Philosophers Stone Quotes

Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy , looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find. ~ Fritz Leiber

If you wanted to explore the castle forever and ever, you'd need to get hold of the Philosopher's Stone. ~ J.K. Rowling

Like the alchemist of old, for ever searching for the philosopher's stone, the analyst to-day never stops looking for stronger moves to prevent the defender from establishing equality. ~ Savielly Tartakower

They say: Philosopher's Stone; I hear: Lot's Wife! ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

They who search after the Philosopher's Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life. ~ Isaac Newton

It is curious to reflect, for example, upon the remarkable legend of the Philosopher's Stone, one of the oldest and most universal beliefs, the origin of which, however far back we penetrate into the records of the past, we do not probably trace its real source. ~ Frederick Soddy

Work is the open sesame of every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold. ~ William Osler

Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone. ~ Anton Chekhov

A clue is a key which unlocks a box full of keys - those peculiarly tempting arrangements of circumstance and fate are points of departure which lead to infinite realms of mystery that beckon with the taboo of hidden knowledge. I am compelled to follow where the curling finger of intrigue flits seductively among shadows whose origins lie in primeval antiquity. The Forbidden Occult is forever enshrined in the luminous cathedral of my imagination. Every philosopher's stone I look under carries my mind aloft on the fairy wings of discovery to ever higher treasures of exponentially expanding conscious awareness. ~ Sean Terrence Best

What becomes of the heart, when the heart's hand grasps the hand of a sweetheart?
What becomes of the dross copper, when it hears the welcoming voice of the philosopher's stone? ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

The focus of history and philosophy of science scholar Arthur Miller's (2010) "137: Jung and Pauli and the Pursuit of Scientific Obsession" is Jung and Pauli's
mutual effort to discover the cosmic number or fine structure constant, which is a fundamental physical constant dealing with electromagnetism, or, from a different perspective, could be considered the philosopher's stone of the mathematical universe.
This was indeed one of Pauli and Jung's collaborative passions, but it was not the only concentration of their relationship. Quantum physics could be seen as the natural progression from ancient alchemy, through chemistry, culminating in the abstract world of subatomic particles, wave functions, and mathematics. [Ancient Egypt and Modern Psychotherapy] ~ Todd Hayen

It is absurd to think that the scientific views of a Muslim scientist are necessarily connected with his religious belief, or that he necessarily derives inspiration for his scientific work from faith. This was as true a thousand years ago as it is now. Alchemy provides an excellent example. Developed extensively by Jabir Ibn Hayyan and AI-Razi, and based on certain myths going back to Arius and Pythagoras, it was one of the most important Muslim contributions. Of course, today everyone knows that alchemy was scientific nonsense: there cannot be anything like the Philosopher's Stone, and the transformation of base metals like copper or tin into silver or gold by chemical means is an impossibility ~ Pervez Hoodbhoy

The art of the alchemist, whether spiritual or physical, consists in completing the work of perfection, bringing forth and making dominant, as it were, the "latent goldness" which "lies obscure" in metal or man. The ideal adept of alchemy was therefore an "auxiliary of the Eternal Goodness." By his search for the "Noble Tincture" which should restore an imperfect world, he became a partner in the business of creation, assisting the Cosmic Plan. Thus the proper art of the Spiritual Alchemist, with whom alone we are here concerned, was the production of the spiritual and only valid tincture or Philosopher's Stone; the mystic seed of transcendental life which should invade, tinge, and wholly transmute the imperfect self into spiritual gold. That this was no fancy of seventeenth-century allegorists, but an idea familiar to many of the oldest writers upon alchemy - whose quest was truly a spiritual search into the deepest secrets of the soul - is proved by the words which bring to an end the first part of the antique "Golden Treatise upon the Making of the Stone," sometimes attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. "This, O Son," says that remarkable tract, "is the Concealed Stone of Many Colours, which is born and brought forth in one colour; know this and conceal it . . . it leads from darkness into light, from this desert wilderness to a secure habitation, and from poverty and straits to a free and ample fortune. ~ Evelyn Underhill

CUSTOMER: Which was the first Harry Potter book?
BOOKSELLER: The Philosopher's Stone.
CUSTOMER: And the second?
BOOKSELLER: The Chamber of Secrets.
CUSTOMER: I'l take The Chamber of Secrets. I don't want The Philosopher's Stone.
BOOKSELLER: Have you already read that one?
CUSTOMER: No, but with series of books I always find they take a while to really get going. I don't want to waste my time with the useless introductory stuff at the beginning.
BOOKSELLER: The story in Harry Potter actually starts right away. Personally, I do recommend that you start with the first book – and it's very good.
CUSTOMER: Are you working on commission?
BOOKSELLER: No.
CUSTOMER: Right. How many books are there in total?
BOOKSELLER: Seven.
CUSTOMER: Exactly. I'm not going to waste my money on the first book when there are so many others to buy. I'l take the second one.
BOOKSELLER: . . . If you're sure.
(One week later, the customer returns)
BOOKSELLER: Hi, did you want to buy a copy of The Prisoner of Azkaban?
CUSTOMER: What's that?
BOOKSELLER: It's the book after The Chamber of Secrets.
CUSTOMER: Oh, no, definitely not. I found that book far too confusing. I ask you, how on earth are children supposed to understand it if I can't? I mean, who the heck is that Voldemort guy anyway? No. I'm not going to bother with the rest.
BOOKSELLER: . . . ~ Jen Campbell

I knew it! I knew it! "
"Are we allowed to speak yet?" said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
"Nicolas Flamel," she whispered dramatically, "is the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone!"
This didn't have quite the effect she'd expected.
"The what?" said Harry and Ron.
"Oh, honestly, don't you two read? Look - read that, there. ~ J.K. Rowling

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosopher's Stone. ~ Paul Celan

Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them. ~ Joseph Addison

Summer weather, like being in love,is a philosopher's stone which turns our ordinary days to gold. But not the whole day ... For it is never the whole day, never all our life which is transformed in any happiness, but only the exquisite moments. ~ Nan Fairbrother

Like the moon, the novel is a symbol and a necessary reality. Ideally it serves neither gods nor masters. Philosopher's stone, it sublimates, precipitates, and quickens. House of Keys, it opens all our darkest doors. May the Pol Pot Persons of all genders and denominations take heed: to create a fictional world with rigor and passion, to imagine a character of any sex, place, time, or color and make it palpitate and quiver, to catapult it into the deepest forests of our most luminous reveries, is to commit an act of empathy. To write a novel of the imagination is a gesture of tenderness; to enter the body of a book is a fearless act and generous. ~ Rikki Ducornet

The philosophers stone is just an allegory. It represents everything that man wants and can never have. ~ Katherine Howe

This queer crotchet [of Hamilton's] that algebra is the science of pure time has attracted many philosophers, and quite recently it has been exhumed and solemnly dissected by owlish metaphysicians seeking the philosopher's stone in the gall bladder of mathematics. ~ Eric Temple Bell

learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. "But, above all, I learned that these ~ Paulo Coelho

Had many men spent but half that time in secret prayer, that they have spent in seeking after the philosopher's stone, how happy might they have been! ~ Thomas Brooks

No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts. ~ Herbert Spencer

The world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their Personal Legends, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But, above all, I learned that these things are all so simple that they could be written on the surface of an emerald. ~ Paulo Coelho

I have loved you in every manner that my imagination could contrive. I have wanted you so deeply that my body sang with pain and pleasure. You have been my obsession, my passion, my philosophers' stone of fantasy. You are my desire, my longing, my spirit. I love you unconditionally. - Sabine Strohem ~ Nick Bantock

We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever ... and all the time it is carrying us about ... It is the human nervous system itself. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

Some arguments require a knife if you're to cut to the quick, others require the breaking of heads with a philosopher's stone. ~ Mark Lawrence

Decades ago, Gerhard Richter found a painterly philosopher's stone. Like Jackson Pollock before him, he discovered something that had been in painting all along, always overlooked or discounted. ~ Jerry Saltz

Every time you use the Dragonflame philosophy, you refine your subtle body and stengthen your will by going through the process of separating the dross from the subtle and putting it back together again. Every time you follow this magical philosophy, you are doing what is know as the Great Work. In other words, every time you work magic using Dragonflame, you get closer to finding the Philosopher's Stone. ~ Lawren Leo

No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone ... ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Labor is the fabled magician's wand, the philosophers stone, and the cap of good fortune. ~ James Weldon Johnson

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones. ~ Ahmed Zaki Yamani

In his differentiation between asceticisms, Nietzsche posited a clear divide between the priestly varieties on the one side, illuminated by his vicious gaze, and the disciplinary rules of intellectual workers, philosophers and artists as well as the exercises of warriors and athletes on the other side. If the former are concerned with what one might call a pathogogical asceticism - an artful self-violation among an elite of sufferers that empowers them to lead other sufferers and induce the healthy to become co-sick - the latter only impose their regulations on themselves because they see them as a means of reaching their optimum as thinkers and creators of works. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle's to be. Northmen's thing made southfolk's place but howmulty plurators made eachone in per-son? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into
oure eryan! Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! And ho! Hey? What all men. Hot? His tittering daugh-ters of. Whawk?
Can't hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flitter-ing bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome?
What Thom Malone? Can't hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffey-ing waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won't moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia's daughter-
sons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who wereShem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now!
Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night! ~ James Joyce

I just want to do a good job with each role that I take and continue to better myself as an actress because that's what I love about this job ... being able to act and work with so many different people on such a wide range of projects. ~ Emma Stone

Water is patient; it can stagnate and let itself be coated with scum if need be. It is as gentle as the morning's dew. It is non-confrontational, even respectful, in circumventing the rocks in a stream. It makes room for everything that enters its pools. It accommodates by assuming the shape of any vessel it is poured into. And it is humble, seeking always the lowest level. Yet along with - or rather because of these adaptive, yielding properties, it is ultimately irresistible; it carves canyons out of stone. ~ Huston Smith

The Stone Age gave us arrow heads and eventually knives, and that allowed us to kill animals in ways you couldn't before, and once you had them you were able to remove the skin and bones. ~ Neal Barnard

The Ilhalmiut do not fill canvases with their paintings, or inscribe figures on rocks, or carve figurines in clay or in stone, because in the lives of the People there is no room for the creation of objects of no practical value. What purpose is there in creating beautiful things if these must be abandoned when the family treks out over the Barrens? But the artistic sense is present and strongly developed. It is strongly alive in their stories and songs, and in the string-figures, but they also use it on the construction of things which assist in their living and in these cases it is no less an art. The pleasure of abstract creation is largely denied to them by the nature of the land, but still they know how to make beauty.
They know how to make beauty, and they also know how to enjoy it-- for it is no uncommon thing to see an Ilhalmio man squatting silently on a hill crest and watching, for hours at a time, the swift interplay of colors that sweep the sky at sunset and dawn. It is not unusual to see an Ilhalmio pause for long minutes to watch the sleek beauty of a weasel or to stare into the brilliant heart of some minuscule flower. And these things are done quite unconsciously, too. There is no word for 'beauty'--as such--in their language; it needs no words in their hearts. ~ Farley Mowat

It was not the philosophers and the prophets who taught us to believe in life after death; all they did was give form and spiritual content to an instinctive perception as old as man himself. ~ Muhammad Asad

When I look around at this 'normal' life you're so eager to leave, I don't see boring or predictable - I see friends who love you and a family that would make any sacrifice for your happiness. I see the kind of security I've never had and always wanted. I may have given you access to the world I know best, but you and your family have given me a world that doesn't exist on a map. ~ Tamara Ireland Stone

Love is the stepping stone to new beginnings. ~ Thomas Kinkade

You are a grand nerveux, Vincent," Doctor Rey had told him. "You never have been normal. But then, no artist is normal; if he were, he wouldn't be an artist. Normal men don't create works of art. They eat, sleep, hold down routine jobs, and die. You are hypersensitive to life and nature; that's why you are able to interpret for the rest of us. But if you are not careful, that very hypersensitiveness will lead you to your destruction. The strain of it breaks every artist in time. ~ Irving Stone

I turn to leave, but as an afterthought I decide to light the various candles that are artfully arranged on the stone bench. Lit candles count as "more," don't they? ~ E.L. James

The profoundest thoughts of the philosophers have something trickle about them. A lot disappears in order for something to suddenly appear in the palm of the hand. ~ Elias Canetti

One may at least surmise that this esoteric teaching had a close and direct connection with wisdom, and that it did not only appeal to reason or to logic, as is the case with philosophy, which for this reason has been called rational knowledge - the philosophers of antiquity maintained that rational knowledge, that is, philosophy, is not the highest degree of knowledge, is not wisdom. ~ Rene Guenon

Marriage takes work - it doesn't just happen. ~ Lara Stone

I started as an artist and I had a side job moving some heavy boxes for a publishing company. They had just gotten a Mac for their art department, the department that creates the book covers. I was kind of showing the art director a thing or two about how to use a Mac. And one day everyone went out to lunch and I jumped on the computer and designed a book jacket and slipped it in the pile to go to the review board in New York. They picked my jacket and when the art director got back to Boston, he wanted to know who designed it and I said, "Me." He was like, "The box guy?" ~ Biz Stone

the force of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules. ~ Laura Vanderkam

He thought he stood upon an English hillside. Rain was falling; it twisted in the air like grey ghosts. Rain fell upon him and he grew thin as rain. Rain washed away thought, washed away memory, all the good and the bad. He no longer knew his name. Everything was washed away like mud from a stone. Rain filled him up with thoughts and memories of its own. Silver lines of water covered the hillside, like intricate lace, like the veins of an arm. Forgetting that he was, or ever had been, a man, he became the lines of water. He fell into the earth with the rain. ~ Susanna Clarke

As we rode slowly through the battle camp, the sounds and smells of war overwhelmed my senses: horses stamping and sweating in anticipation; men shouting; the steady rhythm of metal grinding on stone; leather snapping and buckling, and woo
d crackling in flame. The simmering energy of warriors as they eagerly awaited battle slithered through the camp like an invisible serpent ~ Virginia Chandler

The grief doesn't go away, ... But you ... get used to it, you know? It's like carrying a heavy stone, one that's really too heavy for you: you learn to settle the weight properly, and then you get used to it, and then sometimes you can forget you're carrying it. ~ Rachel Neumeier

The world is filled to suffocating. Man has placed his token on every stone. Every word, every image, is leased and mortgaged. We know that a picture is but a space in which a variety of images, none of them original, blend and clash. ~ Sherrie Levine

The poets and artists and philosophers, resistance activists, secret scouts and troublemakers, had become, as they must, soldiers. Now, ~ China Mieville

I too acknowledge the all-out omnipotence of early culture and nature; hereby we have either a doddered dwarf-bush, or a high-towering, wide-shadowing tree! either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic circumstances of their education,
what furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it. ~ Thomas Carlyle

I'm relentless. My mother says I could sell ice to the Eskimos. ~ Sharon Stone

The international limit on mobile texting, or SMS, is 160 characters. We wanted Twitter to be entirely readable and writable on every single one of the over five billion mobile phones on this planet, because they all have SMS built in. So we said it has to be within 160 characters, all the tweets. ~ Biz Stone

Lunch is for wimps. ~ Oliver Stone

The mind is at every stage a theater of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered by the faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from a still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so the world of each of us, how so ever different our several views of it may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply removing portions of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monoto ~ William James

It's the fear of what's in the dark that scares us, not the dark itself. Thanks, ancient Chinese philosophers. You guys are the best. And the deadest. But mostly the best. Jack's ~ Sara Wolf

I really want to work with Emma Stone; she is adorable. ~ Isabelle Fuhrman

It was hard to listen to Goldwater and realize that a man could be half Jewish and yet sometimes appear twice as dense as the normal Gentile. ~ I. F. Stone

I'm quite a confident person in many ways, but there's only so much you can hear about being compared to Hattie Jacques. For the record, she was a comedy goddess, but she was 25 stone. I hope I'm right in saying I'm not in any way nearly 25 stone. ~ Miranda Hart

Almost huffed at him, but I remembered Karen telling me a boy should kiss the girl on the lips first. I wanted it to happen like that, like in the movies I'd seen. With the way Kota was acting, it was as if he didn't want to do it. He was presenting his cheek as if this was as far as he was willing. ~ C.L.Stone

His eyes, filled with tears and his own blood, are already blind to all things in reality, but the colossal chrysanthemum topped with a purple aurora illuminates the darkness behind his closed lids more radiantly than any light he has ever seen. His head nothing more than a dark void now, the blood all drained away, he is no longer certain whether the person awaiting him at the top of the stone steps is a certain party, but if he can crawl just one yard more, digging at the hot ground with his bullet-broken hands, he will reach the feet of the person unmistakably awaiting him, whoever he may be, and his blood and his tears will be wiped away. ~ Kenzaburo Oe

I'll find out who's inside. Wait here and keep alert!' Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building's eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn't see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol's cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man's eye ~ David Cook

The original lists were probably carved in stone and represented longer periods of time. They contained things like 'Get More Clay. Make Better Oven.' ~ David Viscott

Because that's who she was - the girl who'd give love to a stone. ~ Jennifer Hayden

I walked to Seward School first through fourth grade. It's just amazing to me now that we'd walk down 10th Avenue on Capitol Hill. ~ Stone Gossard

This is the Propylon." He waved toward a stone path lined with crumbling columns. "One of the main gates into the Olympic valley."
"Rubble!" said Leo
"And over there - " Frank pointed to a square foundation that looked like the patio for a Mexican restaurant - "is the Temple of Hera, one of the oldest structures here."
"More rubble!" Leo said.
"And that round bandstand-looking thing - that's the Philipeon, dedicated to Philip of Macedonia."
"Even more rubble! First rate rubble! ~ Rick Riordan

One of our favorite examples of the value of Nothing is an incident in the life of the Japanese emperor Hirohito. Now, being emperor in one of the most frantically Confucianist countries in the world is not necessarily all that relaxing. From early morning until late at night, practically every minute of the emperor's time is filled in with meetings, audiences, tours, inspections, and who-knows-what. And through a day so tightly scheduled that it would make a stone wall seem open by comparison, the emperor must glide, like a great ship sailing in a steady breeze.

In the middle of a particularly busy day, the emperor was driven to a meeting hall for an appointment of some kind. But when he arrived, there was no one there. The emperor walked into the middle of the great hall, stood silently for a moment, then bowed to the empty space. He turned to his assistants, a large smile on his face. "We must schedule more appointments like this," he told them. "I haven't enjoyed myself so much in a long time. ~ Benjamin Hoff

Those who are not schooled and practised in truth [who are not honest and upright men] can never manage aright the government, nor yet can those who spend their lives as closet philosophers; because the former have no high purpose to guide their actions, while the latter keep aloof from public life ... ~ Plato

The lightning cracked again, this time like it was right on top of us, feet away from arcing through the house, and her skin was white as stone and her hair waving, and I thought about the Medusa I'd seen in an old movie when I was younger, monstrous and green-scaled, and I thought: That's not it at all. She was beautiful as Mama. That's how she froze those men, with the shock of seeing something so perfect and fierce in the world. ~ Jesmyn Ward

They had painted in a grand rush to keep intact the purity of their first impression, the mood in which the motif had been conceived. ~ Irving Stone

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one - a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive - as follows:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
American coffee, with real cream.
American butter.
Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.
Broiled chicken, American style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast. Clear maple syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cherry-stone clams.
San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Oyster soup. Clam Soup.
Philadelphia Terapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style.
Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.
Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mississippi.
American roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.
Cranberry sauce. Celery.
Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore.
Prairie liens, from Illinois.
Missouri partridges, broiled.
'Possum. Coon.
Boston bacon and beans.
Bacon and greens, Southern s ~ Mark Twain

To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger - these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

Individual humans know embarrassingly little about the world, and as history progressed, they came to know less and less. A hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs. In one humbling experiment, people were asked to evaluate how well they understood the workings of an ordinary zip. Most people confidently replied that they understood them very well – after all, they use zips all the time. They were then asked to describe in as much detail as possible all the steps involved in the zip's operation. Most had no idea.2 This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed 'the knowledge illusion'. We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Alone"

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone. ~ Maya Angelou