have no-brainer ideas to actually do it. We also have the basic idea to construct a quantum computer based on quantum entanglement, which would be able to calculate anything instantly. We can even use the same discovery to build transmitters and receivers that communicate instantly with anyone or anything in the universe, no matter how far away they are. Instantly means faster than the speed of light, which is something that even Einstein didn’t think was possible. If you have doubts, look up quantum computer and quantum entanglement on Wikipedia. Students at Stanford even found a way to link nerves like the one’s in your brain directly to a computer. That means we can communicate directly with a computer just by thinking. We’re also mapping and mastering how to rewrite our own genes to eliminate genetic diseases and improve on our own genetic blue prints. There are also many exciting breakthroughs in stem cell research that could someday lead to near immortality and organ regeneration. Nanotechnology is also a very promising field that has amazing medical applications. With man’s ability to communicate with a computer just by thinking and nanites in their body, he or she could change their body just by thinking. I’m not just talking about appearance; I mean everything, from the structure of our DNA to what our skin and bones are made out of to the structure of our brains, which is the concept behind Self Evolution. These things and new discoveries in the future may lead man to think the same thing that our caveman ancestors would think of us today. People in the future will have resources and abilities that no ordinary human being today could possess. With the link between man and machine, verbal communication will become a thing of the past and mankind may start to think like a single evolving being over time made up of millions and possibly billions of minds working together. Essentially, we are evolving into God or a community of beings with the ability to reshape the universe any way we want at will. The real question is does God exist today? With enough time almost anything is possible. We may even figure out how to change physics or discover that everything is the way it is for a reason, and another civilization that’s a lot further ahead of us made it that way so we could exist. With infinite time and space within a finite universe, the chance of one civilization being ahead of us so much that they fit our concept of god is a mathematical certainty. That means there is no doubt that god or something similar really exists, and we are not alone in the multiverse. Read the article Infinite Time & Space within a Finite Universe if you want to know what it is and why I use the term multiverse. From a common sense point of view, there are also just too many coincidences in nature to believe that god or something similar does not exist. Take the water molecule as an example. If it was just a little bit different, life as we know it would not be impossible. The properties of water are exactly the way it should be for a reason, and that reason is to create life. We may just be some super being’s science project, but we have the same opportunity to evolve and fill God’s footsteps as any other intelligent race. Another question is why doesn’t God intervene when horrible acts of cruelty are about to happen to innocent people? The next thing to consider is God’s impact on our lives, which I call the Theory of Appreciation and Manifestation. Why doesn’t God stop things like genocide, rape, suffering and murder? Why does God ignore us in our time of need and not change things when we pray for something better? Well the answer is simple. God only interacts with people that show appreciation. Otherwise, God just observes us and makes no effort to influence anything. This may sound silly, but it actually works. First, I saw appreciation work for my new friends and their family, a couple days later I saw Opera by chance and an audience of successful women talking about manifestation through appreciation, then I gave it a shot and my life started to change immediately like night and day. The interesting thing is that I didn’t do anything different. I also thought very critically about whether there is a heaven or a hell and whether Jesus, Buddha, or any number of prophets and messiahs actually had anything to do with the real God. My thought is that we are like pets to God. If God doesn’t want us to cease to exist, then one of them will preserve our consciousness or our soul (mind). This is easily accomplished by super beings by transferring our consciousness to a new set of hardware, so they can continue to observe us. People that don’t show appreciation and earn favor just die, and there is no afterlife for them. There is also no guarantee that appreciation by itself will be enough to ensure an afterlife, and people who show an excessive or irrational appreciation for God are not highly regarded. There is also no actual hell with fire and brimstone or anything supernatural. Although it is not the traditional version of heaven and hell, the choices we make and how society reacts to us influences the quality of our lives and the people in our lives. This is why suffering takes place, and where the closest thing that resembles hell actually exists. There is no real devil; there are only the evil acts of mankind toward other human beings. We are all the sons and daughters of God. Messiahs and prophets are just the spearheads of religion, and most of them were either schizophrenic or making a personal sacrifice for the greater good of their people. Religion is clearly a manmade institution that helps people, but it also fills our heads with a lot of false information that holds back understanding and technology. Even if the Bible and other texts are partially fiction, they still have a tremendous value to society, because they are a source of history that was designed to help people live better lives. Religion should also never contradict with science and nature. It should adapt to our understanding of nature and the universe we live in. Evolution is no longer just someone’s idea; it’s a fact now that we understand how DNA changed over time, and it was God’s plan to create life and watch it evolve all along. The Earth and the Universe are much older than the Bible says, and God did not make things happen in a week. God is also not one being; it’s a community of advanced beings who are a lot further along than we are.
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