tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90132506440393539082024-02-20T11:31:29.551-05:00Doug's Commonplace BookDoughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-53308683375146583312009-01-27T09:07:00.002-05:002009-01-27T09:14:48.507-05:00Excerpts from Micah Clarke, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle[In speaking of a letter he's just received, Micah Clarke says] "Tis from the venerable carpenter who hath for many years been my adviser and friend. He is one who is religious without being sectarian, philosophic without being a partisan, and loving without being weak." <br />p. 1217 (Gutenberg Project edition)<br /><br />[The carpenter, Zachariah Carpenter, writes to Micah] "I doubt not that you will find among your comrades some who are extreme sectaries, and others who are scoffers and disbelievers. Be advised by me, friend, and avoid both the one and the other. For the zealot is a man who not only defends his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice, but wishes to impose upon the consciences of others, by which he falls into the very error against which he fights. The mere brainless scoffer is, on the other hand, lower than the beast of the field, since he lacks the animal's self-respect and humble resignation."<br />p. 1220Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-22907340953540428992009-01-23T09:05:00.001-05:002009-01-23T09:05:59.054-05:00Carol sent me thisAd Coelum<br /><br />At the muezzin's call for prayer,<br />The kneeling faithful thronged the square,<br />And on Pushkara's lofty height<br />The dark priest chanted Brahma's might.<br />Amid a monastery's weeds<br />And old Franciscan told his beads;<br />While to the synagogue there came<br />A Jew to praise Jehovah's name.<br />The one great God looked down and smiled<br />And counted each His loving child;<br />For Turk and Brahmin, monk and Jew<br />Had reached Him through the gods they knew.<br /><br />--Harry Romaine, "Munsey's Magazine", Jan. 1895Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-74166344009929293112008-11-15T08:02:00.000-05:002008-11-15T08:03:10.483-05:00Only one environmental conflict“I believe there’s only one environmental conflict, and that’s between short-term and long-term thinking. In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it’s unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature.” <br /><br />-Mollie Beattie, first woman to head the U.S. Fish and Wildlife ServiceDoughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-62765776202689677052008-11-15T07:00:00.000-05:002008-11-15T07:01:09.263-05:00Adams on prejudiceBefore the [Continental] Congress had opened, John Adams had filled his diary with dismayed comments on the pervasive suspicion of New Englanders. A group of Philadelphia Quakers reminded the Massachusetts delegation that their ancestors had hanged several Quakers in the previous century and laws still barred the sect from the province. "We have numberless prejudices to remove here," Adams wrote to one friend back home. "We have been obliged to act with great delicacy and caution."<br /> Liberty, by Thomas Fleming; page 94Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-42079067898785475802008-11-15T06:58:00.000-05:002008-11-15T06:59:17.349-05:00My wishIf you choose not to believe the scientifically-verifiable laws that govern our world, perhaps you would move on to the heavenly world you do believe in, and leave this one to the care and keeping of those of us who do.Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-25074836718254396822008-11-15T06:56:00.001-05:002008-11-15T06:56:47.694-05:00More wisdomAbraham Lincoln said on November 21, 1864 "Corporations have been ENTHRONED and an era of corruption in high places will follow..."Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-20783180960590283642007-12-11T12:19:00.000-05:002007-12-11T13:38:30.750-05:00Barry Goldwater, of all people, said this."I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'"<br /> Barry GoldwaterDoughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-69752348785144034802007-12-11T11:48:00.001-05:002007-12-11T11:48:41.149-05:00FlickrThis is a test post from <a href="http://www.flickr.com/r/testpost"><img alt="flickr" src="http://www.flickr.com/images/flickr_logo_blog.gif" width="41" height="18" border="0" align="absmiddle" /></a>, a fancy photo sharing thing.Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-31945411454442203112007-12-08T18:26:00.001-05:002007-12-08T18:26:41.862-05:00Thanks to Allison for this one.I find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. The longer I live the more my mind dwells on the beauty and the wonder of the world. <br />- John BurroughsDoughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-81994772368051424872007-09-13T10:08:00.000-04:002007-09-13T10:09:17.707-04:00Definition of commonplace book"Commonplace-book. Formerly Book of common places. orig. A book in which 'commonplaces' or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement." From The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. First usage recorded: 1578.Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-34870173902052152882007-09-13T10:06:00.000-04:002007-09-13T10:07:01.002-04:00Now this makes sense."I was still that child in The Snow Queen, asking 'what is sin?' but not knowing how to find out. Fortunately a Benedictine friend provided one answer: 'Sin, in the New Testament,' he told me, 'is the failure to do concrete acts of love.' That is something I can live with, a guide in my conversion. It's also a much better definition of sin than I learned as a child: sin as breaking rules.<br /> "Comprehensible, sensible sin is one of the unexpected gifts I've found in the monastic tradition. The fourth-century monks began to answer a question for me that the human potential movement of the late twentieth century never seemed to address: if I'm O.K. and you're O.K., and our friends (nice people and, like us, markedly middle class, if a bit bohemian) are O.K., why is the world definitely not O.K.? Blaming others wouldn't do. Only when I began to see the world's ills mirrored in myself did I begin to find an answer; only as I began to address that uncomfortable word, sin, did I see that I was not being handed a load of needless guilt so much as a useful tool for confronting the negative side of human behavior."<br /> --Kathleen Norris in Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-80405625495329363482007-09-13T10:04:00.001-04:002007-09-13T10:04:54.170-04:00Sometimes I feel like this."Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."<br /> --Benjamin FranklinDoughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-33092537422479964692007-09-13T10:01:00.000-04:002007-09-13T10:02:12.410-04:00Fabulous!"The Americans who call themselves "Conservatives" have the right to the title only in a particular sense. In fact, they are old-fashioned liberals. They stand for the freedom of the individual to use his property as he wishes, and for a limited government which must keep out of the marketplace. Their concentration on freedom from governmental interference has more to do with nineteenth-century liberalism than with traditional convervatism, which asserts the right of the community to restrain freedom in the name of the common good. Senator Goldwater appealed directly to the American Constitution and to Locke, its philosophical architect. The Senator's chief economic adviser, Professor Milton Friedman, appeals to the British liberal economists of the nineteenth century. They are "conservatives" only in terms of the short history of their own country. They claim that the authentic American tradition went off the rails with the mass liberalism of the New Deal and should return to the individualism of the founding fathers. The makers of the Constitution took their philosophy from the first wave of modernity; the spirit of the New Deal belonged to the later waves of liberalism. In this sense, Goldwater is an American conservative. But what he conserves is the liberal philosophy of Locke. The founders of the United States took their thought from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Their rallying cry was "freedom." There was no place in their cry for the organic conservatism that pre-dated the age of progress. Indeed, the United States is the only society on earth that has no traditions from before the age of progress. Their "right-wing" and "left-wing" are just different species of liberalism. "Freedom" was the slogan of both Goldwater and President Johnson."<br /> --George Grant, from Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism.Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-81227633381868233962007-09-13T09:45:00.000-04:002007-11-13T17:58:50.983-05:00Here's plenty for comment . . .Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin. <br /><br /> ~anonymous <br /><br />All belief systems are just dry bones unless they impel people to actions which edify humanity or improve the natural world, or both.<br /> GDC<br /><br />"Quite rightly we criticize that in most Islamic states the role of<br />religion in society and the secular character of the legal system are<br />not clearly separated. But we haven't taken note as readily of the<br />U.S. Christian fundamentalists and their interpretation of the bible<br />that show similar tendencies."<br /><br />"There is thus little scope for peaceful resolutions if both sides<br />claim to have a monopoly on the only truth."<br /><br />Gerhard Schroder, former German Chancellor, in "Decisions: My Life in Politics," published in Der Spiegel magazine<br /><br /><br />So it didn't take an attack or cancer for him to reflect on his own mortality-he did it all the time. You know, he'd say, "One of these days I'm gonna be dead and you're gonna have to look after these trees!" And I'd be, "Stop saying that, Dad!" And he'd be like, "But it's true." Because he was a realist. And I'm very much the same way. Everyone is gonna die, but no one thinks they're gonna die. No one. And that's like the biggest blind spot that everyone in the world has, this inability to believe that they're gonna die. And I think the sooner you address that, the better, really. It's like practice, really.<br /><br />Dhani Harrison, regarding his father, George Harrison<br /><br /><br />Jameson said, "Several times in my life I've been in a tough spot, something I couldn't get out of by myself. Somebody always came along. Most often it was a stranger, somebody I never saw before or ever saw again. Seems like we go through life owing gratitude to strangers. The only way we can ever repay them is to help some other stranger. It all evens up, in the long pull."<br />-- from Buffalo Wagons, by Elmer Kelton (p. 134)<br /><br /><br />"I do the very best I know how - the very best I can;<br />and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end<br />brings me out all right, what is said against me won't<br />amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong,<br />ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."<br /><br />-Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)<br /><br /><br /><br />"There is mounting evidence that failure to respond to the business risks associated with climate change could result in multi-billion dollar losses for U.S. businesses and investment portfolios," said John Harrington, CEO of Harrington Investments and author of The Challenge To Power: Money, Investing and Democracy. "In addition, companies that take proactive measures to address climate risk enjoy lower costs, higher profit margins and enhanced customer loyalty. With companies outside the U.S. already taking a leading role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, American companies face a 'sustainability gap' that could affect their competitive edge."<br /><br /> "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."<br /><br /> Albert Einstein<br /><br /><br />Those who give up essential liberty to preserve a little temporary safety, <br />deserve neither liberty nor safety.<br /> -- Benjamin FranklinDoughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9013250644039353908.post-27993640077471388932007-08-11T06:53:00.000-04:002007-08-11T16:48:47.360-04:00A first round . . .The quote I had put under my childhood picture in our high school annual the year I graduated was " . . . to feel the wind on my face and God all around me . . . "<br /><br />Work every day as if it were your first, yet tenderly treat the lives you touch as if they will all end at midnight. Love everyone, even those who deny you, for hate is a luxury you cannot afford. <br /> -- Og Mandino<br /><br />To be wronged is nothing, unless you remember it (Confucius said this). Therefore, commit to memory those things that are worth remembering. (GDC)<br /><br />In the absence of objectivity (which is impossible), integrity must suffice. (GDC)<br /><br />Life isn't fair by design. We must make it so. (GDC)<br /><br />"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."<br />Theodore Roosevelt, 1918<br /><br />Illegitimi non carborundum!!<br />???? ??????Doughttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18411457619577102830noreply@blogger.com0