Your Quote of the Day

It's interesting that the beginner thinks that the ecstasy is the goal of the spiritual quest. But it's not, not any more than the high from LSD. Mystics like Tolstoy aren't going around high all the time.

I don't believe he implied such.

I think the goal of taking LSD is to get high.

I knew a real acid casualty who once dropped acid and then spent the next twelve hours on his hands and knees looking for the trip he had just swallowed.

He always reminded me of the Hunter S Thompson quotation,"Forget about LSD, look at what it's done to that poor bastard."

I was lucky enough to have no clue how to get drugs when at an age of susceptibility. By the time I had enough to go on the urge to experiment had passed.

“Actually there were many officers' clubs that Yossarian had not helped build, but he was proudest of the one on Pianosa. It was a sturdy and complex monument to his powers of determination. Yossarian never went there to help until it was finished; then he went there often, so pleased was he with the large , fine, rambling shingled building. It was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

That's the mistaken goal of the neophyte on a spiritual quest, to get high, the bliss of the womb. The spontaneous high motivated many people toward a spiritual quest. But they chased the high, and as many of them found out, that's not the goal of the spiritual quest. The mystic does not go around high all the time.

In the seventies, a number of religious teachers including Buddhist priests migrated to the United States because they felt a newness, a beginner's mind of young people that needed assistance. I read about a Zen priest in Japan who got fed up because zen became nothing more than a ritual and status seeking for the young graduates of the University. They wanted the certificate on the wall stating that they attended a Zen Institute.

I've stated elsewhere my personal take on being spiritual. Don't see the need to pursue it here.

That's good. Essentially, nothing can be said, just historically.

“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
― Frederick Douglass

Quotes Mistakenly Attributed to Shakespeare

Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive. - Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)

No man is an island. - John Donne (The Bait, 1624)

Come live with me and be my love. - Christopher Marlowe (Passionate Shepherd to his Love, 1599)

For you suffer fools gladly, seeing yourself as wise. - II Corinthians 11:19.

Remember, that time is money. - Benjamin Franklin (Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748)

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. - 14th-Century proverb famously recalled in Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. - William Congreve (The Mourning Bride, 1.1)

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. - William Congreve (The Mourning Bride, 3.8)

I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul. - William Ernest Henley (Invictus, 1875)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1850)

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my Good. - John Milton (Paradise Lost, bk.iv,1.108, 1667)

War is the trade of kings. - John Dryden (King Arthur, II.ii, 1691)

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. -- Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities, 1859)

The law is a ass. -- Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist, 1838)

These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul. -- Guillaume Du Bartas (Divine Weekes and Workes, Sixth Day)

"Tobacco is one of the most precious gifts from the New World to the old, a gift which has brought peace and contentment to men throughout four centuries."

Opening sentence of Tobacco it's culture and manufacture, a book produced by tobacconists HD and HW Will in 1931.

I picked up the second edition, published in 1936, at a car boot sale this morning.

"Hitch your wagon to a star."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Oh, and I certainly don't suffer from schizophrenia. I quite enjoy it. And so do I.”
― Emilie Autumn

I don't think the individual concerned was on a spiritual quest, I think they were completely fucked.

“Cruz [Ted] can be really hard to get along with, but I understand that in a couple weeks he’s planning to launch a charm offensive. He’s having a little trouble with the charm part but he’s got the offensive part down cold.“
--Al Franken

“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Trump Claimed Election 'Rigged' Or 'Stolen' Over 100 Times Ahead Of Capitol Riot

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
-- Joseph Goebbels-- Nazi propaganda minister

"A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation."
Howard Scott

“The modern superstition is that we're free of superstition.”
―Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

"There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt."
-- Mark Twain's "A Whisper To The Reader" from "Pudd'nhead Wilson" (1894)