2005-12-14

Taking turns on my blog

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Little things are but parts of the great. The grass does not spring up full grown by eruption. It rises up and increases as noiselessly and gently as not to disturb an angel’s ear, perhaps is invisible to an angel’s eye. The rain does not fall in masses but in drops; the planets do not leap in their orbits, but inch by inch and line by line they circle the orbits. Intellect, feeling, habit, character, all become what they are through the influence of little things, and in morals and religion, it is by little things, by little actions, that every one of us is going—not by leaps, yet surely by inches—either to life or death eternal.

---David O. McKay


"Well, I don't think rocks would be very interesting to God," I said. "They just sit on the ground and erode."
"You think that way because you are unable to see the storm of activity at the rock's molecular level or the level beneath that, and so on. And you are limited by your perception of time. If you watched a rock you entire lifewouldoudl never look different. But if you were God and could observe the rock over fifteen billion years as though only a second had passed, the rock would be frantic with activity. It would be shrinking and growing and trading matter with its environmeIts ITs molecules would travel the universe and become partner to amazing things that we could never imagine. By contrast, the odd collection of molecules that make a human being will stay in that arrangement for less time than it takes the universe to blink...."


---Scott Adams


The faith that stands on authority is not faith. The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.... Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. It believes in itself.... It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time.... He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.

---Ralph Waldo Emerson


We say that God Himself is a self-existing being. Who told you so? It is correct enough; but how did it get into your heads? Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles....
I am dwelling on the immortality of the spirit of man. Is it logical to say that the intelligence of spirits is immortal, and yet that it has a beginning? The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. That is good logic. That which has a beginning may have an end. There never was a time when there were not spirits; for they are co-equal with our Father in heaven.


---Joseph Smith


But even now it is manifest and clear that there are neither times future nor times past. Thus it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a time present of things future. For these three do coexist somehow in the soul, for otherwise I could not see them. The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation.[437] If we are allowed to speak of these things so, I see three times, and I grant that there are three. Let it still be said, then, as our misapplied custom has it: "There are three times, past, present, and future." I shall not be troubled by it, nor argue, nor object--always provided that what is said is understood, so that neither the future nor the past is said to exist now. There are but few things about which we speak properly--and many more about which we speak improperly--though we understand one another's meaning.

---St. Augustine


Please vote for your favorite.

9 comments:

  1. what will the quote be used for? it has an impact on my chioce

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  2. .

    Nothing. Just curious. Choose more than one and defend variously.

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  3. "defend variously"

    I gotta write an essay too??!?!?! forget it, I hate them all...

    ;)


    kyuhuzkj

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  4. I feel somewhat disloyal by not choosing Joseph Smith, especially since it's almost his birthday and everything, but since Nemesis sent me her fatal illness germs(cleverly concealed in a Christmas card), my brain is in a profound haze, and I am incapable of deep thought. Therefore, I choose the Scott Adams quote.

    I do wonder about the source, though. Are you sure it wasn't Douglas Adams who said that? He seems to have a lot more to say about life, the universe, and everything that Scott does, who usually limits his philosophizing to the workings (or antiworkings) of the corporate world.

    Maybe it's the fuzzy brain--I don't know. Forgive me.

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  5. I love the first one. I may be biased, though, because I taught that lesson last Sunday. It was, as my dad says, a humdinger.

    BTW, I loved teaching that lesson and reading it. It really got me thinking about certain aspects of a Christlike character. Lots of personal revelation in the last week. Maybe when I finish with tonight's final, I'll expound back in Hassland.

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  6. .

    Please do, Miss Hass. And thank you for not poisoning your Christmas card. It had not occurred to me that our illnesses may well be Miss Nemesis's fault.

    By the way, the two of you have excellent taste in Christmas cards.

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  7. .

    Oh!

    Dg--it is Scott Adams in his book "God's Debris" which proposes that the universe is made up of God who blew himself up (just to see if he could do it) and is slowly reassembling himself. You can download it as a pdf if you look hard enough.

    Mandi--Relax. No one's grading you.

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  8. Okay FINE:

    The time present of things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct experience; the time present of things future is expectation

    I had to this one several times to "get it" (my once dormant dyslexia has been rearing it's head again lately due to someone's booby-trapped word verifications) . Since I have read it over and over, I feel we have a bond now and I am choosing it as my favorite.

    Also because I never thought of it like that- I guess St. Augustine didn't belive in time travel....

    ufcqlfml

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  9. .

    That Augustine. I guess now is future present only dead....

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