Don't Call Me "Generation X,"
Call Me a Child of The Eighties
by Bryant Adkins
published in The Reflector
January 20, 1995

I am a child of the eighties. That is what I prefer to be called. The nineties can do without me. Grunge isn't here to stay, fashion is fickle and "Generation X" is a myth created by some over-40 writer trying to figure out why people wear flannel in the summer. When I got home from school, I played with my Atari 2600. I spent hours playing Pitfall or Combat or Breakout or Dodge'em Cars or Frogger. I never did beat Asteroids. Then I watched "Scooby Doo." Daphne was a Goddess, and I thought Shaggy was smoking something synthetic in the back of their psychedelic van. I hated Scrappy.

I would sleep over at friends' houses on the weekends. We played army with G.I. Joe figures, and I set up galactic wars between Autobots and Decepticons. We stayed up half the night throwing marshmallows and Velveeta at one another. We never beat the Rubik's Cube.

I got up on Saturday mornings at 6 a.m. to watch bad Hanna-Barbera cartoons like "The Snorks," "Jabberjaw," "Captain Caveman," and "Space Ghost." In between I would watch "School House Rock." ("Conjunction junction, what's your function?")

On weeknights Daisy Duke was my future wife. I was going to own the General Lee and shoot dynamite arrows out the back. Why did they weld the doors shut? At the movies the Nerds got Revenge on the Alpha Betas by teaming up with the Omega Mus. I watched Indiana Jones save the Ark of the Covenant, and wondered what Yoda meant when he said, "No, there is another."

Ronald Reagan was cool. Gorbachev was the guy who built a McDonalds in Moscow. My family took summer vacations to the Gulf of Mexico and collected "Muppet Movie" glasses along the way. (We had the whole set.) My brother and I fought in the back seat. At the hotel we found creative uses for Connect Four pieces like throwing them in that big air conditioning unit.

I listened to John COUGAR Mellencamp sing about Little Pink Houses for Jack and Diane. I was bewildered by Boy George and the colors of his dreams, red, gold, and green. MTV played videos. Nickelodeon played "You Can't Do That on Television" and "Dangermouse." Cor! HBO showed Mike Tyson pummel everybody except Robin Givens, the bad actress from "Head of the Class" who took all Mike's cashflow.

I drank Dr. Pepper. "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?" Shasta was for losers. TAB was a laboratory accident. Capri Sun was a social statement. Orange juice wasn't just for breakfast anymore, and bacon had to move over for something meatier.

My mom put a thousand Little Debbie Snack Cakes in my Charlie Brown lunch box, and filled my Snoopy Thermos with grape Kool-Aid. I would never eat the snack cakes, though. Did anyone? I got two thousand cheese and cracker snack packs, and I ate those.

I went to school and had recess. I went to the same classes everyday. Some weird guy from the eighth grade always won the science fair with the working hydro-electric plant that leaked on my project about music and plants. They just loved Beethoven.

Field day was bigger than Christmas, but it always managed to rain just enough to make everybody miserable before they fell over in the three-legged race. Where did all those panty hose come from? "Deck the Halls with Gasoline, fa la la la la la la la la," was just a song. Burping was cool. Rubber band fights were cooler. A substitute teacher was a baby sitter/marked woman. Nobody deserved that.

I went to Cub Scouts. I got my arrow-of-light, but never managed to win the Pinewood Derby. I got almost every skill award but don't remember ever doing anything.

The world stopped when the Challenger exploded.

Did a teacher come in and tell your class?

Half of your friends' parents got divorced.

People did not just say no to drugs.

AIDS started, but you knew more people who had a grandparent die from cancer.

Somebody in your school died before they graduated.

When you put all this stuff together, you have my childhood. If this stuff sounds familiar, then I bet you are one, too.

We are children of the eighties. That is what I prefer "they" call it.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
-Goethe

A burden which one chooses is not felt
-Italian proverb

Nothing is more highly prized than the value of each day.
-Goethe

Study without reflection is a waste of time;
reflection without study is dangerous.
-Confucius

The fall of a leaf is a whisper to the living.
-Russian proverb

The grand essentials for this life are
something to do
something to love
and something to hope for.

From a little spark may burst a mighty flame.
-Dante

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward;
they may be beaten
but they may start a winning game.
-Goethe

He is fruitless who is faultless.

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
-Emerson

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the heart.
-Shakespeare

The beginnings of all things are small.
-Cicero

For everything you have missed you have gained something else.
-Emerson

Whatever is in the heart will come up to the tongue.
-Persian proverb

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

They wooed her and she resist;
they neglected her and she fell in love.
-Arabian proverb

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.
-Cicero

Exuberance is beauty.
-Blake

Thinking is the essence of wisdom.
-Persian proverb

The soul's greatest perfection is its capacity for pleasure.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
-Bacon

The gem cannot be polished without friction,
nor man perfected without trials.

He who plants trees loves others besides himself.

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake.
-Confucius

None are so blind as those who won't see.

Books give not wisdom where was none before.

Make the most of yourself,
for that is all there is to you.
-Emerson

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
-Shakespeare

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
-Confucius

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
-Goethe

A man's being in a good or bad humor depends upon his will.
-Johnson

He saith little that loveth much.
-Italian proverb

He who fears death enjoys not life.
-Spanish proverb

One written word is worth a thousand pieces of gold.
-Japanese proverb

He who reigns within himself and rule passions, desires, and fears,
is more than a king.
-Milton

One pardons to the degree that one loves.
-La Rochefoucauld

The past, the present, and the future are really one- they are today
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

Most people are as happy as they make up their minds not be.
-Lincoln

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
-Goethe

What is bitter to endure may be sweet to remember.

Love is the reward of love.
-Sehiller

Fear less, hope more;
eat less, chew more;
whine less, breathe more;
talk less, say more;
hate less, love more;
and all good things are yours.
-Swedish proverb

Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
-Franklin

Following happiness is like chasing the wind,
or clutching the shadow.
-Japanese proverb

The morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness.
-Shakespeare

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
-Seneca

When we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
-La Rochefoucauld

We cannot all be masters.
-Shakespeare

When the fox cannot reach the grapes, he says they are not ripe.
-Aesop

Every cloud engenders not a storm.
-Shakespeare

One can see the heavens through a needle's eye.
-Japanese proverb

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
-Oscar Wilde

A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.

Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice;
but for those who love, time is eternity.
-Henry Van Dyke

Words are the voice of the heart.
-Confucius

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

We walk by faith, not by sight.
-New Testament

If love be timid it is not true.
-Spanish proverb

Men are men, the best sometimes forget.
-Shakespeare

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants.
The question is: What are we busy about?
-Thoreau

It is only when the cold season comes that we know the pine and cypress to be evergreens.
-Chinese proverb

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
-Voltaire

Life is a mirror, if you frown at it, it frowns back;
if you smile, it returns the greeting.
-Thackeray

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
-Shakespeare

Everywhere in life the question is, not what we have gained, but what we do.
-Carlyle

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit.
-Milton

Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant of metals.
-Voltaire

The longest day will have no end.

A mile walked with a friend has only one hundred steps.
-Russian proverb

Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty;
it is not only needless, but it impairs what it would improve.
-Pope

Desire beautifies what is ugly.
-Spanish proverb

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief.
-Addison

When it rains, it rains on all alike.

Good temper, like a sunny day, sheds a ray of brightness over everything; it is the sweetener of toil and the soother of disquietude.
-Confucius

Our sense don't deceive us; our judgement does.
-Goethe

Silence betokens consent.
-Persian proverb

Habits are first cobwebs,
then cables.

The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.
-Emerson

The riches that are in the heart cannot be stolen.
-Russian proverb

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or another, as madmen or innocents, we are already there.
It might be good to open your eyes and see.
-Thomas Merton

Standing on the base ground...a mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
-Emerson

The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
-Empedocles

Love God and do what you will.
-St. Augustine

If you cannot find truth right where you are, where do you expect to find it?
-Dogen

Kensho : realization; seeing into one's own values.

Jiriki : "ones own power," referring to a person's endeavor to attain enlightenment through his or her own efforts.

Zen is the unsymbolization of the world.
-R.H. Blyth

Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them...there is nothing.
-Sartre

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
- Yasutani Roshi

The raindrops patter on the basho leaf, but these are not tears of grief; this is only the anguish of him who is listening to them.
-Zen saying

Our life is frittered away by detail...
Simplify, simplify.
-Thoreau

Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag the idea of a point is to ruin everything. Live and let live, love and let love, flower and face, and follow the natural curve, which flows on, pointless.
-D.H. Lawrence

A morning-glory at my window
satisfies me more than the
metaphysics of books.
-Walt Whitman

The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.

the purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
-Chuang-Tzu

If you meet on the way
a man who knows,
don't speak a word- and don't keep silent!
-Zen saying

If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.
-St. John of the Cross

Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?
-Gauguin (inscription on one of his paintings)

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
-Tom Stoppard

If you want to understand Zen easily, just be mindless, wherever you are, twenty-four hours a day, until you spontaneously merge with the Way.

This is what an ancient worthy called "The mind not touching things, the steps not placed anywhere."
-Ying-An

I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.
-Diogenes

This is what you shall do: Love the earth the Sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God...
-Walt Whitman

Barn's burnt down;
now
I can see the moon.
-Masahide

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
-Goethe

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
-Oscar Wilde

Picture a massless particle.
-a koan of modern physics

Men argue,
Nature acts.
-Voltaire

Enlightenment is like the moon, reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one drop on the grass.
-Dogen

To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to drop off our own body and mind, and to drop off the bodies and minds of others. No trace of enlightenment remains and this no-traces continues endlessly.
-Dogen

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
-Willian Blake

Old pond,
frog jumps in-
plop.
-Basho

See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.
-W.H. Auden

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
-Shunryu Suzuki

You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.
-Deshimaru

We try to evade the question (of existence) with property, prestige, power, production, fun, and ultimately, by trying to forget that we- that I- exist. no matter how often he thinks of God or goes to church, or how much he believes in religious ideas, if he, the whole man, is deaf to the question of existence, if he does not have an answer to it, he is marking time, and he lives and dies like the one million things he produces. He thinks of God, instead of experiencing God.
-Erich Froman

It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before...to test your limits...to break through barriers.

What is popular is not always right,
what is right is not always popular.

The human heart feels things the eyes cannot see,
and knows what the mind cannot see.

A man spends nine months trying to get out of a woman's womb.
And the rest of his life trying to get back in.

Oh, God of dust and rainbows, help us see that without the dust the rainbow would not be.
-Langston Hughes

How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier; the sound of the sea... All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.
-Nikas Kazantzakis

To be content with what we possess is the greatest and most secure of riches.
-Cicero

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.
-Blaise Pascal

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The highest form of bliss is living with a certain degree of folly.
-Desiderius Erasmus

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
-Margaret Lee Runbeck

He is richest who is content with the least; for content is the wealth of nature.
-Socrates

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
-Henry David Thoreau

As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.
-Proverbs 23:7

If you want to be happy, be.
-Aleksy Konstantinovich Tolstoy

Make the most of every sense; glory in all of the pleasures and beauty which the world reveals to you...
-Helen Keller

...happiness doesn't depend upon who you are, or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think.
-Dale Carnegie

If you can't change your face, change your attitude.
-Amy Tan

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it...walk.
-Ayn Rand

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
-Soren Kierkegaard

Life just is. you have to flow with it. Give yourself to the moment. Let it happen.
-Jerry Brown

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
-Mohandas Gandhi

All fortune belongs to him who has a contented mind. Is not the whole earth covered with leather for him whose feet are encased in shoes?
-Hindu tale

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
-John Milton

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
-Siddhartha Guatama (The Buddha)

Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
-Saint Augustine

We need time to dream, time to remember, and time to reach the infinite. Time to be.
-Gladys Taber

It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man be willing to be what he is.
-Desiderius Erasmus

The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a storm.
-James Allen

Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.
-Socrates

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.
-Zeno of Citium

...this was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breaths, just is.
-Countess Van Arnium

To become a happy person, have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child's heart, and spiritual simplicity.
-Norman Vincent Pale

Human beings are the only animals that blush...or need to.
-Mark Twain

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
-Marcel Proust

People in the world cannot identify their own mind. They believe that what they see, or hear, or feel, or know, is mind. They are blocked and so cannot see the brilliant spirit of their original mind.
-Huang-Po

Sade dit moi. Sade donne moi. Sade es-tu diabolique ou divin?
-Enigma

Violence against women is a crime. Violence against men is a comedy.

I do not evolve, I am.
-Pablo Picasso

in the blue light
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, face
into sky, frost starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks
what do we know.
-Gary Snyder

There is no joy, but calm.
-Lord Alfred Tennyson

The blue mountain is father of the white cloud. The white cloud is the son of the blue mountain. All day long they depend on each other, without being dependent on each other. The white cloud is always the white cloud. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain.
-Dogen

To do nothing is the most difficult thing in the world-
the most difficult and the most intellectual.
-Oscar Wilde

Silence is the essential condition of happines.
-Heinrich Heine

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
-Thomas Merton

I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Holins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular...but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons.
-Annie Dillard

How beautiful
The usually hateful crow,
This snowy morning!
-Basho

Why is it that if someone tells you there are one billion stars in the universe you will believe them, but if they tell you a wall has wet paint you will have to touch it to be sure?

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

Who is it that is dragging this corpse around?
-Zen koan

The man who masters himself is delivered the force that binds all creatures.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
-Ralph Walod Emerson

Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
-Alan Watts

The moment a student blinks his eye, he's already way off. The moment he tries to think, he's already differed. The moment he arouses a thought, he's already deviated. But for the man who understands, it's always right there before his eyes.
-Lin-chi

Come forth into the light of things,
let nature be your teacher.
-William Wordsworth

Think every day your last: you will receive with job hours on which you have not counted.
-Horace

This world, after all our sciences, is still a miracle: wonderful, inscrutable, magical, and more, to whoever will think of it.
-Thomas Carlyle

The man of woods sings,
The woman of stone gets up and dances,
This cannot be done by passion or learning,
It cannot be done by reasoning.
-Tung-shan

Existence must be asserted in the present if one does not want all life to be defined as an escape toward nothingness.
-Simone de Beauvoir

If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.
-Isadora Duncan

A sudden, bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
-Francis Bacon

Just remain in the center watching. And then forget that you are there.
-Lao-Tzu

Stones rise up into the sky;
Fire burns down in the water.
-Zen saying

We cannot see things as they really are until we let go of the idea of a separate self.
-John Daido Loori

Do not entertain hopes for realization, but practice all your life.
-Milarepa

An answer is always a form of death.
-John Fowles

Zen is not letting yourself be horsewhipped into words about it, so as you read these words, just unfocus your eyes and stare at the blurry page.
-Jack Kerouac

In my hut this spring
There is nothing-
There is everything.
-Sodo

Talking about food won't make you full,
Babbling of clothes won't keep out the cold.
A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;
It takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.
And yet, without stopping to consider this,
you complain that Buddha is hard to find.
Turn your mind within! There he is!
Why look for him abroad?
-Han-shan

Each moment is a place you've never been.
-Mark Strand

What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A flower falls,
even though we love it;
and a weed grows,
even though we do not love it.
-Dogen

The reverse side also has a reverse side.
-Japanese proverb

The end of man is to let the spirit in him permeate his whole being, his soul, flesh, and affections. He attains his deepest self by losing his selfish ego.
-Robert Musil

I come here to speak poetry, It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it and it will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies.
-Boris Pasternak

The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.
-Stanley Kubrick

The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
-Lao-Tzu

The mind precedes all things, the mind dominates all things, the mind creates all things.
-The Buddha

Nothing in all creation is so like God,
as stillness.
-Neister Eckhart

To live is to be born every minute. Death occurs when life stops.
-Erich Fromm

When you paint spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots- just paint spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots. It is not yet painting spring.
-Dogen

It is looking for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding.
-Vincent Van Gogh

It is eternity now. I am in the midst of it. It is about me in the sunshine; I am in it, as the butterfly in the light-laden air. Nothing has to come; it is now. Now is eternity; now is the immortal life.
-Richard Jeffries

I have discovered that all of man's unhappiness derives from only one source-
not being able to sit quietly in a room.
-Blaise Pascal

Oh snail,
Climb Mt. Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
-Issa

Life is like nothing, because it is everything.
-William Golding

I've dreamt in my life dreams
that have stayed with me ever after...
-Emily Bronte

Beneath a starry landscape
we journey into dreams
on silvery wings
to distant places
Cross the threshold
and enter worlds beyond
Where hidden secrets
wait to unfold
their enchanting
magic.

To fall into habit is to cease to be.
-Miguel de Unamuno

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.
-Federico Fellini

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

My religion is to live- and die- without regret.
-Milerpa

Earth's crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

My favorite piece of music is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.
-John Cage

The first snow;
The leaves of the daffodils
Are bending.
-Basho

Stop thinking and end your problems.
-Lao-Tzu

At the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understand it all than at any time.
-Jane Wagner

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the forest and the boughs
Of the pine tree encrusted with snow.
-Wallace Stevens

Years go by, will I still be waiting for somebody else to understand.
-Tori Amos

Years go by, will I choke on my tears until finally there is nothing left?
One more casualty you know, we're too easy.
-Tori Amos

...and my heart's numbered beat still echo in this empty room.
-Dave Matthews

Bet I know something else you don't. There's dew on the grass in the morning...And if you look - there's a man on the moon.
-Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451

A journal is more than a memory goad. It's therapeutic. The simple act of opening a notebook to put words down stills the crosscurrents of worry, drawing to focus the essential thought patterns that best define us, intersecting those thoughts with the condition of our life at that exact moment. A journal is one of the few anchors the human condition allows us.
-Randy Wayne White

I do not know why I go on. I do not search for truth. I do not believe in it. I hope for no ancient secrets from you, whatever they may be. But I believe in something. Maybe simply in the beauty of the world through which I wander or in the will to live itself.
-Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

We live in a world of accidents finally, in which only aesthetic principles have a consistency of which we can be sure. Right and wrong we will struggle with forever, striving to create and maintain an ethical balance; but the shimmer of summer rain under the street lamps or the great flashing glare of artillery against a night sky--such beauty is beyond dispute.
-Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned

To live is the rarest thing in the world, most people exist, that is all.
-Oscar Wilde

Luke, I am your father.
-Darth Vader

speak well of everyone and you never need to whisper

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
-Goethe

There are two things great fighters possess. They will fight and they will box. You have to fight for respect and then after you get respect you outbox them.
-Evander Holyfield

The last man in all the world sat in his house. Suddenly there was a knock at the door.
-shortest sci-fi story

All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
-Blade Runner

The road to misery and the road to joy are the same road. Your destination will be determined by the song in your heart.
-Paul Frantzich

Nothing is worth more than this day.
-Goethe

Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, filling it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
-Joseph Addison

A beautiful soul dwells always in a beautiful world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-Albert Eistein

To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
-Isaac Newton

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
-Samuel Johnson

Be content with a little light,
So be it your own.
Explore, explore.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
-Arnold Toynbee

It is remarkable how few people seem to derive any pleasure from the beauty of the sky.
-John Lubbock

Waves of serener life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.
-Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is but a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.
-Sanskit proverb

Nature speaks freely to the individual, but seldom harangues a crowd.
-Charles C. Abbot

It is the rare fortune of these days that a man may think what he likes and say what he thinks.
-Tacitus

It's trust and character I need around me. Whoever you choose to be around you, lets you know who you are.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
-Leonardo da Vinci

Every good thought you think is contributing its share to the ultimate result of your life.
-Grenville Kleiser

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise until noon, rapt in reverie.
-Henry David Thoreau

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced--
even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
-John Keats

Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
-Arthur Brisbane

Balance is the perfect state of still water. Let that be our model. It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.
-Confucius

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
-Tomas Edison

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
- George Eliot

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
-Chinese proverb

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
-Andre Gide

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words, --health, peace, and competence.
- Alexander Pope

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
-Thomas Jefferson

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.
-Henry David Thoreau

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valueable of any we have.
-John Locke

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
-Henry David Thoreau

The great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.
-Jean de la Bruyere

The present moment is a powerful goddess.
-Goethe

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
-Japanese proverb

Imagination is the eye of the soul.
-Joseph Joubert

There is no wealth but life.
-John Ruskin

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.
-Elbert Hubbard

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

In solitude, be a multitude to thyself.
-Tibullus

Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.
-Leonardo da Vinci

I was never less alone than while by myself.
-Edward Gibbon

Live lightly on the earth.
-Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship.
-Louisa May Alcott

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

turn on,
tune in and drop out;
you can't say that;
what I am saying,
happens to be,
the oldest method,
of human wisdom;
look within,
find your own divinity,
detach yourself,
from social and material struggle;
turn on,
tune in and drop out

-- best source: DJ L'Embrouille

If you want your prayers answered, get up off your knees and hustle.
-Phillip Simmons