Matt

“Some may be inspired to respectfully adorn the body of a bodhisattva with sandalwood powder, while others may prefer to throw lava on the bodhisattva's head, yet both affect the bodhisattva equally. May the mind of equanimity be developed.
—Prajñāpāramitāsañcayagāthā (Gathering of Precious Qualities)”
― Pema Lungtok Gyatso, Dudjom Lingpa's Chöd: An Ambrosia Ocean of Sublime Explanations

“For the Christian, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least primarily, the legal interpretation of the Divine Law (talmud or fiqh). The sacred doctrine in the latter sense has, to say the least, much less in common with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in Christianity: in Christianity philosophy became an integral part of the officially recognized and even required training of the student of the sacred doctrine. This difference explains partly the eventual collapse of philosophic inquiry in the Islamic and in the Jewish world, a collapse which has no parallel in the Western Christian world.”
― Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

“Even today, I would go halfway round the world to find a book if I thought it essential to my needs, and I have a feeling of absolute veneration for those few authors who have given me something special. For this reason, I can never understand the tepid youth of today who wait for books to be given to them and who neither search nor admire. I would go without eating in order to get a book, and I have never liked borrowing books, because I have always wanted them to be absolutely mine so that I could live with them for hours on end.

As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors.”
― Miguel Serrano, C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships

“The columnist George Will likes to quote a line that he says Cardinal Wolsey uttered about Henry VIII: “Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.”
― William A. Henry III, In Defense of Elitism