Stay Positive


"In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

- Alert Camus








Thursday, December 29, 2011

Answer to Blog Follower


MY ADVENTURE IN THE BLOGGING WORLD HAS BEEN EYE-OPENING, EDUCATIONAL AND FUN.   MY BLOGS ARE AN ATTEMPT TO CATEGORIZE INTERESTS AND TO SEGREGATE INFORMATION GATHERED WHILE 'SURFING' THE WEB.  YOUR BLOG IS INTERESTING AND ONE I WILL FOLLOW.  I JUST NOTICED YOU WERE A FOLLOWER BECAUSE I DID NOT DISPLAY FOLLOWERS UNTIL THIS MOMENT.

GOOGLE HAS INTRODUCED A USEFUL STATISTIC WHICH SHOWS HOW MANY VISITS YOUR BLOGS ARE GETTING... BY THIS STANDARD TO MY BLOGS SHOWS "GET A LIFE IS MOST POPULAR" AND "  SECOND IS "POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY"
WITH VARYING AMOUNTS OF INTEREST IN THE OTHERS.  BLOGGING IS A LEARNING EXPERIENCE IN MANY WATS.  I SET UP AN INFORMAL INVESTIGATION OF WHAT KINDS OF THINGS OTHER PEOPLE GRAVITATE TOWARDS IN THIER BROWSING ON THE WEB.  TO DATE I HAVEN'T USED GOOGLE'S FREE ADVERTISING OR ANY OTHER PAID PROMOTION TO GAIN READERS.  AT SOME POINT, I MAY GET MORE PROMOTIONAL WITH ONE OR MORE BLOGS.  RIGHT NOW BLOGS PROVIDE A PLACE TO STORE INTERESTING INFORMATION FROM THE WEB.

DO YOU HAVE A PURPOSE FOR STARTING A BLOG?  ARE YOU A YOUNG COPYRIGHT LAWYER LOOKING FOR CLIENTS?

"SciReg.Org - online free World Science Register - is the universal system, enabling registration of scientific and creative information as well as protection of copyright and intellectual property "

Your description would suggest a more serious approach than my blogs, at this time.  Who can say that the future won't be different.  Creative Commons seems to be a good guide for what you can safely post.  My purpose has been to learn by doing and to enjoy the process of learning about the world wide web.  Many universities have 'bought-in' to the idea of open learning and we can find lectures in many topics that spark our interest.  I'm a fan of a former financial analyst on Wall Street who began a YouTube mathematics tutoring program to help his cousins pass high school math........  and he has seen huge growth in viewers and has some substantial funding from groups like the Gates Foundation.


My Web approach is like a giant open-ended market study with the hopes of finding a profitable niche to exploit by providing useful information to people who need it and thereby providing a worthwhile service to readers.

Do you have any good ideas you are willing to share?  Wikipedia is the best example of giving away an idea instead of becoming a billionaire like with the founder of Facebook, for instance.






Friday, December 23, 2011

Brain-Eating Amoeba Cases Puzzle and Worry Scientists - The Daily Beast

Avoid fad miracle cures:
Brain-Eating Amoeba Cases Puzzle and Worry Scientists - The Daily Beast:
"Two people have died after flushing their sinuses using neti pots that may have contained amoeba-contaminated water, causing scientists to look anew at a once rare disease that may be on the rise."

For sheer terror, “flesh-eating bacteria” can’t hold a candle to “brain-eating amoeba.” So it is little wonder that two recent fatalities in Louisiana in people who were killed by the amoeba after they used neti pots to flush their nasal passages with (apparently amoeba-contaminated) water has sinus sufferers in a panic. Until now, the only known cases of infection by the brain-eating parasite Naegleria fowleri have occurred when people swam in warm rivers, lakes, or other bodies of freshwater where the single-celled organism lives. If the two deaths in Louisiana were indeed the result of exposure to drinking water from a chlorinated municipal supply, that is worrisome. “We’re not exactly sure why this tragic situation occurred,” says Jonathan Yoder, a scientist in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of parasitic diseases. “We’re working with authorities in Louisiana to understand the characteristics of the water system that might have allowed this.”

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Imagery For Getting Well


IMAGERY FOR GETTING WELL
CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE

MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS (MS)


DESCRIPTION

MS is a disease of the central nervous system involving the breaking down and scarring of the myelin sheath by the immune system which no longer recognizes the myelin as "self." When this fatty insulation of the nerve fibers is disturbed, the messages that control bodily movements/functions are distorted or blocked or communicate to the wrong muscular destination. The condition tends to have an uneven course of exacerbations and remission; however, stress frequently precedes exacerbations. In general, medical treatment is focused on symptom relief.


IMMUNE DYSFUNCTION

Present theories concerning MS involve: (1) a viral etiology, (2) an autoimmune dysfunction, and (3) a combination of the two (the immune system attacking a virus sleeping deep within the cells of the myelin sheath).

DESIRED IMMUNE RESPONSE

    * Immune system recognition of myelin sheath as "self"
  * Harmonious interaction of immune system with the body, especially the myelin-recognizing and loving "self" cells.
    * Increased suppressor cells

SEEDS FOR IMAGERY

A honey-like substance coats the nerves- melting tough scars into viable powerful myelin material- filling any gaps in or degeneration of the myelin sheath, perfectly protecting and insulating the nerve fiber, allowing it to carry the nerve impulse precisely from the brain to the muscle where it is needed.

See a substance pouring over the tangled nerves in nerve trunks, like a soothing oil poured over spaghetti, coating the nerve strands so that they untangle and magically fall into relaxed, straight strands.

See the damaged nerves arcing like frayed electrical wires. See maintenance workers reweave the tattered insulation so the nerves cease short-circuiting each other.


Hand and Foot Warming Exercises

See white clouds in the head (MS scarring as seen in an MRI) being blown away by a powerful wind.

See the nervous system n an indigo blue color. Where there is damage, the scales and scars are greyish-white. See a swarm of mud-daubers flying to a palette heaped with translucent myelin. Some of the mud-daubers use their stingers to cut away the damaged myelin and scales from the nerves. Others pick up the myelin compound and spread it into the area perfectly. When the repairs dry, they turn dark indigo blue, blending so perfectly that no trace of the repair work remains.

See a big eraser rubbing out the lesions in the brain.

Imagine a worker with scrub brushes, pumice, and rouge cloths scouring away the scars and then painting fresh myelin into the area, which turns indigo blue to match the rest of the system.

See calamine lotion being patted onto areas by the immune system. See the immune system change from being irritable and angry to protective, loving, and friendly. See the whole body experience regeneration.

Demand inwardly that your body (and any medication that you are taking) produce all its healing substances. Sense and feel the substances being released...sense the suppressor T cells...teaching the other white blood cells to distinguish friend (the myelin sheath) from foe (bacteria). Sense and see this happening all along the spinal column, from the bottom to the top and up into the brain, as a ladder of flashing lights sending sparks of electrical energy throughout the body" (Epstein, 1989, pp. 149-150).




AUTHORS: Deirdre Davis Brigham with Adelaide Davis and Derry Cameron-Sampey.





Thursday, December 15, 2011

1 out of 2 Americans are Poor!!!

Its a Mean Old World


THIS SHOULD ENCOURAGE THE POPULACE TO EMBRACE THE OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST.

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income

-  HOPE YEN, Associated Press 


“If Americans ever allow banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless.”

- Thomas Jefferson


"One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute."
- William Feather



Tuesday, December 13, 2011

In all Life Change is a Constant



EMBRACE CHANGE:

"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars."
- R. Tagore 

Build a better life according to your ideal Vision.
Do not wait for perfect timing, get started now.
What you do today, is all that matters.
Do your best with what you have and start from where you are.


"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." - Picasso


There is power in action so make plans and execute them.

Circumstance is a result of your past and does not indicate where you are heading.

The greatest journey begins with the first step and so does your building of a new business or whatever you are setting out to create.

We all need to start where we are and in the moment, find the strength to overcome obstacles we encounter, persevere and endure until we achieve a few goals and gain momentum in a positive direction.

Live according to your Vision of the well-lived life.


"One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity."
~Albert Schweitzer



Reverence for Life:

Lost in thought I sat on deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal concept of the ethical that I had not discovered in any philosophy. I covered sheet after sheet with disconnected sentences merely to concentrate on the problem. Two days passed. Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase : “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben” (“reverence for life”). The iron door had yielded. The path in the thicket had become visible.”

— Albert Schweitzer



HOPE FUELS MOTIVATION

 



"It is necessary to hope
For hope itself is happiness,
And its frustrations, however frequent
Are less dreadful than its extinction."

- Samuel Johnson



“Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.”


― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco


Worry does not help any situation to improve.



The sea like life itself, is a stern taskmaster.  The best way to get along with either is to learn all you can, then do your best and don't worry especially about things over which your have no control.


Admiral Chester William Nimitz quoting his grandfather in E.B. Potter's Nimitz


Sunday, December 11, 2011

Pet Penguin in Japan - YouTube

Pet Penguin in Japan - YouTube: ""


This 10-year-old King Penguin was rescued from a fisherman's line and refused to leave after he was healed. He was adopted by a family in a small town in Japan and became a beloved pet who has his own personal air-conditioned cold room. Lala is so smart - he walks to the fish store with his little backpack to shop for fresh fish every day. You are gonna love this little video!
'via Blog this'

Friday, December 9, 2011

How finding beauty in ordinary life can make you happy

December 4, 2011
By SARAH HAMPSON
From Monday's Globe and Mail


With fall glory gone and holiday hurry upon us, five Canadians pause to share a moment of wonder that stopped them in their tracks. What their stories have in common is sheer serendipity

I have a friend who is next to impossible to go for walk with in the spring or summer. "Look," she will instruct, stopping dead in her running shoes. "See how beautiful this gladiolus is?" And of course, you have to stop alongside her and admire the texture and the colour and the height of the flowers. What are you, anyway? Some power-walking obsessive who doesn't know how to smell the proverbial roses?

It turns out that identifying and appreciating beauty in the everyday is a happiness strategy.
 Some spiritual leaders advocate it as a way to feel divine energy. Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness and Flourish, listed it as one of the 24 psychological character traits that make for happy, functioning people. It allows us to experience awe and wonder - to be elevated.

Great, but is that even possible in this dreary limbo of shortening days, after the glory of fall but before the festive season gets fully under way? To think about beauty in ordinary life, I asked five well-known Canadians to tell me (or write) about a recent instance of wonder.

Esi Edugyan, this year's Giller prize winner for her novel, Half-Blood Blues.

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine invited me over to see a new painting he'd just bought. I'd been feeling exhausted, and so when my friend phoned, I grudgingly agreed to go over.

The painting, Crossing the Strait, by the B.C. artist Takao Tanabe, depicts a seascape at night, a view of a blackening ocean just before the light dies, and is viscerally beautiful. Maybe because it so perfectly reflected what goes on outside my window on a dark November day, I was utterly haunted by it. But rather than dwelling in such darkness, rather than brooding on the faltering of the season, the day's sense of ending, Tanabe finds a vein of light in the sky that is perfectly reflected in the water, creating a visual path for the eye to trace, a kind of compass suggesting both hope and the possible. The painting is more, much more, than a meditation on death, as some critics have suggested. It becomes instead a meditation on life, on living, on being alive in the brief time that is our own. I stared at it a long time. And I left feeling grateful, heartened, refreshed.

Mary Walsh, comedian and actress, best known as Princess Warrior Marg Delahunty on This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Recently, my husband and I went to see Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem in London's West End. The performance by Mark Rylance was startling. It makes me so happy just to even think about it now. The show itself was enormously tragic. He plays Johnny Byron, a wreck of a man held together by drugs and drink. But it was overwhelming. He worked entirely with the audience - theatre is a two-way street - and he was open-hearted and you felt that he was just there giving everything he had. It was such a gift. I don't know if I've ever been in a room with such generosity.

Lesra Martin, lawyer and Literacy Ambassador for ABC Literacy, who grew up illiterate in New York before coming to Canada as a teenager with the help of benefactors. He went on to be part of the team who helped free Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

I'm not convinced that beauty is what we see. I think it's something that we feel. I was in Vancouver in early November and out the window, I could see this street full of trees. They were losing their leaves. I found it a bit sad. But my wife and kids were with me, and when the kids saw the leaves, they reacted as they do with a snowfall. They just wanted to go out and play in them. And that immediately changed my perspective. They find joy in it without reflecting too much. That feeling of circumstances shifting, of a change in perspective, is what I think beauty is. It emanates from within and helps shape who we are.

Jennifer Gardy, molecular scientist with British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and the new It Girl of Science following the airing of the CBC documentary Myth or Science.

My husband and I bought tickets to a concert in mid November, and he invited two of his work colleagues from Apple to come with us. Before the concert, the four of us got together at our place, and one of the guys said he wanted us all to watch a music video. And I was, like, a music video? Really? I'm not really interested. But with the opening frames, we were all mesmerized. It's Montana by a group with a really weird name, Youth Lagoon. It's very evocative about a boy; and it flashes back between the fifties and sixties, when he was small, to the present. The song is really beautiful, and the visuals are impressionistic and hazy like memory. It's about family and redemption and change and loss and moving forward. The four of us had just been yapping away, and suddenly we all went silent. Some of us cried. Nobody could say anything for a long time.

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, priest, Poet Laureate Emeritus of The City of Toronto

I was coming out the elevator doors in Toronto's city hall, fresh from committee meetings where strategies, costing thousands of dollars, had been discussed for how to make people happy. I see throngs of people gathered around the sound of a flute. Leaning against a pillar in the concourse is a weather-beaten, little old Chinese man, playing a 10-cent tin flute. Playing jazz, playing pop, playing classical. He is free. And he is blind. There's no collection. His granddaughter comes, gently takes him by the arm, and they go home. Blind and happy, he smiles. Clear-sighted and happy, the people go home. It is how we should live in the city - by the gift of ourselves, inexpensive and priceless.




Source:

Erich Fromm: Atheistic Mystic


Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father was a business man and, according to Erich, rather moody. His mother was frequently depressed. In other words, like quite a few of people, his childhood wasn't very happy.

Like Jung, Fromm came from a very religious family, in his case orthodox Jews. Fromm himself later became what he called an atheistic mystic.


Quotes:  Erich Fromm


“The ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.”


Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.


"Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world."


"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."


"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."


"If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."


"If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?"


"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'"


"In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."


"In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."


"Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted."


"Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality."


"Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market."


"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
Erich Fromm

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.


Man always dies before he is fully born.
Erich Fromm

"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve."


"Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture."


"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."


"Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies."


"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent."


"The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have."


"The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist."


"The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity."


"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."


"The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal."


"The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity."


"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."


"There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love."


"There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers."


"There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself."

"There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue."


"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable."


"To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime."


We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.


"We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them."


"What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal."


"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies."


"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"


Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father was a business man and, according to Erich, rather moody. His mother was frequently depressed. In other words, like quite a few of people, his childhood wasn't very happy.

Like Jung, Fromm came from a very religious family, in his case orthodox Jews. Fromm himself later became what he called an atheistic mystic.


Quotes:  Erich Fromm


“The ultimate choice for a man, inasmuch as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.”


Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.


"Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world."


"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."


"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction."


"If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."


"If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?"


"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.'"


"In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."


"In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."


"Just as love is an orientation which refers to all objects and is incompatible with the restriction to one object, so is reason a human faculty which must embrace the whole of the world with which man is confronted."


"Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality."


"Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market."


"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
Erich Fromm

Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.


Man always dies before he is fully born.
Erich Fromm

"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve."


"Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture."


"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality."


"Most people die before they are fully born. Creativeness means to be born before one dies."


"The mother-child relationship is paradoxical and, in a sense, tragic. It requires the most intense love on the mother's side, yet this very love must help the child grow away from the mother, and to become fully independent."


"The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have."


"The ordinary man with extraordinary power is the chief danger for mankind - not the fiend or the sadist."


"The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity."


"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."


"The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal."


"The task we must set for ourselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity."


"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."


"There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love."


"There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers."


"There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself."

"There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue."


"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable."


"To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime."


We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake.


"We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them."


"What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal."


"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies."


"Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"




Sunday, December 4, 2011

To Be Homeless



"Becoming homeless" is a Buddhist metaphor to describe what happens to us when we learn to disidentify with our mind and its thoughts.  Become detached



Mind is the aspect of intellect and consciousness experienced as combinations of thought, perceptionmemoryemotionwill, and imagination, including all unconscious cognitive processes. The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Mind manifests itself subjectively as a stream of consciousness, or inter subjectively through conversation.
Theories of mind and its function are numerous. Earliest recorded speculations are from the likes of Zoroaster, the Buddha, Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek, Indian and, later,Islamic and medieval European philosophers. Pre-modern understandings of the mind, such as the neo-platonic "nous" saw it as an aspect of the soul, in the sense of being both divine and immortal, linking human thinking with the un-changing ordering principle of the cosmos itself.
Which attributes make up the mind is much debated. Some psychologists argue that only the "higher" intellectual functions constitute mind, particularly reason and memory. In this view the emotions—love, hate, fear, joy—are more primitive or subjective in nature and should be seen as different from the mind as such. Others argue that various rational and emotional states cannot be so separated, that they are of the same nature and origin, and should therefore be considered all part of what we call the mind.
In popular usage mind is frequently synonymous with thought: the private conversation with ourselves that we carry on "inside our heads." Thus we "make up our minds," "change our minds" or are "of two minds" about something. One of the key attributes of the mind in this sense is that it is a private sphere to which no one but the owner has access. No one else can "know our mind." They can only interpret what we consciously or unconsciously communicate.



Kazantzakis more quotes




“Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Rock Garden





“Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind's supreme model.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco



“Reach what you cannot”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco



“I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco


“All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco




“Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco




Nikos Kazantzakis quotes


“What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.”

― Nikos Kazantzakis


“My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.” 
― Nikos Kazantzakis


Yes, the purpose of earth is not life, it is not man, earth has existed without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral sparks of its violent whirling.
Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let us create –so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us – let us create for earth a brain and a heart, let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle. ”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my travels and my dreams. Very few men, living or dead, have helped me in my struggles.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis




“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Let your youth have free reign, it won't come again, so be bold and no repenting.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.” 
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


Day's Quotes - Nikos Kazanzakis


“I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.” 
― Nikos KazantzakisZorba the Greek

“God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises.” 
― Nikos KazantzakisZorba the Greek

“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.” 
― Nikos Kazantzakis
 
“You can knock on a deaf man's door forever.” 
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco
“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco


“For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“When everything goes wrong, what a joy to test your soul and see if it has endurance and courage! An invisible and all-powerful enemy—some call him God, others the Devil, seem to rush upon us to destroy us; but we are not destroyed.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."

Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"

Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ


“Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and *look* for trouble.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“Look, one day I had gone to a little village. An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’

Which of us was right, boss?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“You have your brush, you have your colors, you paint the paradise, then in you go.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“Man is able, and has the duty, to reach the furthest point on the road he has chosen. Only by means of hope can we attain what is beyond hope.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco


“When an almond tree became covered with blossoms in the heart of winter, all the trees around it began to jeer. 'What vanity,' they screamed, 'what insolence! Just think, it believes it can bring spring in this way!' The flowers of the almond tree blushed for shame. 'Forgive me, my sisters,' said the tree. 'I swear I did not want to blossom, but suddenly I felt a warm springtime breeze in my heart.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis


“Let your youth have free reign, it won't come again, so be bold and no repenting.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“When everyone drowns and I'm the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is saved and I'm the only one to drown, God is protecting me then too.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ



“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Truly, everything in this world depended on time. Time ripened all. If you had time, you succeeded in working the human mud internally and turning it into spirit. Then you did not fear death. If you did not have time, you perished.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ


“If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“Reach what you cannot”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

“the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“When shall I at last retire into solitude alone, without companions, without joy and without sorrow, with only the sacred certainty that all is a dream? When, in my rags—without desires—shall I retire contented into the mountains? When, seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime, age and death, shall I—free, fearless, and blissful—retire to the forest? When? When, oh when?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek



“Throughout my life my greatest benefactors have been my travels and my dreams. Very few men, living or dead, have helped me in my struggles.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ




“My principle anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ


“Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“Freedom was my first great desire. The second, which remains hidden within me to this day, tormenting me, was the desire for sanctity. Hero together with saint: such is mankind's supreme model.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco



“Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“Ideal teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross, then having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them! D'you see?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the longer the tether of our slavery?”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek



Nikos Kazantzakis quotes (showing 51-80 of 80)
“Once more there sounded within me the terrible warning that there is only one life for all men, that there is only one life for all men, that there is no other and that all that can be enjoyed must be enjoyed here. In eternity no other chance will be given to us.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“We are not men, to have need of another, an eternal life; we are women, and for us one moment with man we love is everlasting Paradise, one moment far from the man we love is everlasting hell. It is here on earth that we women love out eternity”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ


Yes, the purpose of earth is not life, it is not man, earth has existed without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral sparks of its violent whirling.
Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let us create –so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us – let us create for earth a brain and a heart, let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle. ”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“Discipline is the highest of all virtues. Only so may strength and desire be counterbalanced and the endeavors of man bear fruit.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Rock Garden



“There is only one sin god will not forgive Boss, and that is to deny a woman who is in wanting ~ Zorba”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek


“Overdraw me Lord, and who cares if I break!”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ


“Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.” 
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“The canary began to sing again. The sun had struck it, and its throat and tiny breast had filled with song. Francis gazed at it for a long time, not speaking, his mouth hanging half opened, his eyes dimmed with tears.
"The canary is like man's soul," he whispered finally. "It sees bars round it, but instead if despairing, it sings. It sings, and wait and see, Brother Leo: one day its song shall break the bars.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis


“My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis


“What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis



“The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards
while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water,
and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring.
The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables,
their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon
as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight.
The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox
gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed
to come before her guests after so much murder.
Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained,
turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord
till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals.
The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised
it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed:
Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold,
pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear
dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons;
she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face,
and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human.
Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high
and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood:
“In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife,
the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage;
I was in danger often, both through joy and grief,
of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face.
I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help,
but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed.
I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes,
and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me;
then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust,
piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues,
the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man,
and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst,
and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage.
As I swam on, alone between sea and sky,
with but my crooked heart for dog and company,
I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements
about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear.
Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone
with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods
and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness.
Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts,
I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.”
All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege,
and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit;
They did not fully understand the impious words
but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head.
The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed,
and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs;
all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled.
Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply:
"This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath!
These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!"
He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger
far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel