Shall hope prevail where clamorous hate is rife, Shall sweet love prosper or high dreams have place Amid the tumult of reverberant strife 'Twixt ancient creeds, 'twixt race and ancient race, That mars the grave, glad purposes of life, Leaving no refuge save thy succoring face?
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The trouble with so many of us is that we underestimate the power of simplicity. We have a tendency it seems to over complicate our lives and forget what's important and what's not. We tend to mistake movement for achievement. We tend to focus on activities instead of results. And as the pace of life continues to race along in the outside world, we forget that we have the power to control our lives regardless of what's going on outside.
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In bestowing charity, the main consideration: should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in case of accident or sudden change. Every one has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook. But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is as care ful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue. The rich man is thus almost restricted to following the examples of...others, who know that the best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise: free libraries, parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and mind; works of art, certain to give pleasure and improve the public taste; and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general condition of the people; in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good.
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As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place....
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O human race born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou fall.
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My name is `Abdu'l-Bahá [literally, Servant of Baha]. My qualification is `Abdu'l-Bahá. My reality is `Abdu'l-Bahá. My praise is `Abdu'l-Bahá. Thraldom to the Blessed Perfection [Bahá'u'lláh] is my glorious and refulgent diadem, and servitude to all the human race my perpetual religion... No name, no title, no mention, no commendation have I, nor will ever have, except `Abdu'l-Bahá. This is my longing. This is my greatest yearning. This is my eternal life. This is my everlasting glory.
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Man's feeble race what ills await! Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,...
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Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy and zeal, and truth, he labors for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says, Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth -- who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.
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I should like you to remember two or three fixed principles which shine through all the history of mankind. The first is that mere bigness is not greatness. There is no dignity, no nobleness, in mere bulk. The true greatness of a nation depends upon the character of its ethical ideal and the energy with which it pursues it. I count it a peculiar good fortune for the American nation that it was conceived in liberty and intelligence and swaddled in order and justice, and that its early years were watched over by men who saw in such an organization the best hopes of the human race. But the baptism of the fathers does not guarantee the consecration of their children; and the republic can be kept true to its ideals only by the devoted efforts of each succeeding generation. Thus is it the privilege of the quiet scholar, who sees and speaks the truth, to shape from his study the policy of nations and the course of history.
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The common good of a collective -- a race, a class, a state -- was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. The believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with the declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing of themselves. But observe the results.
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A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen's friendliness. This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am. Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In your heart you are an Irishman but your pride is too powerful. My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said. They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy that I am going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for? For our freedom, said Davin. No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his life and his youth and his affections from the days of Wolfe Tone to those of Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd see you damned first. They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come yet, believe me. Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant... When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets ... Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.
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Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
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We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!...of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless...of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here...that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.' That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.
What will your verse be?
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Every Universe exists depending on the Knowledge that reflects it and not in its absence. It is absolutely true that our ancestors saw this universe before and after we were born and this is why we think that the Universe exists irrespective of our existence. It is an illusion as big as the Illusion of our Life with our entire universe, because our ancestors too saw the world through these senses that we have too, they were human being too, a part of the human race. For the members of a tribe, for instance, their Universe expands up to the borders on their Knowledge of this world. If these borders are very small, the world will be very small and the other way around. Our Universe will look completely different to an animal, even if we think it sees the same images we do. It is true that we are aware, in the Illusion of our Life that the animal sees the same images, but he will interpret them differently, depending on his level of competence, which will entail a different image of the Universe. The same happens with human beings, who think based on a Logical Coefficient 2 and cannot conceive a world where the beings think and see an universe based on Logical Coefficient superior to the one of the man. That world and the universe that will include it will be completely different to the one that reflects and includes our world. Then the meaning of the man�s existence in this world which is for us vanity of the vanities, for a different thinking belonging to a different Logical Coefficient, can be something different.
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In every child who is born, no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again and in him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility toward human life toward the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of terror, and of God.
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The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty, race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is of course the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious; on the other hand it is the determination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has the power of punishment on his side; the slave, on his, has invincible inclination, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice... Good natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is purchased by good treatment on the other.
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I've always wondered why European politicians as a group seemed brighter than American politicians as a group. Maybe it's because many America...
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Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.
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After the bare requisites of living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone, or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who scribbles on a wall to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.
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OZOCRACY - Watch the spectacle (or divisive, polarizing issue) we, the politicians, have created or pointed out, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The politicians have us casting votes for them based on issues like lipsticked pigs, teen pregnancy, duplicitous social class polarization, who is the truer American, who is a homosexual, race and religion etc. while they steal us blind and violate the Public Trust. (Term is based on this scene from The Wizard of Oz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWyCCJ6B2WE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.squidoo.com%2FUSA_VOTERS_VOTE_NO_TO_GOVERNMENT_CORRUPTION_THIS_ELECTION&feature=player_embedded
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God is not merely interestd in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men.He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.
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Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing...
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Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained... now everywhere is war.
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One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
Friendship
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I grew up in space times. In seventh grade, my teacher said we had to do math and science because the Russians were beating us in the space race. It was a real catalyst. I wish we had something like that today.
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All mankind lives and each man strives by codes of conduct mutually agreed. Perhaps these codes are good, perhaps theyre bad, its only evident theyre codes. Mores bind the race. Coaction then occurs. Thought and motion in accord. A oneness then of purpose and survival so results. But now against that code there is transgression. And so because the code was held, whatever code it was, and man sought comfort in mans company, he held back his deed and so entered then the bourne in which no being laughs or has a freedom in his heart.
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Among all men on the earth bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the muse has taught them songs and loves the race of bards.
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Such is the human race, often it seems a pity that Noah... didn't miss the boat.
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Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.......to breed out of the race the scourges of transmissible disease, mental defect, poverty, lawlessness, crime since these classes would be decreasing in number instead of breeding like weeds....such a plan would reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry
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Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment, heredity, and the movements and changes in the world around him. Then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, 'This I am today; that I will be tomorrow.' The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.
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