Great Throughts Treasury

"Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent." - R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

"So, what is the task of the medical system? Our modern view of disease is that disease is centered in the body. The older view of disease is that it is soul loss, a loss of connection, of meaning, of purpose, of essence. If this is so, the real task of the medical system is to heal soul loss, to aid in the retrieval of the soul. The entire culture is ill with soul loss. What is needed is not to bring spirit into our work, to develop more of a spiritual practice or to go to church more. Our task is to recognize that we are always on sacred ground, that there is no split between the sacred and secular. That the living god is dancing on our back. That there is no task that is not sacred in nature and no relationship that is not sacred in nature. Life is a spiritual practice. Health care, which serves life, is a spiritual practice. Disease is a spiritual path, too. Much illness is caused by the loss of the soul. Many, many people live lives that are empty. This emptiness is caused, in some part, by living without meaning, or with meaning that is much too small, too trivial, or too material for the needs of a human being." - Rachel Naomi Remen

"Man is the individualized expression or reflection of God imaged forth and made manifest in bodily form. How is it, then, I hear it asked, that man has the limitations that he has, that he is subject to fears and forebodings, that he is liable to sin and error, that he is the victim of disease and suffering? There is but one reason. He is not living, except in rare cases here and there, in the conscious realization of his own true Being, and hence of his own true Self." - Ralph Waldo Trine

"Prayer and the company of holy men. You cannot get rid of an ailment without the help of a physician. But it is not enough to be in the company of religious people only for a day. You should constantly seek it, for the disease has become chronic. Again, you can't understand the pulse rightly unless you live with a physician. Moving with him constantly, you learn to distinguish between the pulse of phlegm and the pulse of bile." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"The disease of worldliness is like typhoid. And there are a huge jug of water and a jar of savoury pickles in the typhoid patient's room. If you want to cure him of his illness, you must remove him from that room. The worldly man is like the typhoid patient. The various objects of enjoyment are the huge jug of water, and the craving for their enjoyment is his thirst. The very thought of pickles makes the mouth water; you don't have to bring them near. And he is surrounded with them. The companionship of woman is the pickles. Hence treatment in solitude is necessary." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"Eradication of microbial disease is a will-o'-the-wisp; pursuing it leads into a morass of hazy biological concepts and half-truths." - René Dubos, fully René Jules Dubos

"Another example might be suppose you take the argument in favor of abortion up until the baby was one year old, if a baby was one year old and turned out to have some horrible incurable disease that meant it was going to die in agony in later life, what about infanticide? Strictly morally I can see no objection to that at all, I would be in favor of infanticide but I think i would worry about/I think I would wish at least to give consideration to the person who says 'where does it end?'" - Richard Dawkins

"Incidentally, psycho-analysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease - lots of different spirits etc. The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air ; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria. So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment..." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you 'play' with them!" - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"Those who are given to quarrelling with themselves always lack comfort, and through their infirmities they are prone to feed on such bitter things as will most nourish that disease which troubles them ... We must not judge of ourselves always according to present feeling ... We must beware of false reasoning, such as: because our fire does not blaze out as others, therefore we have no fire at all. By false conclusions we may come to sin against the commandment in bearing false witness against ourselves." - Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs)

"There is an international disease which feeds on the notion that if you have a cause to defend, you can use any means to further your cause, since the end justifies the means. As an international community, we must oppose this notion, whether it be in Canada, in the United States, or anywhere else. No cause justifies violence as long as the system provides for change by peaceful means." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"Food, improperly taken, not only produces original diseases, but affords those that are already engendered both matter and sustenance; so that, let the father of disease be what it may. Intemperance is certainly its mother." - Robert Burton

"Trusting In Mind - The Great Way is not difficult, Just don’t pick and choose. If you cut off all likes or dislikes Everything is clear like space. Make the slightest distinction And heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see the truth, Don’t think for or against. Likes and dislikes Are the mind’s disease. Without understanding the deep meaning You cannot still your thoughts. It is clear like space, Nothing missing, nothing extra. If you want something You cannot see things as they are. Outside, don’t get tangled in things. Inside, don’t get lost in emptiness. Be still and become One And all opposites disappear. If you stop moving to become still, This stillness always moves. If you hold on to opposites, How can you know One? If you don’t understand One, This and that cannot function. Denied, the world asserts itself. Pursued, emptiness is lost. The more you think and talk, The more you lose the Way. Cut off all thinking And pass freely anywhere. Return to the root and understand. Chase appearances and lose the source. One moment of enlightenment Illuminates the emptiness before you. Emptiness changing into things Is only our deluded view. Do not seek the truth. Only put down your opinions. Do not live in the world of opposites. Be careful! Never go that way. If you make right and wrong, Your mind is lost in confusion. Two comes from One, But do not cling even to this One. When your mind is undisturbed The ten thousand things are without fault. No fault, no ten thousand things, No disturbance, no mind. No world, no one to see it. No one to see it, no world. This becomes this because of that. That becomes that because of this. If you wish to understand both, See them as originally one emptiness. In emptiness the two are the same, And each holds the ten thousand things. If you no longer see them as different, How can you prefer one to another? The Way is calm and wide, Not easy, not difficult. But small minds get lost. Hurrying, they fall behind. Clinging, they go too far, Sure to take a wrong turn, Just let it be! In the end, Nothing goes, nothing stays. Follow nature and become one with the Way, Free and easy and undisturbed. Tied by your thoughts, you lose the truth, Become heavy, dull, and unwell. Not well, the mind is troubled. Then why hold or reject anything? If you want to get the One Vehicle Do not despise the world of the senses. When you do not despise the six senses, That is already enlightenment. The wise do not act. The ignorant bind themselves. In true Dharma there is no this or that, So why blindly chase your desires? Using mind to stir up the mind Is the original mistake. Peaceful and troubled are only thinking. Enlightenment has no likes or dislikes. All opposites arise From faulty views. Illusions, flowers in the air – Why try to grasp them? Win, lose, right, wrong – Put it all down! If the eye never sleeps, Dreams disappear by themselves. If the mind makes no distinctions, The ten thousand things are one essence. Understand this dark essence And be free from entanglements. See the ten thousand things as equal And you return to your original nature Enlightened beings everywhere All enter this source. This source is beyond time and space. One moment is ten thousand years. Even if you cannot see it, The whole universe is before your eyes. Infinitely small is infinitely large: No boundaries, no differences. Infinitely large is infinitely small: Measurements do not matter here. What is is the same as what is not. What is not is the same as what is. Where it is not like this, Don’t bother staying. One is all, All is one. When you see things like this, You do not worry about being incomplete. Trust and Mind are not two. Not-two is trusting the Mind. Words and speech don’t cut it, Can’t now, never could, won’t ever." - Sen T’Sen, aka Seng T'San, Jianzhi Sengcan, Kanchi Sosan, Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen

"The two systems have unique disadvantages as well as advantages. Thus, the rational system, although superior to the experiential system in abstract thinking, is inferior in its ability to automatically and effortlessly direct everyday behavior, and the experiential system, although superior in directing everyday behavior is inferior in its ability to think abstractly, to comprehend cause-and-effect relations, to delay gratification, and to plan for the distant future. Since each system has equally important advantages and disadvantages, neither system can be considered superior to the other system." - Seymour Epstein

"Illumination is eternal. Now is always evolving. As there are billions of stars, there are billions of steps.As there are billions of souls, there are billions of ways to grow." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Before we are born we are defiled with contagion, and before the enjoyment of light we receive the injury of our very origin. For we are conceived in iniquity… Birth itself has its contagions, and not only one, but nature itself has contagion." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"A merciful man is the physician of his own soul. Like a violent wind he drives the darkness of the passions out of his inner self." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second, hand." - Samuel Butler

"In a man's letters his soul lies naked." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Were a man not to marry a second time, it might be concluded that his first wife had given him a disgust to marriage; but by taking a second wife, he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"At any moment each person is always doing the VERY BEST he can, based on his total conscious and non-conscious prevailing awareness and which is within his capabilities, energy, time, and developed talents and abilities. If people are always doing the very best they can, it is illogical and irrational to expect them to do better. What is the reason this concept is so important to understand? If it is true, then it is counterproductive to criticize someone for not meeting or conforming to an expectation or standard until they have the awareness of the benefits they will receive by conforming. What needs to exist is for people to be made aware of how they will get better results, by pointing out the consequences of their behavior and giving them the choice and opportunity to make adjustments." - Sidney Madwed

"Before we are born we are defiled with contagion, and before the enjoyment of light we receive the injury of [our] very origin. For we are conceived in iniquity... Birth itself has its contagions, and not only one, but nature itself has contagion." - Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL

"Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory that are due to his name, and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. Usually, the most praying souls are the most assured souls." - Thomas Brooks

"Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say." - Thomas Jefferson

"We should be determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson

"And his heart was stirred, it felt a father's kindness: such an emotion as the possessor of beauty can inspire in one who has offered himself up in spirit to create beauty." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"The better day, the better deed." - Thomas Middleton

"There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude." - Thomas Paine

"Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory." - William Barclay

"The horrid mystery hanging over us in this house gets into my head like liquor, and makes me wild." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"The men who rise in the law are the men who decline to take No for an answer." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"Defeat is nothing but education, nothing but the first step to something better." - Wendell Phillips

"There is no pond which the sun cannot dry up. - Kenya Proverb" -

"The kindly individual believes that all people are kindly and act accordingly. The plague individual believes that all people lie, swindle, steal and crave power. Clearly, then, the living is at a disadvantage and in danger." - Wilhelm Reich

"I’ve come down from the sky like some damned ghost, delayed too long…To the abandoned fields the trees returned and grew. They stand and grow. Time comes to them, time goes, the trees stand; the only place they go is where they are. Those wholly patient ones… They do no wrong, and they are beautiful. What more Could we have thought to ask?... I stand and wait for light to open the dark night. I stand and wait for prayer to come and find me here." - Wendell Berry

"The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life." - Wendell Berry

"The soil under the grass is dreaming of a young forest, and under the pavement the soil is dreaming of grass." - Wendell Berry

"The surface mind is like a dinghy on a vast sea. Dreams are the dimension for initiation and awakenings. Revelations, healing, or the reflection of a potential healing show up in dreams. One puts oneself into a vulnerable position because one surrenders the surface mind’s preferential viewpoint and goes into letting the dream reveal what its forces might be, and what the intent of the vaster nature is. Denied aspects by the surface psyche are cast into the unconscious where they live their material and influence not only us but others as well, whether we are conscious of it or not. The ego can’t project, it can’t cast out, it is predominantly a witness. What you think are your resources, and who and what you think you are is really a mask, and it precludes your seeing the authentic being. The whole development in the second half of life is to discover the authentic being and to release the defenses, and the masks, and meeting other people’s expectations. We begin to explore the mystery of natural beingness which is a very strange things for human beings – we have to be trained back into it." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"The words that convey the secret of the art of living, the secret of success and happiness: ONE WITH LIFE, being one with NOW. You don’t live your life, life lives you. Life is the dancer and you are the dance." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"The religion of one age is often the poetry of the next. Around every living and operative faith there lies a region of allegory and of imagination into which opinions frequently pass, and in which they long retain a transfigured and idealised existence after their natural life has died away. They are, as it were, deflected. They no longer tell directly and forcibly upon human actions. They no longer produce terror, inspire hopes, awake passions, or mould the characters of men; yet they still exercise a kind of reflex influence, and form part of the ornamental culture of the age. They are turned into allegories. They are interpreted in a non-natural sense. They are invested with a fanciful, poetic, but most attractive garb. They follow instead of controlling the current of thought, and being transformed by far-fetched and ingenious explanations, they become the embellishments of systems of belief that are wholly irreconcilable with their original tendencies. The gods of heathenism were thus translated from the sphere of religion to the sphere of poetry. The grotesque legends and the harsh doctrines of a superstitious faith are so explained away, that they appear graceful myths foreshadowing and illustrating the conceptions of a brighter day. For a time they flicker upon the horizon with a softly beautiful light that enchants the poet, and lends a charm to the new system with which they are made to blend; but at last this too fades away. Religious ideas die like the sun; their last rays, possessing little heat, are expended in creating beauty." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"Vast tribes of savages, who had always been idolaters, who were perfectly incapable, from their low state of civilization, of forming any but anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity, or of concentrating their attention steadily on any invisible object, and who for the most part were converted not by individual persuasion but by the commands of their chiefs, embraced Christianity in such multitudes that their habits of mind soon became the dominating habits of the Church. From this time the tendency to idolatry was irresistible. The old images were worshipped under new names, and one of the most prominent aspects of the Apostolical teaching was in practice ignored." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"A good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Dearest, I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. No one could have done more than you have done. Please believe that. But I know that I shall never get over this: and I am wasting your life. It is this madness. Nothing anyone says can persuade me. You can work, and you will be much better without me. You see I can't write this even, which shows I am right. All I want to say is that until this disease came on we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that. V." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"Death is woven in with the violets, said Louis. Death and again death." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"I feel my brains, like a pear, to see if it's ripe; it will be exquisite by September." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl