Living Organism Quotes

Film becomes a living organism. After awhile, it begins to tell you what it needs and you're usually best listening. ~ David Slade

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word water is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism. ~ Alan W. Watts

Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension. ~ John Dos Passos

The problem that we, as living organisms, face - and not we only, humans, but any living organism faces - is the management of life. ~ Antonio Damasio

The life force knows exactly what it takes to keep any particular living organism - any organism - alive. Anything in manifestation, for that matter. Even a rock is a manifestation of some sort, and you know, in physics and quantum physics, they know a rock is not dead. ~ Lindsay Wagner

A book is finished when it does not want me to work on it any longer...it reaches a point when it feels like it is literally avoiding me. I have a very physical relationship with the manuscript, almost a corps à corps. Paradoxically, when I finally feel at ease with a manuscript, with its voices, I realize it is finished. I see a book as a living organism, with its own rules and will. What matters to me is to allow it to grow and to acquire an existence of its own. It's as if the book uses me in order to come into existence, rather than being written. ~ Antonio Lobo Antunes

There is a marvelous ambiguity to the ego: on the one hand it is an ordinary part of the world, one of many things that inhabit it. It occupies space, endures through time, has physical and psychic features, and interacts causally with other things in the world: if it falls, it falls like any other body; if it is pushed, it topples over like any other thing; if treated with chemicals, it reacts like any living organism; if light rays hit its visual organs, it reacts electronically, chemically, and psychologically. 'I' am a material, organic, and psychological thing. If we were to take the self simply as one of the things in the world, we would be treating it as what can be called the empirical ego.

On the other hand, this very same self can also be played off against the world: it is the center of disclosure to whom the world and everything in it manifest themselves. It is the agent of truth, the one responsible for judgments and verifications, the perceptual and cognitive 'owner' of the world. When considered in this manner, it is no longer simply a part of the world; it is what is called the transcendental ego.

The empirical and transcendental egos are not two entities; they are one and the same being, but considered in two ways. ~ Robert Sokolowski

The computer model will be replaced by an organic model, in which the brain-mind is embodied - part of a whole, dynamic, living organism: one driven by emotional forces, not only cognitive ones. ~ Siri Hustvedt

Universe is one very vast living organism, evolves through clash and cohesion, attains unto pure consciousness the ultimate state of being blissful. ~ Raj

There are no unnatural acts, only unacceptable acts. ~ Robert Black

Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Where I'm just sort of shocked into the revelation, once again, of this planet is a living organism; this living thing, being alive, is a living thing. It's every breath you take. That was the last one. It'll never come back. You are riding on this wave of awareness, second to second to second. ~ Daphne Zuniga

Healing is a biological process, not an art. It is as much a function of the living organism as respiration, digestion, circulation, excretion, cell proliferation, or nerve activity. It is a ceaseless process, as constant as the turning of the earth on its axis. Man can neither duplicate nor imitate nor provide a substitute for the process. All schools of healing are frauds. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. ~ George Wald

We ought to consider our home managing as the creation of a living organism that nurtures the peace of Christ and the righteousness of God. ~ Gloria Furman

Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves. ~ Carl Jung

Government is a living organism. Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive. You hit it, it will fight back. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I almost think that hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living organism. Where hope is lacking the soul dries up and withers ... ~ Gabriel Marcel

Our human dependence on the living processes of the earth was largely forgotten with the growth of industrial civilization. Now we are being forced to remember that Gaia is greater than we are and that the human economy is embedded within the ecology of the biosphere. So, in what sense is Gaia alive? And what difference does it make if we think of her as a living organism, as opposed to an inanimate physical system? ~ Rupert Sheldrake

Overhead, a Hawk was zeroing in on a watchbird. The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill. At present it was impelled toward a certain type of living organism, metallic like itself. But the Hawk had just discovered that there were other types of living organisms, too - Which had to be murdered. ~ Robert Sheckley

This association of the idea of the orgasm and the idea of dying is a universal one. On the basis of these typical clinical examples, we arrive at the following conclusion: the striving after non-existence, nirvana, death, is identical with the striving after orgastic release, i.e., the most essential experience of the living organism. Thus, an idea of death stemming from the actual demise of the organism does not and cannot exist, because an idea can reflect only what has already been experienced. No one, however, has ever experienced his or her own death. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Acting on stage is a living organism you can never pin down, and I believe the audience feeds off that, too. ~ Hattie Morahan

The physiological combustion theory takes as its starting point the fundamental principle that the amount of heat that arises from the combustion of a given substance is an invariable quantity-i.e., one independent of the circumstances accompanying the combustion-from which it is more specifically concluded that the chemical effect of the combustible materials undergoes no quantitative change even as a result of the vital process, or that the living organism, with all its mysteries and marvels, is not capable of generating heat out of nothing. ~ Robert Mayer

A tree is a wonderful living organism which gives shelter, food, warmth and protection to all living things. It even gives shade to those who wield an axe to cut it down ~ Gautama Buddha

Our responsibility, as individual cells of a living organism, is to perform our individual functions as well as possible. Our orders come from within; they are not imposed from without. We are free to be ourselves, as fully as we can; and the more we are ourselves, the better we will be functioning, and the more satisfaction we will feel. Our lives grow richer and richer as the health of the total organism improves. Our destiny is unimaginably high. ~ Paul S. Williams

Man is comprised of an organism, which is to say an organised form, and of vital forces, as well as a soul. The same may be said of a people. The national construction of a state, while taking account of all three elements, for various reasons of qualification and heredity can nevertheless be chiefly based upon a single one of these elements.

In my opinion, in the Fascist movement it is the state element that prevails, coinciding with organised force. What finds expression here is the shaping power of ancient Rome, that master of law and political organisation, the purest heirs to which are the Italians. National Socialism emphasises what is connected to vital forces: race, racial instinct, and the ethical and national element. The Romanian Legionary movement instead chiefly stresses what in a living organism corresponds to the soul: the spiritual and religious aspect.

This is the reason for the distinctive character of each national movement, although ultimately all three elements are taken into account, and none is overlooked. The specific character of our movement derives from our distant heritage. Already Herodotus called our forefathers "the immortal Dacians". Our Geto-Thracian ancestors, even before Christianity, already had faith in the immortality and indestructibility of the soul – something which proves their spiritual drive. Roman colonisation introduced the Roman sense of organisation and form. Later centuries made our people miserable and di ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

[A living organism] ... feeds upon negative entropy ... Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness (= fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment. ~ Erwin Schrodinger

....The chemists' ingenuity in devising insecticides has long ago outrun biological knowledge of the way these poisons affect the living organism. ~ Rachel Carson

Really," said Thiel crossly, bending to collect them, "I was quite clear to Darby that we wished a single, recent map. Take these away, Death. They're unnecessary."
"All paper maps are recent," said Death with a sniff, "when one considers the vastness of geological time."
"Her Majesty merely wishes to see the city as it is today," said Thiel.
"A city is a living organism, always changing- ~ Kristin Cashore

We may treat of the Soul as in the body - whether it be set above it or actually within it - since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body's experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working. ~ Plotinus

Certainly there had been an intelligence left in the ancient computers below the city, a single living organism which had long ago ceased to exist sanely under conditions that, within its merciless dipolar circuits, could only be absolute reality. It held its increasingly alien logic within its banks of memory for eight hundred years and may have held them for eight hundred more, if not for the arrival of Roland and his friends; yet this mens non corpus had brooded and grown ever more insane with each passing year; even in its increasing periods of sleep it could be said to dream, and these dreams grew steadily more abnormal as the world moved on. Now, although the unthinkable machinery that maintained the Beams had weakened, this insane and inhuman intelligence had awakened in the rooms of ruin and had begun once more, although as bodiless as a ghost, to stumble through the hallways of the dead.

In other words, Blaine the Mono was preparing to get out of Dodge. ~ Stephen King

A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation. ~ Andy Grove

New York City is a living organism; It evolves, it devolves, it fluctuates as a living organism. So my relationship with New York City is as vitriolic as the relationship with myself and with any other human being which means that it changes every millisecond, that it's in constant fluctuation. ~ Timothy Levitch

Those who treat God's Word (i.e., Scripture: Bible, Qur'an ..etc) as a living organism are theologically, non-believers. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

Let us consider society as a living organism. ~ Enck Kanaj

I prefer to think of the audience as a single living organism with which I am sharing a singular, never-to-be-repeated experience. ~ Martha Plimpton

We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which not only assures the preservation of its nationality, but by the development of its spiritual and ideal abilities leads it to the highest freedom. ~ Adolf Hitler

Nature knows two fundamentally different ways of adaptation, which determine the further existence of the living organism the one is by increased fertility, accompanied by a relatively small degree of defensive power and individual conservation; the other is by individual equipment of manifold means of self-protection, coupled with a relatively insignificant fertility. ~ C. G. Jung

The rainforest was a huge, living organism, and the narrow path they followed was one of its capillaries. They traveled along it like bacteria or antibodies in the bloodstream. ~ Richard Tillotson

Her hope was to preserve what she called The Way, to keep it alive, for that future moment when the current obsession with excess and hierarchy imploded. Wilma said many Native people believed that the earth as a living organism would just one day shrug off the human species that was destroying it - and start over. In a less cataclysmic vision, humans would realize that we are killing our home and each other, and seek out The Way. That's why Native people were guarding it. ~ Gloria Steinem

A dying organism is often observed to be capable of extraordinary endurance and strength ... When any living organism is attacked, its whole function seems to aim toward reproduction. ~ John Steinbeck

Hinduism is a living organism. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Everyday we add to our knowledge of the power of Atman (soul) and we shall keep on doing so. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Think of the compost bin as a living organism. It is, in fact, made up of colonies of bacteria. A live bin is hot at the center and produces a thick, loamy substance. If a bin is cold and dead, but has true compost at the center, it needs to be turned. Use a pitchfork or shovel to mix and shuffle the bin's contents. ~ Amelia Barrows

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die. ~ Gore Vidal

Space is an environment of emptiness. It offers no possibility for natural adaptation to any living organism - and particularly not to the highly sophisticated creature, man. Yet man has the ability to resolve this paradox through his intellectual power and creative faculties. ~ Hubertus Strughold

Each cell of a living organism cooperates with the cell next to it. It does not need any sentiment or declarations of undying love to do so. Each cell is wise enough to know that if its neighbour goes, it also goes. The cells stick together not out of brotherhood, love and that kind of thing, but out of the urgent drive to survive. It is the same with us, but only in a larger scale. Soon we will all come to know one simple thing: if I try to destroy you, I will also be destroyed. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

The logic of the poet - that is, the logic of language or the experience itself - develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant. ~ Thomas Merton

Romance is a universally unspoken language understood by all living organism on this planet except heterosexual men. ~ Steve Kluger

Astrology's roots lie in an ancient world-view which perceived the universe as a single living organism, animated by divine order and intelligence. ~ Liz Greene

Something happens to you when you begin to think about this planet as a single living organism. And when you begin to live in that awareness, nothing is ever again quite the same. Nothing can be the same after that. Nations began to look like people to me, like familiar friends. The distinctions between religion, biology, and politics began to blur. I began to wonder why I had always assumed that human thought was the only kind of thought - as if nature would be content with a single species of flower, or just one kind of tree. ~ Ken Carey

The genome was once thought to be just the blueprint for a living organism, like a combination of the architect's plan for a building and the builder's list of supplies. It specified the parts, the building blocks, and, somehow, the design of the whole, the way in which they are to be put together. ~ Iain McGilchrist

The things I felt ... about certain painters of the past that ... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet ... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself ... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface ... That's truly ... the act of creation. ~ Philip Guston

I know that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without distrubing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame.
I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain. But I do know that in back of it is a power that made it, that power alone can tell, and if there is no power, then it is an infinite chance which man cannot solve. ~ Marianne Wiggins

Most believers who are hurt, are hurt in their soul and not their spirit. The Church is a spiritual living organism that continues to grow, thrive and is increasing in that which flows from Jesus Christ, the Anointed One. The anointing keeps destroying any yolk that seeks to bind us especially yolks of pain. The anointing is the oil or the balm that heals. The anointing frees those who have been bruised. The anointing heals the broken heart. Moreover, this oil has not stopped flowing from the great head of the Church. Jesus spoke of the anointing and Him being anointed in the scriptures, hear ye the word of the Lord in Luke 4:18-19. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. ~ Sharon Peters

A recognized fact which goes back to the earliest times is that every living organism is not the sum of a multitude of unitary processes, but is, by virtue of interrelationships and of higher and lower levels of control, an unbroken unity. When research, in the efforts of bringing understanding, as a rule examines isolated processes and studies them, these must of necessity be removed from their context. In general, viewed biologically, this experimental separation involves a sacrifice. In fact, quantitative findings of any material and energy changes preserve their full context only through their being seen and understood as parts of a natural order. ~ Walter Rudolf Hess

That dot is special. That dot is where LIFE lives. And I get it, it's biased of a living organism (like me) to think that life is important and special, but I don't care!
Because stars don't care, galaxies don't care, but people do.
Undoubtedly we're something special because, as far as we can tell, we are unique. ~ Charlie McDonnell

In the other universes, stones and stellar masses are still and quiet. They might emit light, they might glow, but they're still inanimate. Bakhassa is different. That is why we, Bakhals, love our homeland so much and wish to neither invade the other universes nor let others penetrate through ours. We believe the other species have killed their universes due to their vile codes of conduct. We do not wish the same to happen to ours, because we cherish our beloved home, unlike them. Bakhassa is like a living organism where every star, every particle, every small cell, has a heart and a soul. It is a universe where everything coexists in harmony, and destructions too, serve to create younger matters. We, Bakhals, call our universe 'Bakhassa' - the 'heartbeat', because everything here breathes, feels, and connects. Unlike the others, this universe is alive, and we follow the rhythm of its heartbeat. ~ Tamuna Tsertsvadze

As the systems theorist Fritjof Capra points out, humanity's social, political, economic, and environmental plights are all manifestations of a cultural crisis brought about by adherence to outdated conceptual models ... Under the reductionist paradigm, humans' concept of nature devolved from that of living organism to machine, and the predominant value system came to be based on the domination and control of nature rather than respect for and harmony with the natural world. ~ Alex Gerber Jr.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology - looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does. ~ George Lucas

Things stay with you, they say, and the past grows into a living organism that you can never really shake off. Everything you've ever done, the good and the bad, is supposed to always be on your trail, breathing down your neck. Time acts on it, people say, or so they hope, and eventually some of it even gets forgotten, buried deep within. ~ Ramona Wray

Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil." To ~ Ayn Rand

In actual fact, conventions are the death of real tradition as they are of all real life. They are parasites which attach themselves to the living organism of tradition and devour all its reality, turning it into a hollow formality.

Tradition is living and active, but convention is passive and dead. Tradition does not form us automatically: we have to work to understand it. Convention is accepted passively, as a matter of routine. Therefore, convention easily becomes an evasion of reality. It offers us only pretended ways of solving the problems of living - a system of gestures and formalities. Tradition really teaches us to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our own lives. Thus tradition is often flatly opposed to what is ordinary, to what is mere routine. But convention, which is a mere repetition of familiar routines, follows the line of least resistance. One goes through an act, without trying to understand the meaning of it all, merely because everyone else does the same. Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving - born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way. Convention is simply the ossification of social customs. The activities of conventional people are merely excuses for NOT acting in a more integrally human way. Tradition nourishes the life of the spirit; convention merely disguises its interior decay. ~ Thomas Merton

Now, a living organism is nothing but a wonderful machine endowed with the most marvellous properties and set going by means of the most complex and delicate mechanism. ~ Claude Bernard

I am, you are, a cell in a bigger living organism. We have been taught to forget this. But our bodies are remembering.
We are not the only ones who are suffering. We are not the only ones who are sick.
But we are the ones with the power to make a change.
The time has come to take back our power to heal from this sickness.
This is the time to heal. It is time to purge the toxic masculine from our bodies and beings. And to choose life. ~ Lucy H. Pearce

A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm
it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism. The tragedy of our time is that cultural philosophies and market realities are squeezing life's vitality out of most farms. And that is why the average farmer is now 60 years old. Serfdom just doesn't attract the best and brightest. ~ Joel Salatin

I guess the most difficult thing for me was living up to my mom's expectations. I was always scared that if I didn't do things in this certain way, then my mom just wouldn't think I was great. That's something that was difficult for me growing up. ~ Milla Jovovich

People living without God dies first spiritually and then physically ~ Sunday Adelaja

Flowers bloom when you are happy! ~ Avijeet Das

Sometimes I would open my eyes when we were kissing, I would watch him and I could see it. I could actually see LOVE - not words, not an emotion, not an abstract concept or a subjective state of mind, but a living, breathing thing. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

Some people work for a living and some people twerk for a living. ~ Kenya Moore

Our souls know each other since a long time! ~ Avijeet Das

People who make their living looking into crystal balls are destined to eat a lot of broken glass. ~ Larry R. Williams

It's just that I don't believe in living a life in decline. Either one grows, one blooms, or one diminishes. I wasn't able to imagine any way after witnessing the white nights to continue to live while growing. And since I refuse to live and diminish, I wanted to die. ~ Roman Payne

Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle. ~ Ellen Hopkins

It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time. ~ Wallace Stevens

Paul is essentially saying that through living in a Christ-honoring way among unbelievers in the world - in the context of our jobs, communities, trips to the grocery store, and everything else we do in everyday life - the light of the gospel shines through our behavior, with the result that some people come to faith. ~ Matt Perman

During my mental illness, thank God, my grandma was my human rescuer and angel, she ask me to stop taking the medication, leading to the recovering. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

My mother was, in the tradition of parents, quite a complicated and contradictory human being. Moralistic but a devout lover of pleasure (food, music, the aesthetics of nature). Deeply religious but seemingly as comforted by singing a secular chanson as by prayer. A lover of the natural world who was visibly anxious every time she left the castle. Fragile, but also though and stubborn. I never knew how many of her oddities had sprung from grief and how many from her own inherent nature. "There is not one blade of grass, there is no colour in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice," my mother told me once, shortly after arriving in England. ~ Matt Haig

One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States ... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore ... I felt liberated in Paris. ~ Josephine Baker

The problem with a mass delusion is that by
definition, only the heretics know when we are living through one. ~ Michael Fontaine

I don't remember any impression [from blues].The blues was just everywhere in the Mississippi Delta. It was mostly black sharecroppers living there, and there was a lot of blues around. Sometimes the guys would sing the blues in the fields, working. ~ Mose Allison

First commandment: there ain't no such thing as "one true way" and the way you find is only good for you, not anybody else, because your interpretation of what you see and feel and understand as the truth is never going to be the same as anyone else's.
Second commandment: the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself.
Third commandment: leave the world better than you found it.
Fourth commandment: if it isn't true, going to do some good, or spread a little love around, don't say it, do it, or think it.
Fifth commandment: there are only three things worth living for; love in all it's manifestations, freedom, and the chance to keep humanity going a little while longer. They're the same things worth dying for. And if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race. ~ Mercedes Lackey

There is no real exellence in all this world which can be separated from right living. ~ David Starr Jordan

If organs as elemental as brain and heart can be persuaded to regenerate, and others, like ears and corneas, can be fashioned from living ink, how will that change us as a species? Will the printing of organs affect our evolution? Could it alter our genes? ~ Diane Ackerman

Empathy must be cultivated. The practice of empathy means taking a moment to imagine how you might behave if you were in our positions. Do not tell us how we should act if we were you; imagine how you would act if you were us. Imagine living in a society where your white skin marks you for disgust, hate, and fear. Imagine that for many moments. Only when you see black folks as we are, and image yourselves as we have to live our lives, only then will the suffering stop, the hurt cease, the pain go away. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

There is always something good and unique in the life of every woman so put those talents and wisdom to good use today, by so doing you will make your world a better place than you met it. ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself. ~ Laura Gilpin

You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times. ~ Natalie Goldberg

Life is simple: We are living in a word that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything
in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. You cannot be without God. It's impossible. It's simple impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it. What is it that makes the world opaque? It is care. ~ Thomas Merton

Tomorrow is not a day. It's an attitude. It's a symbol of the human spirit's desire to keep getting better. It's that curious mind that asks 'what's next'?

Tomorrow is not ushered in by the cock's crow. Tomorrow dawns when today is better than yesterday...when we create something new. ~ Sola Kosoko

I was talking to a friend last night, about pain. She said, "Pain doesn't go away, does it? It just lessens with time." And I said, "I think that the pain can be turned into other things... the pain is like the holes in the ground, but I think that we can turn the holes in the ground into little pools of water we can jump into. It's still a part of us, but, we can change its nature. Hopefully. Sometimes." And I think that just might be true. ~ C. JoyBell C.

The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights and sounds. The City is getting its living - the West-End but enjoying its pleasure. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Why wish for the privilege of living your past life again? You begin a new one every morning ~ Robert Quillen

I live for living ~ Caroline Kepnes

Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Today, O Lord, I yield myself to you. May your will be my delight today. May your way have perfect sway in me. May your love be the pattern of my living. - Richard J. Foster, Prayers from the Heart12 ~ Richard J. Foster

I would like to ofer some exercises that can help us use the Five Precepts to cultivate and strengthen mindfulness. It is best to choose one of these exercises and work with it meticulously for a week. Then examine the results and choose another for a subsequent week. These practices can help us understand and find ways to work with each precept.

1. Refrain from killing: reverence for life. Undertake for one week to purposefully bring no harm in thought, word, or deed to any living creature. Particularly, become aware of any living beings in your world (people, animals, even plants) whom you ignore, and cultivate a sense of care and reverence for them too.

2. Refraining from stealing: care with material goods. Undertake for one week to act on every single thought of generosity that arises spontaneously in your heart.

3. Refraining from sexual misconduct: conscious sexuality. Undertake for one week to observe meticulously how often sexual feelings arise in your consciousness. Each time, note what particular mind states you find associated with them such as love, tension, compulsion, caring, loneliness, desire for communication, greed, pleasure, agression, and so forth.

4. Refraining from false speech: speech from the heart. Undertake for one week not to gossip (positively or negatively) or speak about anyone you know who is not present with you (any third party).

5. Refraining from intoxicants to the point of heedlessness ~ Jack Kornfield