LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe! Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves --as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.
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I wouldn't mind dying in a plane crash. It'd be a good way to go. I don't want to die in my sleep, or of old age, or OD...I want to feel what it's like. I want to taste it, hear it, smell it. Death is only going to happen to you once; I don't want to miss it.
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A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you've been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.
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This required abandoning the idea that there is a universal quantity called time that all clocks measure. Instead, everyone would have his own personal time. The clocks of two people would agree if they were at rest with respect to each other but not if they were moving. This has been confirmed by a number of experiments, including one in which an extremely accurate timepiece was flown around the world and then compared with one that had stayed in place. If you wanted to live longer, you could keep flying to the east so the speed of the plane added to the earth
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May I repeat what I told you here: treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything brought into proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point. Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth... lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need to introduce into our light vibrations, represented by the reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blueness to give the feel of air.
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I think, “What are those things Christ would want me to do ? Would Christ get on a plane and fly to New York and go on the Phil Donahue Show ?” I believe he would, so I go.
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When you get right down to it, the Safety Lecture is a silly idea. I mean, if the passengers really thought the plane was going to crash, they wouldn't get on it in the first place, let alone learn how to get an adequate oxygen supply on the way down. by
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How would they explain that as they got off the plane at Beirut? ... How would they tell grandma under a cypress tree: They wanted us to worship a donkey!?
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Spent my days with a woman unkind,
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.
Made up my mind to make a new start,
Going to california with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me theres a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.
Took my chances on a big jet plane,
Never let them tell you that theyre all the same.
The sea was red and the sky was grey,
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today.
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Every time the plane banked too sharply on take-off or landing, I prayed for a crash, or a mid-air collision -- anything. No more haircuts. Nothing matters, not even bad breath. Life insurance pays off triple if you die on a business trip.
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People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life... I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.
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'I refer to those who describe murders/riots/panics and other catastrophes perpetrated by humans, and who say to be 'acting like animals.' I refer specifically to comments regarding a recent ship hijacking where it was said that the terrorists acted like 'cowardly animals.' These terrorists and guerrilla acts are NOT animal in nature - they are HUMAN in nature. As one who sees the balance, beauty and meaning of the world in which nonhuman animals must face life-or-death situations everyday just to survive and perpetuate their species, I grossly resent and take offense at these statements! When was the last time we saw a gorilla hijack a plane? A pod of whales hijack an ocean liner? A group of nonhuman animals walk down the street and terrorize the neighborhood??? Human animals are the terrorists and guerrillas when they go into the nonhuman animals' homes to slaughter them for fur coats, hunting trophies, plumage and all the other atrocious reasons society gives for the gross lack of respect for life, and murder of our fellow creatures inhabiting this world. If and when man comes off his ego trip, maybe he'll see just how insignificant he is to the total scheme of beings on this planet in which ALL creatures share. Then, the saying will be turned around to 'They behaved like people.'' (Letter to Abigail Van Buren in the York Daily Record)
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It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness -- it is not merely mechanical, it is not only spiritual; it is something of both, on a different plane and a more remote one.
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Define irony... a bunch of idiots dancing on an airplane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.
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Coitus can scarcely be said to take place in a vacuum; although of itself it appears a biological and physical activity, it is set so deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes. Among other things, it may serve as a model of sexual politics on an individual or personal plane.
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Getting on a plane, I told the ticket lady, 'Send one of my bags to New York, send one to Los Angeles, and send one to Miami.' She said, 'We can't do that!' I told her, 'You did it last week!'
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Religions do a useful thing: they narrow God to the limits of man. Philosophy replies by doing a necessary thing: it elevates man to the plane of God.
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It was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of men-where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same time.
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I remain just one thing, and one thing only -- and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
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There are a lot of great players in this game, but only one Kirby. It was his character that meant more to his teammates. He brought a great feeling to the clubhouse, the plane, everywhere.
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We know all about what they have done and the amount of success they have been able to achieve. It is truly one of the top programs in the nation. They flew someone in on a private plane to watch us play Mineral Area. That should tell you they have a big-time program.
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Elaine Dickinson There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane
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The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.
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The movie's director is the pilot. It's his vision. For an actor, the time to worry about flying is when you're on the ground. If you don't want to fly with the director, don't get on the plane
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On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.
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The true thrift is always to spend on the higher plane; to invest and invest, with keener avarice, that he may spend in spiritual creation, an...
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If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
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Don't you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does? The only time it isn't good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.
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We've got to figure these things a little bit different than most people. Y'know, there's something about going out in a plane that beats any ...
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If I could take all your words away and give you but a sparse few, they would be: ‘I now know, I am absolute, I am complete, I am God, I am.’ If there were no other words but these, you would no longer be limited to this plane.
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