Finally, a word on how to tackle a question.
Read it. Read it quietly. Read it out loud to yourself or to someone who listens intently.
Get your IMAGINATION in gear!
Draw a picture in your mind or a real one on paper or on the sand with your finger or with the toe of your boot. Get into dialogue on it. Use your hands - your arms - gesture - flail them - get excited! - show a passion!
Find an analog - what is it like? Talk to yourself. Get 'mad' with it.
At the table engage your family - do the experiment - come alive!
Soon a faint light emerges - the light grows - an understanding comes forth.
Soon too the "enthousiasmos" - that divine possession - so long fettered by inactivity - blossoms forth.
Leonardo put it well:
"Quiet water becomes stagnant. Iron rusts from disuse.
So doth inactivity sap the vigour of the mind."
--Professor Julius Sumner Miller
From his introduction to his book "Millergrams"
brevity is the soul of wit...
tempes fugit --- time flies
carpe diem --- seize the day
you get what you pay for...
a thing of beauty is a joy forever...
he that will not reason is a bigot...
he that cannot reason is a fool...
and he that dares not reason is a slave...
time is a commodity we cannot save, earn, invest, or gain interest on... we can only spend it... so spend every second of it wisely...
when you know a thing, hold that you know it... when you know not a thing, allow that you know it not... this is knowledge...
to doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions... both dispense with the necessity of reflection...
the truth may not be helpful, but the concealment of it cannot be...
all generalizations are dangerous...
even this one...
a harmful truth is better than a useful lie...
as scarce as truth is, the supply has always been greater than the demand...
know what you believe and why you believe it...
our beliefs may predispose us to misinterpret the facts, when ideally the facts should serve as the evidence upon which we base our beliefs...
man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true...
our beliefs are not automatically updated by the best evidence available... they often have an active life of their own and fight tenaciously for their survival...
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever you have left, no matter how improbable, is your answer...
we have to live today by what truth we can get today, and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood...
call him wise whose actions, words, and deeds are all a clear 'because' to a clear 'why'...
do not raise your voice when you should reinforce your argument...
i object to intellect without discipline, power without constructive purpose...
the more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play...
you are what you do when no one is looking...
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
- Carl Sandburg
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
- Pablo Picasso
There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work.
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
- Louis Kronenberger
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honor that; try to imitate it, and your faults will drop off like dead leaves when their time comes.
- John Ruskin
Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
- Elizabeth Bibesco
The trouble with many married people is that they are trying to get more out of marriage than there is in it.
- Elbert Hubbard
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
- Goethe
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
- John Andrew Holmes
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.
- Buddha
If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.
- Epicurus
Someone has to give way.
There is a rule in sailing that the more maneuverable ship should give way to the less maneuverable craft.
I think this is sometimes a good rule to follow in human relationships as well.
- Dr. Joyce Brothers
A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
- John Dewey
1) everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.
-Douglas Adams
Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, Make Me Feel Important. Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.
- Mary Kay Ash
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second is disastrous.
- Margot Fonteyn
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
- Samuel Johnson
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
- Maya Angelou
Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
- Milan Kundera
The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.
- G.C. Lichtenberg
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
- Bertrand Russell
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
- Theodore Rubin
"No legacy is so rich as honesty."
- William Shakespeare
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."
- Confucius
"The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration."
- Ernest Newman
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
- Helen Keller
"Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think."
- Benjamin Disraeli
"Joy can be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their own personal happiness."
- Leo Tolstoy
"I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate."
- George Burns
"The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be. This is a habit followed by all successful people since the beginning of time. Therefore I say the surest way to doom yourself to mediocrity is to perform only the work for which you are paid."
- Og Mandino
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal."
- Hannah More
"Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped."
- African proverb
"This only grant me, that my means may lie too low for envy, for contempt too high."
- Abraham Cowley
"The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing."
- William Ralph Inge
"He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
- Thomas Paine
"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
- Marcel Proust
"It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are."
- ee cummings
"Do not insist that the universe comply with your understanding of it."
- Gary Zukav
"Heaven on Earth is a choice you must make, not a place you must find."
- Wayne Dyer
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things."
- T.S. Eliot
"Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you into trouble."
- Frank Tyger
"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."
- Cecil Beaton
"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
- E. B. White
"The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him."
- Voltaire
"I find that it is not the circumstances in which we are placed, but the spirit in which we face them, that constitutes our comfort."
- Elizabeth T. King
"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."
- Harry S. Truman
"You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive."
- James Baldwin
"He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet."
- Joseph Joubert
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei
"You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings."
- Pearl S. Buck
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and the fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not
enforced silence."
- Louis Brandeis
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
- Stanislaw Lee
"Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not."
- Henry Fielding
"Technology ... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."
- Max Frisch
"The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning."
- Robert King Morton
"At high tide the fish eat ants; at low tide the ants eat fish."
- Thai Proverb
"Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college."
- Lilian Smith
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something."
- T.H. Huxley
"Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance."
- Samuel Butler
"Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds - all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have."
- Edward Everett Hale
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."
- Carl Jung
"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."
- Voltaire
"Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due."
- William R. Inge
"When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light."
- John W. Gardner
"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think."
- Edwin Schlossberg
"To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals - that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him."
- Honore De Balzac
"Drama is life with the dull bits cut out."
- Alfred Hitchcock