Love

Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

Emma Goldman

Three passions

Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

adapted

Bertrand Russell

women

I think that women as a group are so powerful. I still don't think we are able to embrace our power well enough yet. We think we live in a man's world and we have to follow their rules, and yet, we're so different, and our rules are so different. I wish that we could come together more as a political force. If women ran the world, I don't believe that there would be war. I really don't.... We understand the bigger picture. We understand our impact on the environment, on the world. We understand the generations that will go after us because we gave birth to them.

KYRA SEDGWICK, Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2007

The purpose of life is a life of purpose. ~Robert Byrne

come alive...

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!

Gazing through the window at the world outside
Wondering will mother earth survive
Hoping that mankind will stop abusing her sometime

After all there's only just the two of us
And here we are still fighting for our lives
Watching all of history repeat itself
Time after time

I'm just a dreamer
I dream my life away
I'm just a dreamer
Who dreams of better days

I watch the sun go down like everyone of us
I'm hoping that the dawn will bring a sign
A better place for those Who will come after us ...
This time

Your higher power may be God or Jesus Christ
It doesn't really matter much to me
Without each others help there ain't no hope for us
I'm living in a dream of fantasy
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah

If only we could all just find serenity
It would be nice if we could live as one
When will all this anger, hate and biggotry ...
Be gone?

I'm just a dreamer
I dream my life away
Today
I'm just a dreamer
Who dreams of better days
Okay
I'm just a dreamer
Who's searching for the way
Today
I'm just a dreamer
Dreaming my life away
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah

Ozzy Osbourne - the dreamer

90% attitude

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

Charles R. Swindoll quotes (American Writer and Clergyman, b.1934)

Into the wild

Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. - Alexander Supertramp May 1992



Christopher McCandless: Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me truth.

Game called life...

I'm not very good
At this Game called Life
For I've not learned to see children crying
Without feeling pain
For I've not learned to watch animals destroyed
Without wondering why
For I've not yet met a king or a celebrity
That I would bow down to
Or a man so insignificant
That I would use for a stepping-stone
For I've not learned to be a 'yes man'
To narrow minded bosses
Who quote rules without reason
And I've not learned to manipulate
The feelings of others
To be used for my own advantages
Then cast aside as I see fit
No, I'm not very good
At this Game called Life
And if everything goes well
Maybe I never will be

Javan

To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

e. e. cummings
American Poet

Love is our purpose ...

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.

Marianne Williamson

American Author and Social Activist

We grow great by dreams....
"All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true."

Woodrow Wilson
28th US President

You Learn....

After awhile you learn
the subtle difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn that love doesn't mean possession
and company doesn't mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises and you begin to accept
your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of an adult not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build your roads today
because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have ways of falling down in mid-flight.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine
burns if you get too much so you plant your
own garden and decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
that you really are strong
and you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn...

Veronica A. Shoffstall

Oriah Mountain Dreamer Canadian Teacher and Author
	It doesn't interest me what you do for a living I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dreams for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. © 1995 by Oriah House, From "Dreams Of Desire" Published by Mountain Dreaming, 300 Coxwell Avenue, Box 22546, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4L 2A0 Please click here for more information about Oriah's book.