Mike Robinson's Blog - Posts Tagged "spirituality"
Great Passages, Part I
from BLOOD MERIDIAN, by Cormac McCarthy:
"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. ... War is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game. Because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."
from THE DIVINE COMEDY (PARADISO), by Dante:
"Thence the high beings read the signs, the trace
of that eternal Power who is the end
for which the form is set in time and place.
All natures in this order lean and tend
each in distinctive manner to its Source,
some to approach more near and others less-
Whence from their various ports all creatures move
on the great sea of being, with each one
ferried by instinct given from above.
This is what makes the fire rise toward the moon;
this, the prime mover of the mortal heart."
from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, by James Joyce:
"The desire and loathing excited by improper aesthetic means are really not aesthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic in character but also because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by pure reflex. ...Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken us in an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It ought to awaken or induce an aesthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty."
from SKINNY LEGS AND ALL, by Tom Robbins:
"What is plain is that neither money nor the love of it is the root of all evil. Evil's roots run deeper than that. Anyway, money is not a root. Money is a leaf. Trillions of leaves, actually; dense, bushy, dollar-green, obscuring the stars of reality with their false canopy."
from CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, BOOK II, by Neale Donald Walsch:
"You must stop seeing God as separate from you, and you as separate from each other. The only solution is this truth: nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else. Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all life. All government, all politics, must be based on this truth. All laws must be rooted in it. This is the only hope of your race....If everyone in your race gave all, what would you require? The only reason you require anything is because someone else is holding back. Stop holding back."
from WEAVEWORLD, by Clive Barker:
"Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making."
from ON WRITING by Stephen King (this one's for the writers):
"What's equally wrong is the deliberate turning towards some type of fiction in order to make money. It's morally wonky, for one thing -- the job of fiction is to find the truth inside the lie, not to commit intellectual dishonesty in the hunt for a buck."
from DANDELION WINE, by Ray Bradbury:
"And everything, absolutely everything, was there....'I'm alive,' he thought.....The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hears beat in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.......'I'm really alive!' he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don't remember!"
from A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT, by Mark Twain:
"You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter and disease and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags -- that is a loyalty for unreason; it is pure animal."
from BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, by Kurt Vonnegut:
"The picture [of this yellow band] shows everything about life that truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal - the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us, unwavering and pure. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light, identical."
from VICTORY, by Joseph Conrad:
"Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world - invulnerable because elusive."
from MYSTIC RIVER, by Dennis Lehane:
"They came to be elated and uplifted, Dave knew, raised up out of their lives by the rare spectacle of victory. That's why arenas and ballparks felt like cathedrals -- buzzing with light and murmured prayers and forty thousand hearts all beating the drum of the same collective hope. Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives. Win for me. Win. Win. Win."
"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. ... War is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game. Because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."
from THE DIVINE COMEDY (PARADISO), by Dante:
"Thence the high beings read the signs, the trace
of that eternal Power who is the end
for which the form is set in time and place.
All natures in this order lean and tend
each in distinctive manner to its Source,
some to approach more near and others less-
Whence from their various ports all creatures move
on the great sea of being, with each one
ferried by instinct given from above.
This is what makes the fire rise toward the moon;
this, the prime mover of the mortal heart."
from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, by James Joyce:
"The desire and loathing excited by improper aesthetic means are really not aesthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic in character but also because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by pure reflex. ...Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken us in an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It ought to awaken or induce an aesthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty."
from SKINNY LEGS AND ALL, by Tom Robbins:
"What is plain is that neither money nor the love of it is the root of all evil. Evil's roots run deeper than that. Anyway, money is not a root. Money is a leaf. Trillions of leaves, actually; dense, bushy, dollar-green, obscuring the stars of reality with their false canopy."
from CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD, BOOK II, by Neale Donald Walsch:
"You must stop seeing God as separate from you, and you as separate from each other. The only solution is this truth: nothing exists in the universe that is separate from anything else. Everything is intrinsically connected, irrevocably interdependent, interactive, interwoven into the fabric of all life. All government, all politics, must be based on this truth. All laws must be rooted in it. This is the only hope of your race....If everyone in your race gave all, what would you require? The only reason you require anything is because someone else is holding back. Stop holding back."
from WEAVEWORLD, by Clive Barker:
"Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making."
from ON WRITING by Stephen King (this one's for the writers):
"What's equally wrong is the deliberate turning towards some type of fiction in order to make money. It's morally wonky, for one thing -- the job of fiction is to find the truth inside the lie, not to commit intellectual dishonesty in the hunt for a buck."
from DANDELION WINE, by Ray Bradbury:
"And everything, absolutely everything, was there....'I'm alive,' he thought.....The grass whispered under his body. He put his arm down, feeling the sheath of fuzz on it, and far away, below, his toes creaking in his shoes. The wind sighed over his shelled ears. The world slipped bright over the glassy round of his eyeballs like images sparked in a crystal sphere. Flowers were sun and fiery spots of sky strewn through the woodland. Birds flickered like skipped stones across the vast inverted pond of heaven. His breath raked over his teeth, going in ice, coming out fire. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hears beat in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts throbbing his wrists, the real heart pounding his chest. The million pores on his body opened.......'I'm really alive!' he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don't remember!"
from A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT, by Mark Twain:
"You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter and disease and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags -- that is a loyalty for unreason; it is pure animal."
from BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, by Kurt Vonnegut:
"The picture [of this yellow band] shows everything about life that truly matters, with nothing left out. It is a picture of the awareness of every animal. It is the immaterial core of every animal - the 'I am' to which all messages are sent. It is all that is alive in any of us, unwavering and pure. A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would show two such bands of light, identical."
from VICTORY, by Joseph Conrad:
"Heyst was not conscious of either friends or of enemies. It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement, accomplished not by hermit-like withdrawal with its silence and immobility, but by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had perceived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world - invulnerable because elusive."
from MYSTIC RIVER, by Dennis Lehane:
"They came to be elated and uplifted, Dave knew, raised up out of their lives by the rare spectacle of victory. That's why arenas and ballparks felt like cathedrals -- buzzing with light and murmured prayers and forty thousand hearts all beating the drum of the same collective hope. Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives. Win for me. Win. Win. Win."
