Hello Universe

Quotes from books and articles I've read that are worth keeping. I am co-host on herebedragons.fm and founder of udm.how

[jasmino]

Seek always to attain Excellence, equity and justice. If you must bow your head let it be Only to the highest mountain.

Maori proverb

[jasmino]

I have been a lucky man. To feel the intimacy of brothers is a marvelous thing in life. To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life. But to feel the affection that comes from those whom we do not know, from those unknown to us, who are watching over our sleep and solitude, over our dangers and our weaknesses - that is something still greater and more beautiful because it widens out the boundaries of our being, and unites all living things.

Pablo Neruda (in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift)

[jasmino]

When the will dominates, there is no gap through which grace may enter, no break in the ordered stride for error to escape, no way for which a barren prince may receive the virtu of his people, and for an artist, no moment of receptiveness when the engendered images may come forward.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

Death in particular focuses life, and deepens it. In the face of death we can discriminate between the important and the trivial. We sometimes drop our habitual guardian reticence and speak clearly.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

Individual identity cannot thrive where some people count and others do not.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

Without imagination we can do no more than spin the future out of the logic of the present; we will never be led into new life because we can work only from the known.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

Alone in the workshop its is the soul itself the artist labours to delight. The labour of gratitude is the initial food we offer the soul in return for its gifts, and if it accepts our sacrifice, we may be drawn into a gifted state, the work falls together graciously. (Not always of course. For some the work may fall into place regularly, but most of us cut out a thousand pairs of shoes before the elves begin to sew.)

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

In sympathy the poet receives (inhales, absorbs) the embodied presences of creation into the self; in pride he asserts (exhales, emanates) his being out toward others.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

The true commerce of art is a gift exchange, and where that commerce can proceed on its own terms we shall be heirs to the fruits of gift exchange: in this case, to a creative spirit whose fertility is not exhausted in use, to the sense of plenitude which is the mark of all erotic exchange, to a storehouse of works that can serve as agents of transformation, and to a sense of an inhabitable world - an awareness, that is, of our solidarity with whatever we take to be the source of our gifts, be it the community or the race, nature, or the gods. But none of these fruits will come to us where we have converted our arts to pure commercial enterprises. The Nielsen ratings will not lead us toward a civilization in which the realized gifts of the gifted stand surety for the life of the citizenry. Sprinkles of gold flake will not free the genius of our race.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and most eccentric and at the same time, most representative, most universal... That was something I learned for Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing... The cure for that is to write things down which you will not publish and which you won't show people. To write secretly... so you can actually be free to say anything you want. It means abandoning being a poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry, really abandoning, giving up as hopeless - abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world. Abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honour and diginity, and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mind... You really have to make a resolution just to write for yourself... in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but just writing what your self is saying.

Allen Gisnberg on writing (in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift)

[jasmino]

This is the "poverty of the gift, in which each man, by his generosity, becomes 'poor' so that the group may be wealthy. A needy person is not seen as having a separate and personal problem. His neediness is felt throughout the group, and its wealth flows toward the need and fills it without reflection or debate, just as water flows immediately to fill the lowest place. The law asks that no member of the tribe be either more or less in touch with the necessities of life.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

Anarchist theory is like an aqua regia applied to the state and its machinery to see how much might be stripped away before people begin to suffer more than they do under law and authority. The anarchist begins with the assumption of man's good nature, contending that law itself is a 'cause' of crime. He feels a kinship, not a gap, between modern man and his predecssor 'in nature'.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

Work is what we do by the hour. It begins and ends at a specific time and, if possible, we do it for money. Labour, on the other hand, sets its own pace. We may get paid for it, but it's harder to quantify. Things get done, but we often have the odd sense that we didn't do them.

Lewis Hyde in The Gift

[jasmino]

I am not a foreigner because I haven't been praying to return safely home, I haven't wasted my time imagining my house, my desk, my side of the bed. I am not a foreigner because we are all travelling, we are all full of the same questions, the same tiredness, the same fears, the same selfishness and the same generosity. I am not a foreigner because, when I asked, I received. When I knocked, the door opened. When I looked, I found.

Paulo Coelho in Aleph

[jasmino]

Any political ideology that disallows parties from carrying out opposition activities and presenting themselves to the country as viable alternatives to the existing government cannot be said to have anything to do with democracy. To view opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.

Aung San Suu Kyi in "Letters from Burma"

[jasmino]

When I visited Natmauk, my father’s hometown, I went to the monastery where he studied as a boy. There the abbot gave a sermon on the four causes of decline and decay: failure to recover that which has been lost; omitting to repair that which has been damaged; disregard of the need for reasonable economy; and the elevation to leadership of those without morality or learning.

Aung San Suu Kyi in "Letters from Burma"

[jasmino]

According to the teachings of Buddhism, a good friend is one who gives things hard to give, does what is hard, bears hard words, tells you his secrets, guards your secrets assiduously, does not forsake you in times of want and does not condemn you when you are ruined. With such friends, one can travel the roughest road and not be defeated by hardship. Indeed, the rougher the path, the greater the delight in the company of kalyanamitta, good and noble friends who stand by us in times of adversity.

Aung San Suu Kyi in "Letters from Burma"