Another kind of love and compassion is not based on something appearing beautiful or nice, but based on the fact that the other person, just like oneself, wants happiness and does not want suffering and indeed has every right to be happy and to overcome suffering. On such a basis, we feel a sense of responsibility, a sense of closeness toward that being. That is true compassion. This is because the compassion is based on reason, notjust on emotional feeling. As a consequence, it does not matter what the other's attitude is, whether negative, or positive. What matters is that it is a human being, a sentient being that has the experience of pain and pleasure. There is no reason not to feel compassion so long as it is a sentient being.
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What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.
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'Against his better judgment, the big game hunter is talked into taking both his wife AND her mother along on one of his expeditions. It does not go well. The mother-in-law is, if anything, harder to get along with in the wilds than she was in the city. And to make matters worse, she won't even abide by the simple camp rules designed to keep the safari safe. One night after dinner, the hunter's wife realizes her mother is missing. Panicked, she rushes to her husband and begs him to institute a search. He sighs, and together they set out. But before they've gone far, they hear throaty growling. Soon they come upon a small clearing in which the mother-in-law stands, backed up against thick, seemingly impenetrable jungle brush, and facing a huge male lion. The wife whispers urgently, 'What are we going to do?' 'Nothing,' responds her husband. 'The lion got himself into this mess, now let him get himself out of it.''
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There is here no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force it's sap and stands confident in the storms of Spring without the fear that after them may come no Summer. It does come. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful
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'Against his better judgment, the big game hunter is talked into taking both his wife AND her mother along on one of his expeditions. It does not go well. The mother-in-law is, if anything, harder to get along with in the wilds than she was in the city. And to make matters worse, she won't even abide by the simple camp rules designed to keep the safari safe. One night after dinner, the hunter's wife realizes her mother is missing. Panicked, she rushes to her husband and begs him to institute a search. He sighs, and together they set out. But before they've gone far, they hear throaty growling. Soon they come upon a small clearing in which the mother-in-law stands, backed up against thick, seemingly impenetrable jungle brush, and facing a huge male lion. The wife whispers urgently, 'What are we going to do?' 'Nothing,' responds her husband. 'The lion got himself into this mess, now let him get himself out of it.''
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The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
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If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
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Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbow'd. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Lies but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
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Though a good motive cannot sanction a bad action, a bad motive will always vitiate a good action. In common and trivial matters we may act without motives, but in momentous ones the most careful deliberation is wisdom.
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In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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As far as whether we are allowed to kill and to eat animals, there is a remarkable ordering of matters in Holy Scripture. We can read how, at first, only plants are mentioned as providing food for man. Only after the flood, that is to say, after a new breach has been opened between God and man, are we told that man eats flesh...Nonetheless...we should not proceed from this to a kind of sectarian cult of animals. For this, too, is permitted to man. He should always maintain his respect for these creatures, but he knows at the same time that he is not forbidden to take food from them. Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.
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The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
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It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.
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Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.
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There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control.
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To renounce the alcoholic world is not to abandon it, but to act upon principles I have come to love and cherish, and to restore in others - who still suffer - the serenity I have come to know. When I am truly committed to this purpose, it matters little what clothes I wear or how I make a living. My task is to carry the message, and to lead by example, not design.
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It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
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It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.
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It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
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My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm -- as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.
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Saying goodbye doesn't mean anything. It's the time we spent together that matters, not how we left it.
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To win. Nothing else matters, and nothing else will do.
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OUT of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbow'd. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
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Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do belive in Art for Art's sake.
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People have often said to me, 'Surely when you are with the tramps they don't really accept you as one of themselves? Surely they notice that you are different--notice the difference of accent?' etc., etc. As a matter of fact, a fair proportion of tramps, well over a quarter I should say, notice nothing of the kind. To begin with, many people have no ear for accent and judge you entirely by your clothes. I was often struck by this fact when I was begging at back doors. Some people were obviously surprised by my 'educated' accent, others completely failed to notice it; I was dirty and ragged and that was all they saw. Again, tramps come from all parts of the British Isles and the variation in English accents is enormous. A tramp is used to hearing all kinds of accents among his mates, some of them so strange to him that he can hardly understand them, and a man from, say, Cardiff or Durham or Dublin does not necessarily know which of the south English accents is an 'educated' one. In any case men with 'educated' accents, though rare among tramps, are not unknown. But even when tramps are aware that you are of different origin from themselves, it does not necessarily alter their attitude. From their point of view all that matters is that you, like themselves, are 'on the bum'. And in that world it is not done to ask too many questions. You can tell people the history of your life if you choose, and most tramps do so on the smallest provocation, but you are under no compulsion to tell it and whatever story you tell will be accepted without question. Even a bishop could be at home among tramps if he wore the right clothes; and even if they knew he was a bishop it might not make any difference, provided that they also knew or believed that he was genuinely destitute. Once you are in that world and seemingly of it, it hardly matters what you have been in the past. It is a sort of world-within-a-world where everyone is equal, a small squalid democracy...
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Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly, with mere appearances; but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
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In describing the Mound-builders no effort has been made to paint their costume, their modes of life or their system of government. They are presented to the reader almost exclusively under a single aspect, and under the influence of a single emotion. It matters not to us whether they dwelt under a monarchical or popular form of polity; whether king or council ruled their realms; nor, in fine, what was their exact outward condition. It is enough for us to know, and enough for our humanity to inquire, that they existed, toiled, felt and suffered; that to them fell, in these pleasant regions, their portion of the common heritage of our race, and that around those ancient hearth-stones, washed to light on the banks of the far western rivers, once gossiped and enjoyed life, a nation that has utterly faded away.
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Drug addiction is no different from any other religion - sometimes the ritual is all that matters.
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Do not hover always on the surface of things, nor take up suddenly, with mere appearances but penetrate into the depth of matters, as far as your time and circumstances allow, especially in those things which relate to your profession.
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It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
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