Quote of the day
True spirituality rejects no new light, no added means or materials of our human self-development. It means simply to keep our centre, our essential way of being, our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive, and evolve out of it all we do and create.
~ Sri Aurobindo ~
But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.
I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.
I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost.
I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service?
It is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!
I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.
Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.
The best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more.
I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets — neither of us have any. Look here — I believe without question, or have the certain knowledge, that she loves me. I believe without question, or have the certain knowledge, that I love her. It has been sincerely meant.
~ Vincent van Gogh (born 30 March 1853)
Posted via email from Dreams Poetry Visions Imagination Art Beauty Peace Justice Disarmament Inspiration Quotes Alchemy Wisdom Future World Balance Truth Stars
Dawn of light lying between a silence and sold sources
Chased amid fusions of wonder
In moments hardly seen forgotten
Coloured in pastures of chance dancing leaves cast spells of challenge
Amused but real in thought, we fled from the sea whole
Posted via email from Dreams Poetry Visions Imagination Art Beauty Peace Justice Disarmament Inspiration Quotes Alchemy Wisdom Future World Balance Truth Stars
Reflecting Merope
In the well known Pleiades star cluster, starlight is slowly destroying this wandering cloud of gas and dust. The star Merope lies just off the upper left edge of this picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. In the past 100,000 years, part of the cloud has by chance moved so close to this star--only 3,500 times the Earth-Sun distance--that the starlight itself is having a very dramatic effect. Pressure of the star's light significantly repels the dust in the reflection nebula, and smaller dust particles are repelled more strongly. As a result, parts of the dust cloud have become stratified, pointing toward Merope. The closest particles are the most massive and the least affected by the radiation pressure. A longer-term result will be the general destruction of the dust by the energetic starlight.
Image Credit: NASA
"Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another."
- Carl Sagan
"I had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how ... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not — that none of us — are alone! ... I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if only for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope. But ... that continues to be my wish."
"Ellie Arroway" in Contact
based on the novel by
Carl Sagan (Born November 9, 1934)
"In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours."
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos Episode 12: Encyclopedia Galactica
"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
- Herman Melville
“There are people that can't go to Fantastica. There are those who can but never return. And there are just a few who go to Fantastica and come back. And they make both worlds well again.”
- Michael Ende, in The Neverending Story (1979)
"The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194) appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. They are actually long lanes of stars and gas laced with dust.
This sharpest-ever image of the Whirlpool Galaxy, taken in January 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, illustrates a spiral galaxy's grand design, from its curving spiral arms, where young stars reside, to its yellowish central core, a home of older stars. The galaxy is nicknamed the Whirlpool because of its swirling structure.
The Whirlpool's most striking feature is its two curving arms, a hallmark of so-called grand-design spiral galaxies. Many spiral galaxies possess numerous, loosely shaped arms which make their spiral structure less pronounced. These arms serve an important purpose in spiral galaxies. They are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creating clusters of new stars. In the Whirlpool, the assembly line begins with the dark clouds of gas on the inner edge, then moves to bright pink star-forming regions, and ends with the brilliant blue star clusters along the outer edge.
Some astronomers believe that the Whirlpool's arms are so prominent because of the effects of a close encounter with NGC 5195, the small, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms. At first glance, the compact galaxy appears to be tugging on the arm. Hubble's clear view, however, shows that NGC 5195 is passing behind the Whirlpool. The small galaxy has been gliding past the Whirlpool for hundreds of millions of years.
As NGC 5195 drifts by, its gravitational muscle pumps up waves within the Whirlpool's pancake-shaped disk. The waves are like ripples in a pond generated when a rock is thrown in the water. When the waves pass through orbiting gas clouds within the disk, they squeeze the gaseous material along each arm's inner edge. The dark dusty material looks like gathering storm clouds. These dense clouds collapse, creating a wake of star birth, as seen in the bright pink star-forming regions. The largest stars eventually sweep away the dusty cocoons with a torrent of radiation, hurricane-like stellar winds, and shock waves from supernova blasts. Bright blue star clusters emerge from the mayhem, illuminating the Whirlpool's arms like city streetlights.
The Whirlpool is one of astronomy's galactic darlings. Located 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), the Whirlpool's beautiful face-on view and closeness to Earth allow astronomers to study a classic spiral galaxy's structure and star-forming processes."
via Hubble Heritage
"The Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as Messier 51a, M51a, or NGC 5194) is an interacting[5] grand-design[6] spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is one of the most famous galaxies in the sky.[7] The galaxy and its companion (NGC 5195) are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may even be seen with binoculars.[8] The Whirlpool Galaxy is also a popular target for professional astronomers, who study it to further understanding of galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions."
Via Wikipedia
"NGC 5195 (also known as Messier 51b or M51b) is a dwarf galaxy that is interacting with the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as M51a or NGC 5194). Both galaxies are located approximately 25 million light-years away in the constellationCanes Venatici. Together, the two galaxies are one of the most famous interacting galaxy pairs."
via Wikipedia
Grand Is the Seen
"Grand is the seen, the light, to me — grand are the sky and stars,
Grand is the earth, and grand are lasting time and space,
And grand their laws, so multiform, puzzling, evolutionary;
But grander far the unseen soul of me, comprehending, endowing all those,
Lighting the light, the sky and stars, delving the earth, sailing the sea,
(What were all those, indeed, without thee, unseen soul? of what amount without thee?)
More evolutionary, vast, puzzling, O my soul!
More multiform far — more lasting thou than they."
- Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass
"I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance
Throughout my being's limitless expanse,
Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages
I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages."
- As quoted in Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy (1987) by Géza von Molnár, p. 2
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
- Line 1, Auguries of Innocence
Auguries of Innocence at Wikisource
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
- Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, in Dune
"If you need something to worship, then worship life - all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!"
- Paul Muad'Dib Atreides, in Dune Messiah
"This is the awe-inspiring universe of magic: There are no atoms, only waves and motions all around. Here, you discard all belief in barriers to understanding. You put aside understanding itself. This universe cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be detected in any way by fixed perceptions. It is the ultimate void where no preordained screens occur upon which forms may be projected. You have only one awareness here — the screen of the magi: Imagination! Here, you learn what it is to be human. You are a creator of order, of beautiful shapes and systems, an organizer of chaos."
- The Atreides Manifesto, Bene Gesserit Archives, in Heretics of Dune
Via Dune Wikiquote
via en.wikiquote.org
"What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."
- Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482907-kate-bush-1-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-rubberband-girl">Kate Bush - 1 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (Rubberband Girl)</a>
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482916-kate-bush-2-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-and-so-is-love">Kate Bush - 2 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (And So is Love)</a>
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482930-kate-bush-3-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-the-red-shoes">Kate Bush - 3 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (The Red Shoes)</a>
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482775-kate-bush-4-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-lily">Kate Bush - 4 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (Lily)</a>
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482956-kate-bush-5-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-moments-of-pleasure">Kate Bush - 5 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (Moments of Pleasure)</a>
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Just let us try
To give these moments back
To those we love
To those who will survive...
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482957-kate-bush-6-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-eat-the-music">Kate Bush - 6 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (Eat the Music)</a>
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<a href="http://vodpod.com/watch/4482958-kate-bush-7-of-7-the-line-the-cross-and-the-curve-end-credits-w-red-shoes-mix">Kate Bush - 7 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (End + Credits w/ Red Shoes Mix)</a>
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Lyrics via Kate Bush Wikiquote
"Oh thou, who givest sustenance to the universe
From whom all things proceed
To whom all things return
Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual sun
Hidden by a disc of golden light
That we may know the truth
And do our whole duty
As we journey to thy sacred feet
Well I said
"Lily, Oh Lily I don't feel safe
I feel that life has blown a great big hole
Through me"
And she said
"Child, you must protect yourself
I'll show you how with fire"
Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire
I said
"Lily, Oh Lily I'm so afraid
I fear I am walking in the Veil of Darkness"
And she said
"Child, take what I say
With a pinch of salt
And protect yourself with fire"
Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire"
