Reflections On The Psalms Quotes

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him. ~ C.S. Lewis

Rules cease to exist once they have outlived their value, but forms live on eternally. There are forms of the novel which impose on the suggested topic all the virtues of the Number. Born of the very expression and of the diverse aspects of the tale, connected by nature with the guiding idea, daughter and mother of all the elements that it polarizes, a structure develops, which transmits to the works the last reflections of Universal Light and the last echoes of the Harmony of Worlds. ~ Raymond Queneau

Local fog in Venice has a name: nebbia. It obliterates all reflections ... and everything that has a shape: buildings, people, colonnades, bridges, statues. Boat services are canceled, airplanes neither arrive, nor take off for weeks, stores are closed and mail ceases to litter one's threshold. The effect is as though some raw hand had turned all those enfilades inside out and wrapped the lining around the city... the fog is thick, blinding, and immobile... this is a time for reading, for burning electricity all day long, for going easy on self-deprecating thoughts of coffee, for listening to the BBC World Service, for going to bed early. In short, a time for self-oblivion, induced by a city that has ceased to be seen. Unwittingly, you take your cue from it, especially if, like it, you've got company. Having failed to be born here, you at least can take some pride in sharing its invisibility... ~ Joseph Brodsky

In the final analysis, superstitions, omens, and intuitions are the reflections of a conscious effort on the part of an individual to detect the subtle signals sent to us from the natural world. If we are convinced that the life and matter around us are mute, then we are confined to the silence of the scientifically concrete. If we are open to subtlety, then the world resonates with significance. ~ Allan J. Hamilton

From my keen observation, it is a very sad fact that the Philippines' current administration's drug war crisis has fully pressed the pedal of acceleration to more division, hatred, cycles of violence (copycat killings, summary killings, extra judicial killings, collateral victims of drug war), toxic revenge, and perpetual impunity. ~ Angelica Hopes, reflections on Drug War in the Philippines ~ Angelica Hopes

The teachers introduced a program that explicitly trained the students to construct coherent arguments, with a focus on the connections between successive ideas. It was a radical shift from the kind of assignment that dominates high school writing instruction today, in which students are asked to write memoirs and personal reflections. The students showed dramatic improvements in their test scores in several subjects, and many more of them graduated from high school and applied to college. It's no coincidence that ~ Steven Pinker

The Knight in the triumph of his heart made several 6 reflections on thegreatness of the British Nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of Popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that theThames was thenoblest river in Europe; that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the Seven Wonders of the World; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman. ~ Joseph Addison

Traders and quants are genuinely different species. Traders pride themselves on being tough and forthright while quants are more circumspect and reticent. These differences in personality are reflections of deeper cultural preferences. Traders are paid to act. All day long they watch screens, assimilate economic information, page frantically through spreadsheets, run programs written by quants, enter trades, talk to salespeople and brokers, and punch keys. It's hard to have an extended conversation with a trader during the business day; it takes an hour of standing around to have five minutes of punctuated repartee. Part of what traders do has a video game quality. In consequence, they learn to be opinionated, visceral, fast-thinking, and decisive, though not always right. They thrive on interruption. Quants ~ Emanuel Derman

Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah. ~ Meir Soloveichik

As a kid, I was taught that if you opened the Bible in the middle you'd probably land on the book of Psalms. And near the middle is everyone's favorite, the 23rd, there is this line: "You prepare a table before in the presence of my enemies." I don't know how many times I've read or recited this Psalm without pondering what that line actually means, but here is my take on it. When things are a bit tense, when life is not going at its best, when the potential for disaster is just around the corner, when your enemies are all around you - and even staring you down! - that's when God lays out the red-checkered picnic cloth and says, "Oooo, this is a nice place. Let's hang out here together for a while...just you and me. ~ David Brazzeal

There is, however, no advantage in reflections on the past further than may be of service to the present. For the future we must provide by maintaining what the present gives us and redoubling our efforts; it is hereditary to us to win virtue as the fruit of labour, and you must not change the habit, even though you should have a slight advantage in wealth and resources; for it is not right that what was won in want should be lost in plenty. ~ Thucydides

It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities ... interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible ... ~ Carl Jung

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life. Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interests upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance. Thus we demand that the world grant us recognition for qualities which we regard as personal possessions: our talent or our beauty. The more a man lays stress on false possessions, and the less sensitivity he has for what is essential, the less satisfying is his life. He feels limited because he has limited aims, and the result is envy and jealousy. If we understand and feel that here in this life we already have a link with the infinite, desires and attitudes change. ~ C. G. Jung

The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. ~ Walter Bagehot

For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itself but in his ideas of it. By focusing the mind wholly on each objects and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life. ~ Philip Kapleau

Looking back, it is also the smallest moments that seem to radiate the most pain. The moments when you realize you loved these people, helplessly, that you were given no choice in this matter of loving them, and that they will always be part of you no matter how you try to carve them out of your flesh. That you are tied to them with bonds you could never sever, that they will live on inside you no matter how many effigies of them you hang and burn, no matter how often their reflections appear in the eyes of other men and women, men and women who then unwittingly play the roles of father and mother, with whom you act out the drama again and again. ~ Evelyn Lau

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy," Burke wrote in the Reflections, "which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors. . . . In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows. Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth."58 ~ Yuval Levin

Brentwood stands on that fine and wealthy slope of country, one of the richest in Scotland, which lies between the Pentland Hills and the Firth. In clear weather you could see the blue gleam-like a bent bow, embracing the wealthy fields and scattered houses of the great estuary on one side of you; and on the other the blue heights, not gigantic like those we had been used to, but just high enough for all the glories of the atmosphere, the play of clouds, and sweet reflections, which give to a hilly country an interest and a charm which nothing else can emulate. Edinburgh, with its two lesser heights - the Castle and the Calton Hill - its spires and towers piercing through the smoke, and Arthur's Seat lying crouched behind, like a guardian no longer very needful, taking his repose beside the well-beloved charge, which is now, so to speak, able to take care of itself without him - lay at our right hand. From the lawn and drawing-room windows we could see all these varieties of landscape. The colour was sometimes a little chilly, but sometimes, also, as animated and full of vicissitude as a drama. I was never tired of it. Its colour and freshness revived the eyes which had grown weary of arid plains and blazing skies. It was always cheery, and fresh, and full of repose. ("The Open Door") ~ Mrs. Oliphant

The idea is that of the earth not only becoming covered with myriad grains of thought, but becoming enclosed in a single thinking envelope so as to form, functionally, no more than a single vast grain of thought on the sidereal scale, the plurality of individual reflections grouping themselves together and reinforcing one another in the act of a single unanimous reflection ... A new domain of psychical expansion- that is what we lack. And it is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

What gives us word-users the right to make life-and-death decisions concerning other living creatures that have no words? Why do we find ourselves in positions of such anguish (at least for some of us)? In the final analysis, it is simply because might makes right, and we humans, thanks to the intelligence afforded us by the complexity of our brains and our embeddedness in rich languages and cultures, are indeed high and mighty, relative to the "lower" animals (and vegetables). By virtue of our might, we are forced to establish some sort of ranking of creatures, whether we do so as a result of long and careful personal reflections or simply go along with the compelling flow of the masses. Are cows just as comfortably killable as mosquitoes? Would you feel any less troubled by swatting a fly preening on a wall than by beheading a chicken quivering on a block? ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of our own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly - not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

The only way to understand the Psalms is on your knees, the whole congregation praying the words of the Psalms with all its strength. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself. ~ Anais Nin

My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?' (Psalm 42:2) But the Psalmist also says, 'In death there is no one that is mindful of thee.' So it made me happy that I could be with my mother the last few weeks of her life, and for the last ten days at her bedside daily and hourly. Sometimes I thought to myself that it was like being present at a birth to sit by a dying person and see their intentness on what is happening to them. It almost seems that one is absorbed in a struggle, a fearful, grim, physical struggle, to breathe, to swallow, to live. And so, I kept thinking to myself, how necessary it is for one of their loved ones to be beside them, to pray for them, to offer up prayers for them unceasingly, as well as to do all those little offices one can. When my daughter was a little tiny girl, she said to me once, 'When I get to be a great big woman and you are a little tiny girl, I'll take care of you,' and I thought of that when I had to feed my mother by the spoonful and urge her to eat her custard. How good God was to me, to let me be there. I had prayed so constantly that I would be beside her when she died; for years I had offered up that prayer. And God granted it quite literally. I was there, holding her hand, and she just turned her head and sighed. ~ Dorothy Day

Altogether, a pleasant place, marred by activities of unpleasant people whose qualities, perhaps, are sad reflections of sadder environments. ~ Walter Greenwood

You don't have to be trapped inside a mirror to be trapped in the mirror. Think about all the people who stare at their reflections and dislike what they see. Think about all the people who base their happiness solely on what they look like. Think about all the people who don't enjoy life because they don't enjoy their appearance. If you ask me, the mirror imprisons us all. ~ Chris Colfer

Ending

I lied.
I wanted you from that moment.
I wanted you, wrapped in starlight and reflections,
To be tied up with strings.
And ropes.
And chains.
I wanted you hanging around my neck
Like a charm I could press to my heart and
Make three wishes on.

But I trapped the want
And the words inside my mouth.
I buried those secret things under my tongue,
Biting down until blood and bitterness
Filled my mouth
And poured down the back of my throat.

In the beginning, you said, there was only water.
But what about the end?

I closed my eyes and lay flat
With my back to the ocean
And my face to the sky.
I lifted my hands and caught ribbons of wind
Underneath my fingernails.
I rode the water for so long,
I forgot what my skin felt like when it was dry. ~ Autumn Doughton

Two Metro lines, two trains, two carriages, two people walking in parallel streets, two lives, couples criss-crossing without seeing each other, potential encounters, meetings which shall never take place. The imagination rewrites history. It modifies the local directory and the roll-call of those who frequent a town, a street, a house, a woman. It transfixes reflections in the mirror for all eternity. It hangs entire portrait galleries from the wall of our future memory on which magnificent strangers use a sharp knife to engrave their initials and a date. ~ Robert Desnos

In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art. ~ Dylan Thomas

The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more. ~ Alberto Manguel

5-4-10 Tuesday 8:00 A.M.
Made a large batch of chili and spaghetti to freeze yesterday. And some walnut fudge! Relieved the electricity is still on.
It's another beautiful sunny day with fluffy white clouds drifting by. The last cloud bank looked like a dog with nursing pups.
I open the window and let in some fresh air filled with the scent of apple and plum blossoms and flowering lilacs. Feels like it's close to 70 degrees. There's a boy on a skate board being pulled along by his St. Bernard, who keeps turning around to see if his young friend is still on board.
I'm thinking of a scene still vividly displayed in my memory. I was nine years old. I cut through the country club on my way home from school and followed a narrow stream, sucking on a jawbreaker from Ben Franklins, and I had some cherry and strawberry pixie straws, and banana and vanilla taffy inside my coat pocket. The temperature was in the fifties so it almost felt like spring. There were still large patches of snow on the fairways in the shadows and the ground was soggy from the melt off.
Enthralled with the multi-layers of ice, thin sheets and tiny ice sickles gleaming under the afternoon sun, dripping, streaming into the pristine water below, running over the ribbons of green grass, forming miniature rapids and gently flowing rippling waves and all the reflections of a crystal cathedral, merging with the hidden world of a child. Seemingly endless natural sculptures.
Then th ~ Andrew Neff

One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before. And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with an added object. So many colours on the hillside, each different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights gilding or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose, orange, green or violet. ~ Winston Churchill

Edin Viso's poetry and prose bear the obvious marks of dark drama-of a soul variously splayed apart and cinched back together...This is a book of psalms-at once craggy and rough as the Balkan landscape, and sublime as sunrise on the Aegean Sea. There are calluses on the palms, dried blood on the knuckles, and dirt under the fingernails of these pieces. And there is grace...Edin is a poet who knows the value of a blanket, a single orange, a moment shared...He is a man who is unafraid, and who does, in the pages before you, "take off his skin and dance in his bones.". ~ Stephen T. Berg

I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever - that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

all the while trying not to think of the golden eyed idiot from the bar, not how his voice sounded, low and velvety or how the moon light gave little reflections on his hair or the shining in his eyes. I'm like a sappy girl from a book, she thought hiding her face under her purple pillows. ~ Amanda Littrell

For Immanuel Kant, the term anthropology embraced all the human sciences, and laid the foundation of familiar knowledge we need, to build solidly grounded ideas about the moral and political demands of human life. Margaret Mead saw mid-twentieth-century anthropology as engaged in a project no less ambitious than Kant's own, and her Terry Lectures on Continuities in Cultural Evolution provide an excellent point to enter into her reflections. ~ Margaret Mead

There are many themes found in the Book of Psalms that are generally not found in modern music. These include the fear of God, the righteousness and justice of God, the sovereignty of God, the judgement of God, the evil of sin, spiritual and physical warfare, the arch enemies of the Christian, the destruction of the wicked, the reality of hell, the blessedness of the church, the vicious attacks upon the church, the commandments of God, the dominion of David's son, and so on. Without the backdrop of these truths, the themes of love, mercy, faith, and salvation become largely meaningless. ~ Kevin Swanson

The tree that stands so firm on land trembles in the water. ~ Marty Rubin

The sign outside this tent is accompanied by a small box full of smooth black stones. The text instructs you to take one with you as you enter. Inside, the tent is dark, the ceiling covered with open black umbrellas, the curving handles hanging down like icicles. In the center of the room there is a pool. A pond enclosed within a black stone wall that is surrounded by white gravel. The air carries the salty tinge of the ocean. You walk over to the edge to look inside. The gravel crunches beneath your feet. It is shallow, but it is glowing. A shimmering, shifting light cascades up through the surface of the water. A soft radiance, enough to illuminate the pool and the stones that sit at the bottom. Hundreds of stones, each identical to the one you hold in your hand. The light beneath filters through the spaces between the stones. Reflections ripple around the room, making it appear as though the entire tent is underwater. You sit on the wall, turning your black stone over and over in your fingers. The stillness of the tent becomes a quiet melancholy. Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds. The stone feels heavier in your hand. When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones, you feel lighter. As though you have released something more than a smooth polished piece o ~ Erin Morgenstern

The reflections on a day well spent furnish us with joys more pleasing than ten thousand triumphs. ~ Thomas A Kempis

In his reflections on rebellion, Albert Camus argues that one cannot kill unless one is prepared to die.11 But that argument does not seem to apply to soldiers in battle, where the whole point is to kill while avoiding getting killed. And yet there is a wider sense in which Camus is right. Just ~ Michael Walzer

The experience was both vivid and wrenching. The convicting reflections on all his impure thoughts and desires could not have been clearer. It felt as though some inner awareness had now been awakened. With each word Stephen prayed, the experience only grew stronger. On the other side, each of those desires and yearnings was being lifted up for inspection - not only his, he realized. Something else was inside him, something new. . . . He could only identify it as God. Not merely the Judean God. My God. God was helping him sift and sort - those selfish and evil desires pushed to one side, the hunger for truth and holy living gathered on the other. ~ Janette Oke

By praying "his" prayers - the Psalms of the Old Testament, which Jesus prayed - we effectively piggyback on them all the way to heaven. ~ Eric Metaxas

Stop holding on to the broken pieces of that mirror even after you are bleeding so badly, I agree that the reflections you had imagined or saw once before were beautiful but sometimes holding on to them with a hope will just continue to hurt you even more and it will never get any better. ~ Akshay Vasu

Writers allow us to see ourselves more clearly, they express spiritual signposts that assist us find ourselves. Writers' self-revelations allow us to grasp personal reflections that remain unrealized and indistinct within ourselves. Nuggets of personal perception remain veiled, until we read carefully chosen words sharing the author's crystallized perceptions. Provocative authors resolutely tap into that robust vein of common yearning and assiduously engineer their way through humankind's rampant library of collective neurosis. Reading a master's scintillating prose allows our own inchoate thoughts to shape up under the splendid beam of sunlight that they cast onto pages bearing their soul's freshly minted words. Their astutely crafted pages conveying everlasting imagery immunizes their work from the harshness of time's relentless march forward. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

THE SIMPLE UNION

Listen to me, O friend.

Be thou a yogi, a monk, a priest,
A devout lover of God,
A pilgrim searching for Happiness, Bathing in holy rivers,
Visiting sacred shrines,
The occasional worshipper of a day,
A great reader of books, Or a builder of many temples -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

This vain struggle,
This long toil,
This ceaseless sorrow,
This changing pleasure,
This burning doubt,
This burden of life,
All these will cease, O friend -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

Have I pilgrimage the earth,
Have I loved the reflections,
Have I chanted, singing in ecstasy,
Have I donned the robe,
Have I put on ashes,
Have I listened to the temple bells,
Have I grown old with study,
Have I searched,
Was I lost?
Yea, much have I known -
My love aches for thee.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved,

O friend,
Wouldst thou love the reflection,
If I can give thee the reality?
Throw away thy bells, thine incense,
Thy fears and thy gods,
Set aside thy systems, thy philosophies.
Come,
Put aside all these.
I know the way to the heart of the Beloved.

O friend,
The simple union is the best.

This is the way to the heart of the Beloved. ~ Anonymous