REFLECTIONS

The war has made us a nation of great power and intelligence. We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness and prosperity at home, and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to Teach us the necessity of the first; our power secures the latter.

I feel that we are on the eve of a new era, when there is to be great harmony between the Federal and Confederate. I cannot stay to be a living witness to the correctness of this prophecy; but I feel it within me that it is to be so. The universally kind feeling expressed for me at a time when it was supposed that each day would prove my last, seemed to me the beginning of the answer to "Let us have peace."

The expressions of these kindly feelings were not restricted to a section of the country, nor to a division of the people. They came from individual citizens of all nationalities; from all denominations-the Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew; and from the various societies of the land-scientific, educational, religious, or otherwise. Politics did not enter into the matter at all.

I am not egotist enough to suppose all this significance should be given because I was the object of it. But the war between the States was a very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the other had to yield principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be brought to an end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the victorious side. I was, no matter whether deservedly so or not, a representative of that side of the controversy. It is a significant and gratifying fact that Confederates should have joined heartily in this spontaneous move. I hope the good feeling inaugurated may continue to the end.

Ulysses S. Grant (conclusion of his Memories)

"The man should have youth and strength who seeks adventure in the wide, waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid the steaming jungles of the tropics, or on the desert of sand or of snow. He must long greatly for the lonely winds that blow across the wilderness, and for sunrise and sunset over the rim of the empty world."


Theodore Roosevelt

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit
atrocities.
-Voltaire

As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall
die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.
- Tears and Saints

What to think of other people? I ask myself this question each time
I make a new acquaintance. So strange does it seem to me that we
exist, and consent to exist.
- Drawn and Quartered

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it.
I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be
ignorant of how unhappy they are.
- The Trouble with Being Born

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long
ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull
banality of truth.
- Tears and Saints

We smile, because no answer is conceivable, because the answer would
be even more meaningless than the question.
- The Trouble with Being Born

I feel I am free but I know I am not.
- The Trouble with Being Born

Quotes from E.M.Cioran
http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11072/Cioran/

The Blind Men and the Elephant


John Godfrey Saxe

1816-1887


It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind)
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to brawl:
"God bless me but the Elephant
Is very like a wall."
The second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho! What have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see", quoth he, "The Elephant
Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out a cager hand,
And felt around the knee,
"What must this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain." quoth he;
"'tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can, This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
is very like a rope !"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each of his own opinion
Exceding stiff and strong
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong !

Moral
So oft is theological wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen

"If there is a heaven...I don't want a mansion or a palace, Della. I
want a schoolroom, filled with little children, with readers and crayons
and paints and chalk. Little children, all big-eyed and eager to learn.
And I'd want a big library. The biggest library you've ever seen. One
that's opened all the time, not just half days. That's what I hope
heaven's like."

Maudie Ferguson speaking, in Cassandra King's Making Waves. Hyperion,
2004.

Carl Sagan stated,
"We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact."