Elizabeth

“In Native spiritualities, there is often a belief that we cannot pray unless we’ve laughed.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
― Pablo Picasso

“When our mind is carried away by strong pain, it helps to go back to our relaxed and peaceful in-breath and out-breath. Eventually, when our painful feeling comes back, we accept it as it is instead of letting it carry us away and make us more agitated. We don’t fight the painful feeling because we know it is part of us, and we don’t want to fight ourselves. Pain, irritation, and jealousy are all part of us. As they arise, we can calm them by going back to our in-breath and out-breath. Our peaceful breathing will calm those strong emotions. When an emotion becomes calmer, we can see the roots of our suffering and see that those who cause us pain are also suffering. Usually when we suffer we think we’re the only person who suffers, and that the other person is very happy. But in fact, it’s likely that the person who hurts us also has a lot of pain and doesn’t know how to handle his strong emotions. Breathing with awareness, we generate our energy of mindfulness, and we can have insight into”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child

“The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality.”
― James George Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, Part 1