C. Rajgopalachari  - 24.1.1922

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“Quite frankly, lady, you and your kind make me sick. You use your father’s great wealth and your privileged position as a passenger on the Campari  to poke  fun, more often than malicious fun, at members of the crew who are unable to retaliate. They’ve just got to sit and take it, because they’re not like you They have no money in the bank at all, most of them, but they have families to feed, mothers to support, so they know they have to keep smiling at Miss Beresford when she cracks jokes at their expense or embarrasses or angers them, because if they don’t Miss Beresford and her kind will see to it that they’re out of a job.”….
The Golden Rendezvous - p. 44

“That’s all of it. Misuse of power even in so small a thing, is contemptible. And then, when anyone dares retaliate, as I do, you threaten them with dismissal, which is what your threat amounts to. And that’s worse then contemptible it’s cowardly.”
The Golden Rendezvous - p.172

“It’s a foolish thing to have pride, perhaps but I’ve still got a little left.” I hadn’t meant my voice sound so harsh; it just came out that way.  “Whatever job I’ll get, I’ll get one I found for myself, not one bought for me by a girl.” As thumbs down a genuine offer, I reflected bitterly.
The Golden Rendezvous - p.173

I’d never make a Salesman, I thought drearily, if I met a man dying of thirst in Sahara I couldn’t have convinced him that water was good for him.

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 We must begin to acknowledge first that there is complete absence of two things in Indian society. One of these is equality. On the social plane, we have in India a society based on privilege of graded in equality which means elevation of some and degradation of the others, on the economic plane we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who are living in abject poverty. On the 26th January, 1950 we re going to enter into q life of contradictions. In politics we have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality… We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment, or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which the assembly has laboriously build up.

Dr.B.R.Ambedkar
CAD Vol.V p. 184-7

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A free society is not one in which people are merely allowed to make effective social choices among variety of alternatives, but one in which they are encouraged to do so. The range and number of choices available and the mutual tolerance among those who choose conflicting paths are what determines the degree of freedom, that the member of any modern society can be said to enjoy

Legalism
Judith N.Shklar

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    In 1787, after the delegates in Philadelphia signed the United States Constitution, a woman approached Benjamin Franklin, “Well Doctor” she asked, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy!” Franklin replied “A republic, if you can keep it”.

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.

Benjamin Franklin.   

I’d put our house in order by rebuilding it, from the bottom up. The evil to the attacked is not sin, suffering, greed, priest craft, king craft, demagogy, monopoly, ignorance, drink, war, pestilence, nor any of the other consequences of property, but just poverty itself.

George Bernard Shaw.

The greatest poverty is the inability to express ones own self fully.

Aruneshwar Gupta

For the direction of a nation no less than of an individual’s life, rests basically upon the sanity of emotions, judgment and control.

 
Joseph Jastra ‘Freud’

Jeer not others upon any occasion. If they he foolish, God hath denied them understanding, if they be vicious, you ought to pity, not revile them; if deformed, God framed their bodies, and will you scorn his workmanship! Are you wiser then your creator!  If poor, poverty was designed for a motive to charity, not to contempt; you cannot see what riches they have with him.
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A man can be said to forbear only when he has the power to strike and strikes not; where he has not the power, what matters  whether he for hears of does not for hear.

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Indians have always arisen who, discarding the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, have sought for the realization of the highest ideals in life – not through passive renunciation but through active struggle. The weaklings who has refused the conflict, acquiring nothing, has had nothing to renounce. The alone who has striven and won can enrich the world by bestowing the fruits of his victorious experience. 
Sir J.C. Bose

That we are still alive, still vital, still looking forward, still dissatisfied with our present, still not merely adoring the past, but looking forward to the future. So long as we have this kind of impulse in our minds, the future of our country, of every country for that matter, is safe.

If God is the creator of the world, we participate to some extent in His nature. We are co- creators with the Divine. Our duty is not to escape from time but to establish our superiority over tyranny of time.

Every human being has rational, ethical and spiritual sides. It is wrong to think that some people are rational and other spiritual. It is not the caste, it is not the untouchability; it is not the different forms of marriage or the different form of adopting it is the great ideals of abhaya, asangha and ahimsa.

I want my country to become free so that one day, if necessary, she may die that the world may live.

What we have to do is to give a soul to this world which has found itself a body. We have to give a conscience to this world, and we can give it if we are truly Indian.

We have inherited a legacy, great and precious, but it is fatal to rest in the consciousness of having inherited something unique. The inheritance should be invested in new undertakings; we have to start new achievements. We must be ever engaged in the pursuit of truth.

The Gita asks us to work for lokasamgraha , world solidarity ar progress. An active way at life, karma yoga adopts renunciation in action and not of action.

There is nothing higher than man in this world. God transcendent is beyond us. God immanent is in man. Every human being must be regarded as sustaining the possibility of rising to the divine state.

The purpose at man who has now come to the intellectual level is to grow to the spiritual level. Just as the intellectual man is higher than the mental and the mental is higher than the vital, so the spiritual man is higher then the intellectual. For that you have to pass through so much at self-transformation, self scrutiny, self-understanding.

You must undergo a transmutation of your own nature, a complete remaking at yourself, and strive to get rid of things which are un-divine, un-healthy and uncreative in your nature.

Every human being is called upon to take part in the struggle of life in its supreme endeavor to better itself. That is the purpose for which we are created.

The cosmic process has a staircase of fine layers:- anna, prana, manas, vijnana, ananda.  We are in the vijayana stage. We have to rise to the ananda stage. It is that which is not a proposition to be tested by anyone. That we are unregenerate that we are incomplete, that we have to complete ourselves, that we have to rise above discords and hatreds, and get to that level of supreme enlightens, is a thing which is certified by every human heart. Every hungry heart and eager mind knows that it is dissatisfied with its own present position. It has, therefore, to lease itself up to that higher stage which you cannot express in words.

Practice ethical and spiritual exercises get to the supreme stage and work for the happiness of the word.

Every thinker starts on his religions quest with a profound sense of dissatisfaction with this world.

It is the inner transformation that has to be effected. Man has tore make himself, has to become a different individual altogether.

To phases meditation, leading to the development of enlightenment and service of humanity the rest of the time.

Our Heritage – A. Radhakrishnan

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That there is a fourth plane of consciousness, which is not generally recognized by man in his endless preoccupations with the lower finite there fields of conscious activities is an eternal truth.

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The self-affirmation of a being is the stronger the non-being it can take into it self.

Nothing braces the mind so much as training in ability to apply powers to disagreeable tasks. 

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India materially pool for the last two centuries, yet has an in exhaustible fund of Devine wealth, spiritual ‘skyscrapers’ may occasionally be encountered by the way side.

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Life in India may not he easy, but it certainly is interesting and challenging.

Indira Gandhi – Years of endeavour

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Progress is made by those who rise above vox populi adopted norm.

Ralph W.Emerson

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1. For every effect there is a cause
2. Every effect is the manifestation of the cause itself in different form.
3. When cause is removed from the effect nothing remains. 

Theory of causation – Swami Chinmayanand

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When a people, live in the same geographical area, for a long period of time, following  the same fundamental values of life, the fragrance that is emitted out is called Culture.

Swami Chinmayanand

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Be mild with the mild; shrewd with the crafty; confiding with the honest; merciful with the young, the frail or the fearful; rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt to the liar. But in all this,  never he unmindful of your dignity. Begin to learn all the powers of your mind, not that you may shine, but truth may triumph and your cause may prosper.

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Know they self, help man; protect the right, do without fear or weakness or faltering thy work of battle in the world. Thou art the eternal and imperishable spirit, thy soul is here on its upwards path to immortality; life and death are nothing, sorrow and wounds and sufferings are nothing, for these things have to be conquered and overcome. Look not at thy own pleasure and gain and profit, but above and around, above at the shining summits to which thou climbest, around at this world of battle and trial in which good and evil, progress and retrogression are locked in stern conflict. Man call to thee, then strong man, their hero for help; help then light. Destroy when by destruction the world must advance but hate not that which thou destroyest, neither grieves for all those who perish. Know everywhere the one self, know all to be immortal souls and the body to be but dust. Do thy work with a calm, strong and equal spirit; fight and fall nobly or conquer mightily. For this is the work that God and thy nature have given to thee to accomplish.

Sri Aurobindo – Essays on Gita p.61
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Spirit is self existent being with an infinite power of consciousness and unconditioned delight in its being.

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Sin and virtue are the obverse and reverse of the same fact which is karma.  According to use made of it, the same karma presents itself as sin or virtue.

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He is a philosopher who translates principle into practice.  Theorization and make believe have no place in his spiritual career. By experiment he knows that life in the super senses is superior to that in the senses.

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            Karma enriches knowledge and knowledge beings in proficiency in work.

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Indian ‘dharma’ insists on recognition of the divine potentiality of each and full material opportunity for the manifestation of perfection already in man.

V.R.Krishna Iyer

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‘The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one’
‘Of course, who said that’
‘I don’t know’
‘He was probably a coward’ she said
‘He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousands death’s it his intelligent. He  simply doesn’t mention it.
‘I don’t know. Its hard to see inside the head of the brave’.
‘Yes that’s how they keep that way’.

   A Farewell to arms - Ernest Hemingway - p.110-111
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“It is not”, retorted she, “it is the best! The others ware the satisfaction of my whims and for Edgar’s sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edger and myself. I cannot express it, but surely you  and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here?  My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliffs’ miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning, my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained I shall still continue to be, and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like foliage in the woods, time will change it, I’m well aware as a winter changes the trees.

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rock beneath-a source of little visible delight, but necessary-Nelly I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind- not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself-but as my own being – so don’t talk of separation again- it is impracticable.

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It becomes pain by being wanted too much.

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It is far better to endure patiently sharp pain. A smart which nobody feels but your self, that to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – p.58
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Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is the most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong doings. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Brave New World- Aldous Huxley

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“Swami Ji. I am puzzled about following your instructions suppose I never ask for food, and nobody gives me any. I should starve to death”. 

        “Die, then!” This alarming counsel split the die. “Die if you must, Mukunda ! Never believe that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God!  He who has created every from of nourishment . He who has bestowed appetite, will inevitably see that his devote is maintained. Do not imagine that rice sustains you nor that money or man supports you. Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life breath?. They are His instruments merely. Is it by any skill of your that food digests in your stomach! Use the sword of your discrimination Mukunda!  Cut through the chains of agency and per cieve the single cause!

Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramhansa Yogananda  -p.91

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“God does not wish the secrets of his creation revealed promiscuously. Also, every individual in the world has an inalienable right to his free will, a saint will not encroach  that independence.”

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine, but they trample them under their feet, and true again and rend you.

Matthew 7:6 (Bible).
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“You’ve often made a distinction between brain and mind and muscle”. “But what is mind! I persisted “I thought this old philosophical question had been finally laid to rest.”

Fuller: “Lets say mind is the capability in us to discover relationships existing between, way beyond merely physical bonds”.

Interview with Buckminster Fuller
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Relationships between two beings:  

Intellectual Bond  - Acquaintance.

Intellectual + Mental Bond – Friendship.

Intellectual + Physical Bond – Love.

Intellectual + Physical Bond + Social recognition – Marriage.

AG

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It had gone beyond her beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bight feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghastly heart. 

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 “He passed her by very close, without seeing her. Because she was one of those people, who make no sign but who must be patiently sought, whom one must know how to see. In by gone days an artist would have made her the subject of a great painting. She would have been seamstress, water carrier or lace make.”

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“She would not know what I could have done for her” said the student when the affair ended in disaster. “Did you try to see what she could have done for you” replied the friend.

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I think one can draw quite a distinct division between youth and maturity. Youth ends when egotism does. Maturity begins when one bees for others. Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish every notion assumes importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives. That is being young, to most people, however, there comes a time when the situation changes, when they live more for others, not for any virtuous reason which most people thinks, one thinks less about oneself and ones wishes when one has family. Others lose their egotism in a responsible position, in politics, in art or in science. Young people want to play; mature people want to work. A man does not marry just to have children, but if he does have them, they change him, and finally he sees that every thing has happened just for them. That links up with the fact that young people like to talk of death but do not really think about it. It is just the other way round with old people. Life seems long to young people and they can therefore concentrate all their wishes and thoughts on themselves. Old people are conscious of an approaching end, and then everything that one has and does for one self finally falls short and lacks value. Therefore, a man requires faith and something else that continues; he does not work just for the work so there are wife and child, business and responsibility and the nation too justify the daily toil and moil. A man is happier when he lives for others than when he just lives for himself, but old people should not make such a virtue of it, because it isn’t one really. In any case the most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be rise as grandfathers when they are still at school.           

Gertrude – Herman Hesse -p.89
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There are only two kinds of wisdom, well either the world is bad and worthless, as Buddhists and  Christian preach, in which case one must do penance and renounce everything. I believe one can obtain peace of mind in this way… as cities do not have such a hard life as people think, or else the world and life is good and light  then one can just take part in it and afterwards die peacefully, because it is finished. Most people believe in both, dependent on the weather, their health, and whether they have money in their pocket or not. And those who really believe do not live in accordance with their beliefs. That is how it is with me, too. For instance, I believe as Buddha did, that live for things that appeal to my senses as if this is the most important thing to do. If only it was more satisfying.”

Gertrude - Hermann Hesse - p.89

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 “Combat and pain still are portion of man”, that the struggle for life is the order of the world, at which it is vain to repine.       

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 Man fight grimly for the status of idealogics, lest the experience they seek to validate be deride by their opponents.

Harold J.Laski
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“We never need to say anything to each other when we’re together. This is for the time when we won’t be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I’ve given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked needs. This is the only way you can wished to be loved. This is only way I can want you to love me. If you married me now, I would become your whole existence, But I would not want you then, for you would not want yourself and so you would not love me long. To say ‘I love you, one must know first how to say the ‘I’. The kind of surrender I could have from you now would give me nothing but an empty hulk. If I demanded it I’d destroy you. That’s why I won’t stop you. I’ve let you go to your husband, I don’t know how  I’ll live through tonight, but I will. I want you whole, as I am, as you’ve remain in the battle you’ve chosen. A battle is never selfless, “You must learn not to be afraid of the world. Not to be held by it as you are now, Never to be held by it as you were in that courtroom. I must let you learn it, I can’t help you, you must find your own way, when you have, you’ll come back to me. They won’t destroy me, Dominique, and they won’t destroy you, you’ll win because you’ve chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom from the world. I’ll wait for you, I love you, I’m saying this now for all the years we’ll have to wait. I love you, Dominique.            

Fountain Head -Ayn Rand, p - 364
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And Noelle knew that this time it was true. She thought of the years during which she had planned to destroy Larry and of the fierce pleasure she had taken in imagining his destruction and yet the moment Noelle had seen Larry again she had know instantly that there was something deeper than hate still alive in her. When she had pushed him to the brink of death, asked him to risk both their lives on that terrible flight to Amsterdam, it was as though she was testing his love for her in a wild defiance of fate. She had been with Larry in the cockpit, flying the plane with him, suffering with him, knowing that if he died they would die together, and he had saved them both. And when he came to her room in Amsterdam and made love to her, her hate and love had become intermingled with their two bodies, and some how time had expanded and contracted and they were back in thin little hotel room in Paris and Larry was saying to her, “Lets get married, we’ll find some little moiré in the country” and the present and the past had exploded dazzlingly into one and Noelle knew then that they were timeless, had always been timeless, that nothing had really changed and that the depths of her hatred for Larry had come from the hights of her love. If she destroyed him she would be destroying herself for she had given herself completely to him long ago and nothing could ever change that. 

The other side of midnight
Sidney Sheldon – p 350

It seemed to Noelle that everything she had achieved in her life had her through her hatred. Her father’s betrayal had wounded and shaped her, annealed and hardened her, filled her with a hunger for vengeance that could be satisfied by her own in which she was all powerful, in which she could never be betrayed again, never be but, she had finally achieved that. And now she was ready to give it up for this man. Because she knew now that what she had always wanted was for Larry to need her to love her and at last he did and that finally was her new key on.

The other side of midnight
Sidney Sheldon – p …

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Allen ju gefallen ist nicht moglish - To favors alone is not possible Not one of the geographical feature of which Germany is made up, be it plain or upland, Alp or river, is an exclusively German possession. We have to share everything with are neighbor.

Every one of the geographical features of which India is made up, be it plain or upland, Everest or Ganges, is an exclusive Indian possession. We are self-contained.

 Aruneshwar Gupta

To  give birth to institutions
To nourish them without taking possession.
To act without appropriation,
To be chief among man without managing them
can be achieved.

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She understood it all now the loneliness, the pain, the seriousness of what her father had done. He had played his life away. He had had a good time. Now she understood what had happened to her mother and why for a time she came to hate the man she had loved. He had left her alone, frightened and unloved.

Summers End, Danielle Steel – p.14

But nonetheless he took her under his wing. Three months later she was his wife. The ceremony was small and held at city hall; the honeymoon was spent at his Mothers house in Antibes, followed by two weeks in Paris.

And by then she understood what she had done. She had married a country as well as a man. A way of life, she would have to be perfect, understanding and silent. She would have to be charming and entertain his clients and friends, she would have to be lonely while he traveled and she would have to give up the dream of making a name for herself with her art….

Over the years she gave up a number of dreams, but she had Marc. The man who had saved her from solitude and starvation, the man who had won her gratitude and her heart. The man of impeccable manners and exquisite taste, who rewarded her with security and sable. The man who always wore a mask.

She knew that he loved her, but now he rarely expressed it as he had done before “shows of affection are for children”, he explained. 

Summers End, Danielle Steel – p.15

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  In framing an ideal we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.

Aristotle

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Bill quickly tried to pass over, the situation, saying, “look, I was born to lead, not to follow.” After a pause, his father replied with quiet firmness, “Before you can lead, you must know how to follow.”

Honour Thy Father -Gay Telese – p.58

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Young Newman bears no marked resemblances to his father and says he gets no nepotistic help from him or not much “The only thing my dad helps me get”, says Scott, “is my foot into the door. But no one in his right mind is going to hire somebody to handle a part just because he’s somebody’s son”.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “When ever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantage that you’ve had”.

The Great Getsby

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‘Well the point simply is that every child is born a genius. And as I said he asks beautiful questions. But parents say ’Darling you mustn’t ask such questions. They are going to get you in trouble’. Out of this mixture of love, fear and ignorance parents continually shut off the valves that every child is born with. The Leonards, the Darwins, the Butters are the fortunate ones, who escaped being damaged in their child hood.

Buckminster Fuller

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My husband once said, that every time an intellectual has the chance to speak out against injustice, and yet remains silent, he contributes to the moral paralysis and intellectual barrenness that grips the affluent world.

Frida Laski w/o Harold J. Laski, author of ‘The Grammar of Politics’

I am glad that my first years were in a ordered world, for though it passed, still the memory holds of what it means to a child to live in such a world, where adults were calm and confident and children knew the boundaries beyond which they could not go and yet within which they lived secure.
My Several Worlds
Pearl S. Buck
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‘There are time’s’ said Somerset Maugham ‘when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one! All of them or none.’

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Later, however, Monty Clift’s dark days,  Brando come to him and tried to help him “I’ve always hated you because I want to be better them you,” Brando admitted, “but you’re better them me - you’re my touch stone, my challenge, and I want you and I to go on challenging each other.”

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When a man appointed to be the guardian of the state and the depository of the happiness and morals of the people, forgetful of the solemn relation in which he stands, descends to the dishonest artifices of a mercantile projector and sacrifices his conscience and his trust to pecuniary motives, there is no strain of abhorrence of which the human mind is  capable, no punishment the vengeance of the people can inflict, which may not be applied to him with justice.

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If the inquiry constantly is ‘what will please the people’ and not ‘what will benefit the people’, in such a government there can be nothing but temporary expenditure, fickleness and folly.       

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Recent events have brought up again the recurrent thought that has puzzled mankind for ages. What is it all? The puzzle perhaps remain unsolved for ever, unsolved till the earth has again broken into fragments of got too cold for life to subsist and mankind ceases to exist. The idea of a beneficent and providential all powerful deity watching the destinies of mankind or each human being cannot obviously command acceptance. That basis of Christianity, Mohammedanism of Hinduism or any other ‘ism’ does not appeal. What about the Vedic and Buddhistic concepts? I do not know enough about the later, the former a universal force from which we issue and with which we eventually merge is a magnificent conception characteristic of the great thinkers who propounded it. But is it anything more than Philosophical theory! Answer grain is spiritual experiences be subjective? What me feels is that an inexorable force is working relentlessly according to laws of cause and effect with its multitudinous and immerse forces? Answer: Inscrutable. More you cannot do, for, you know not why and where fore of things…

I still, however, occasionally mentally recite many of the famous sayings of the Vedic - and slokas in Gita, as I take my morning or evening walks these recitations make me feel as if I were a part of a great endeavour for some purpose which, however is not known to us. One could call these mental, recitals prayers; but though I have a feeling of satisfaction while reciting them, they do not help me to understand or get close at the purpose of the great being or a spirit governing the destinies of man kind.

M.C. Setelvad - My life, law and other things - p.181-82.

Poor man getting perplexed as he is unable to accept and acknowledge the truth – ego problem. He agrees with getting satisfaction with the metaphysical strengths of the shalokas, but thinks that in absence of understanding of the true content and the intellectual perception of these shalokas, which ‘I’ don’t understand how can I get satisfaction. That is one reason that MCS inspite of being a great aristocrat and intellectual advocate, remained to be at a lower footing than N.A. Palkiwala.

Aruneshwar Gupta

Dev Anand is finally paying the price that any man obsessed with himself has to pay in the end. All these years he has been determined to walk alone (personally and professionally), and now he is the loneliest man in the industry. Since he never had much time for them, his wife and kids lead their own lives, his brothers have gone their separate ways, even his woman have ditched him. Dev Anand is the most bitter man to day.

Check out – Though a public figure, Dev Anand has always been a private man. Still, its not as if Dev has shunned people. He says himself, “I really feel that people here love me and will always he there when I need them.” The only time he doesn’t want company is when he feels the creative wage. “I need be left alone then”. At such times he says he is ‘aloof’ from the industry but not 'alienated’. Whatever other may think, Dev insists “I’ve never experienced bitterness or loneliness in my life. Both these things come to you only when people desert you and I believe the people stile love me as much as I love them...”

It is not difficult to live in an isolation, but it is to be isolated, for than one may be afraid of his own self, which one is unable to understand and comprehend. Oh the poor man can’t even see and understands his own self- only watches and laughs at the world around.

Aruneshwar Gupta

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He recalled one night when his bill at the Copacabana was approximately $900, which he casually paid of a think load in his pocket. Loving the feeling at that moment, It was not a sense of opulence, power, egotism, or a satisfaction in loving so much cash; it was almost a contempt of money that he had felt, a wanton disregard for the thing that others craved, an easy-come-easy-go attitude that mocked the miser in mankind and demonstrated a recklessness about life and a fearlessness about the future-all this and more had contributed to the private jet  that Bill felt arc hat night when he had placed nine hundred-dollar bills and a hundred-dollar tip an the silver tray at the Copacabana, not caring that the lights were dim and that nobody was watching incept the waiter. Fun.

Honour Thy Father. Gay Telese – p.233

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It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never know how easy it was. And what beats you; he thought “Nothing” he said aloud “I went too far”.

The Old Man and the Sea, Pearl S. Buck

When the south wind blows
the avalanche tumbles
and death’s dirge rumbles,  
Is that God’s will?

Through the lands of men
I do wander alone
ungreeted and unknown
Is that God’s will?

Pain is my lot
my heart is like lead.
I feel that God is dead
Shall I then live.

…

The man of melancholy disposition is little concerned with the judgment of others, with their opinion of what is good or true, he relies purely of his own insight…. He regards changes of fashion with indifference and their glitter with contempt…. He has a lofty sense of the dignity of human nature. He esteems himself and regards man as a creature deserving of respect. He suffers no object subservience and breathes the noble air of freedom. To him all chains are abhorrent, from the gilded fitters worn at court to the heavy irons of the galley slave. He is a stern judge of himself as well as of others and is not infrequently disgusted with himself as well as with the world.

Observations on the feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime., Kant

…

There was something stricken about the man. He behaved like a specific instrument of a specific purpose, from the beginning to the end of his life.

Vincent Shecon, For Gandhi ji

The words that describe Brutus “His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man”.

Spinoza had not only one of the most universal minds of the modern times, but one of the most sympathetic hearts. In 1882 when his statute was unveiled at Hague, Ernest Renam concluded the dedicatory exercise with these words: Here came perhaps the truest vision ever had of God, because here come perhaps the noblest affliction ever entertained for man”.

‘You don’t know yet,’ she continued. “You have heard him sing, haven’t you? That is what he is like, fierce and violent, but mostly against himself. He is an emotional man; he has great rig our but no goal. At every moment he would like to taste the whole world, and whatever he has and whatever he does, only constitutes an infinitesimal part of it. He drinks and is never drunk; he has woman and is never happy; he sings magnificently and yet does not want to be an artist. If he likes anyone he hurts him. He pretends to despise all who are contended, but it is really hatred against himself because he does not know contentment that is what he is like.

Gertrude - Hermann Hesse

His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded when he spoke, and had his judges and jury pleased at his devotion. The fear of every man that heard him was, that he should make an end.

Ben Jonson, For Francis Bacon.

…

He seemed to have all the gifts the gods could offer. He had a handsome presence a sharp and nimble mind, a great family tradition, a gift for flashing phase, a elegance of language, a brilliant war record, a grand tour’ In Europe, a smelting of philosophy, a sense of self sufficiency and of his own destiny, and just enough irresponsibility to set off his more substantial qualities.

The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes

…

I am a man, and nothing human is beyond the scope of my activity

Terence

…

I’m the middleman. The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line it’s a middlemen. And the more middleman, the shorter the distance. Such is the psychology of  pretzel.

…

Marcus Aurelius was thereupon crowned the greatest of Romans. But not the greatest of man. For Marcus Aurelius the philosopher was thwarted in his ambition by Marcus Aurelius the king.

…

Einstein was born into a world of substance, he died in a world of events.

Hamilton turned out to be one of the small class of men of whom it has been justly said that they appear as levers to uplift the earth and roll it into another course, but they not attain to such rare functions by the high range of their ambitions but by the large development of their powers.

…

Washington possessed a mind that no calamity could stun and an energy of character that no circumstance could paralyze.

…

Poise and peace and inner harmony are so quintessential to the judicial temper that huff, haywire or ever humiliation shall not besiege; nor avaricious provocation, frivolous persiflage nor terminological inexactitude throw into palpitating tantrums the balanced cerebral of the judicial mind.

…

Carlyle in his Heroes and Hero worship, quotes a remark about Robert Burns to the effect that “his poetry was general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expressing itself that way”.                        

…

This misfortune affects me less than others, because it is not in my temper to repine at evils, that are past, but to endeavor to draw good out of them, and because I think our safety depends on a total change of system and this change of system will only be produced by misfortune.

Alexander Hamilton

He could never consent to “attempts which must either fail in execution or be productive of evil”, and that he “would rather incur the negative inconvenience of delay then the positive mischief of injudicious expedients’.

Alexander Hamilton

Nevertheless he had attained his main object, through his, ability to use as his instrument, a hostile state legislature on a reluctant congress.

Alexander Hamilton

I met him at the head of the stairs, where accosting me in an angry tone,” Colonel Hamilton” said he, ‘You have kept me waiting at the head of the stairs these ten minutes. I must tell you, sir, you treat me with disrespect”.

I replied without petulance, but with decision, “I am not conscious of it, sir, but since you have thought it necessary to tell me so, we part.”

“Very well, sir,” said he, “if it be your choice,” or something to this effect, and we separated. I sincerely believe my absence, which gave so much umbrage, did not last two minutes.

Lafayette, whose casual detention of Hamilton was the immediate cause of Washington’s arrogance also exerted himself to effect a reconciliation, but found, to his regret, “each disposed to believe the other was not sorry for the separation.”

He had turned 24 only a little over a month before.
Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton took the realistic view of human nature, which hold that it cannot possess freedom save through moral freedom, while Jefferson inclined to the romantic view that humanity is naturally inclined to be good and kind if well treated and that the country is best governed that is governed least.

…

I always disliked the office of an aide-de-camp, as having in it a kind of personal dependence. I refused to serve in this capacity with two Major Generals, with the enthusiasm of the times, an idea of the General’s character which experience taught me to be unfounded, over came my scruples, and induced me to accept his invitation to enter into his family. It was not long before I discovered he was neither remarkable for delicacy nor had good temper, which revived my former aversion to the station in which I was acting, and it has been increasing ever since. It has been often with great difficulty that I have prevailed upon myself not to renounce it, but while, from motives of public utility, I was doing violence to my feelings, I was always determined, if there should ever happen a breach between us, never to consent to an accommodation. I was persuaded that once that nice barrier, which marked the boundaries of what we owned to each other, should be thrown down, it might be propped again, but could never be restored.

I have given you so particular a detail of our differences from the desire I have to justify myself in your opinion. Perhaps you may think I was precipitate in reflecting the overture made by the general to an accommodation. I assure you, my dear sir, it was not the effect of resentment, it was the deliberate result of maxims I had long formed for the government of my own conduct.

…

To render it agreeable to good policy there things are requisite. First that the necessity of the time requires it, secondly, that it be not the probable source of greater evils than those it pretends to remedy, and lastly that it have a probability of success.

…

Alexander Hamilton in accomplishing his vision faced tremendous odds with greater courage and high spirits - his traits - generosity, devotion, promptness, pride, concert, touchiness, pugnacity, shrewdness, acumen and inexhaustible energy - a mingling of high and low, such as may be found only in characters built on a grand scale, with the bold irregularity of  a mountain range.
…

Hamilton turned out to be one of the small class of man of whom it has been justly said that they appear as levers to uplift the earth and roll it into another course, but they do not attain to such rare functions by the high range of their ambition, but by the large development of their powers.

…

Mauve was a man full of an energy which he did not dissipate. He painted, and when that fatigued him he painted some more. By that time he would be refreshed and could go to his painting again.

Lust for Life
Irvin Stone
…

Rubens was serving Holland as Ambassador to Spain and used to spend the afternoon in the royal gardens before his easel. One day a jaunty member of the Spanish Court passed and remarked, “I see that the diplomat amused himself sometimes, with painting.” To which Rubens replied ‘No, the painter amuses himself sometimes with diplomacy!”
…

Napoleon went forth to seek virtue but, since she was not  be found, he got power

Goethe.

 “The youngster is made of granite, but there is a volcano inside”,

                        Napoleon - Emil Ludwig – p.6

The masters, indeed, monks one and all, have a good opinion of him, although he does not makes much headway except in mathematics history and Geography subjects which appeal to a precise mind, a being eye, and also to the bitter man of spirit characteristics of one who belong to a conquered race.

Napoleon - Emil Ludwig – p.7

For he who would make history must first study history. From his father, Napoleon had inherited versatility and a vigorous imagination; from his mother came pride, courage, and accuracy; from both was derived his strong family feelings.

Napoleon - Emil Ludwig – p.

Reserved and diligent, he prefers study to any kind of conversation, and nourishes his mind upon good authors… He is taciturn with a love for solitude; is moody, overbearing and extremely egotistical. Though he speaks little, his answer are decisive and to the point, and he excels in argument. Much self love and overweening ambition.”   

Napoleon - Emil Ludwig – p.

Reading with sure instinct about the things (and those my) that will be of me to him in days to some; artillery, its principles and its history, the art of siege, Plato’s Republic; the constitutions of the Pension, the Athenian, the Spartan states, the history of England; the campaigns of Frederick the great, French fineness, the tartans and the Turks, their manners and customs and the topography of their counties, the history of Egypt and the history of Cathage; descriptions of India, English account of contemporary France, Mina beau, Buffoon  and Machiavelli; the history and the constitution of Switzerland, the history and constitution of Chine, India and Inca state, the history of the nobility and the story of patrician misdeeds, astronomy, geology, and meteorology, the laws of the growth of populations, statistics of mortality.

Always alone, though in the midst of mart, I go back home that I may give myself up to my lonely dears and to the waves of my melancholy, whither now do my glory thoughts tend! Towards death, yet I stand on the threshold of my life, and may reasonably expert to draw bread for may, may year. How great the joy-to see my own people are more! What demon, then is it that tempts me to self-destructions? Since misfortune dogs my foot steps, and nothings gives me pleasure why should I got on bearing life in which, for me everything goes away, what a tragedy in the home land! My fellow-countryman in chains, kiss the hand that beats them proud, buoyed up by __ of his own wrote, so lived of you the happy Corsican. …. Not only have been stolen from us our greatest food, but now they are corrupting our morals! That is how I see my country and yet I am powerless to help. Are there not reasons enough for quitting those whom I love. If it were but the life of one individual, which stood between us and our liberties, I should not be slow to act. Life has become a burden to me, I have no enjoyment, nothing but pain and because I cannot live after my own fashion, everything is loathsome to me.

Men who are truly great are like meteors, they shine and consume themselves, that they may lighten the darkness of the earth.

Napoleon - Emil Ludwig – p.20

“I, too, was in love once, and learned enough of it to despise definition, which only confuse the issue. I deny its justification nay, more, I regard it as injurious to society and destructive to the happiness of the individual. Man could bless heaven if they were  quit of it.”
Napoleon - Emil Ludwig – p.21

Happiness is the greatest possible developments of my talents.

…

Over the years, he has perfected the art of enjoying harsh criticism until the critics themselves come out with eulogies.

…

John Davis was commanding in appearance, was impressive, forceful and convincing in arguments, and was free of partisan or personal attitudes or expression... His bearing was uniformly serious and dignified, his manner courteous, his arguments logical, his diction exact, almost to perfection and he scrupulously never violated his unvaried duty to the court and the respect due to adversary counsel… His serene confidence and innate dignity created respect and compelled conviction.     

Charles B. Johnson, To the West Virgin Bar Association

    In his pleadings he abhorred those two common faults of mis-reciting evidences, quoting precedents or books falsely, or asserting things confidently, by which ignorant juries or weak judges are too after wrought on. He pleaded with the same sincerity that he used in other party his life, and used to say that it was as great a dishonors as a man was capable of that for a little money he was to be hired to say of do other wise then as he thought.

Add. Notes on the life and Death of Sir Mathew Hale – p. 36, Baxter    

...

            Between Della Street and Perry Mason was that peculiar bond which comes to exist between persons of the opposite sex who have spent years together in an exacting work where success can only be obtained by perfect coordination of effort. All personal relations are subordinated to the task of achievement, which brings about a more perfect companionship than where companionship is consciously sought. 

              The entire legal profession - lawyers, judges, law teacher’s - has become so mesmerized with the stimulation of the courtroom contest that we tend to forget that we ought to be healers of conflicts Doctors, in spite of astronomical medical costs, still retain a high degree of public confidence because they are perceived as healers. Should lawyers not be healers? Healers, not warriors. Healers, not procurers, Healers, not hired murderers? 

Warren Burger
Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
with a message for courtroom protagonists

Man, Woman and Child
Erich Segal

A wife of valor who can find?
She is for more precious than jewels
Proverbs 31:10

Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold…..
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
W.B. Jets

To respond to another person when you are in pain, there must be a lot of trust between you

…

Love and hate don’t seems to cancel each other out. They can coexist and drive you mad.

…

The only one score in the marriage gone. A thousand no errors ever.

…

Not being miserable isn’t exactly my definition of an ideal marriage.

…

The most painful part of growing up is discovering that nobody’s perfect.

…

When he began to speak it was of the religious ideas of the Hindus; but when he ended, Hinduism had been created.

Sister Nivedita On Vivekanand

    Science is said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the same. Then if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in god. In that case God is some times potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make him mutable. Every thing mutable is a compound, and everything compound must called destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. There fore there never was a time when there was no creation.

    It only man is fully aware of his Art perfect omnipotent, omniscient nature! But he is ignorant of his real spiritual identity and because of his ignorance, he feels himself imperfect, and the revolt against this sense of imperfection manifests itself as desires in the mental zone. Desire throw open the volcano-peaks of the mind and they crept to throw out the scorching lower of thought currents, without a desire behind it no thought can rise. And when a desire gets fully established in the mind, in the onward flow of thoughts, generated by it, the very desire in self-expression manifests as our actions in the outer world.

    The grossness of divinity of an individual’s actions express themselves in the quality and nature of their desires, which, in their turn, advertise the degree and depth of his ignorance.
Vivekanand
Paper on Hinduism. Read at the Parliament of religion at Chicago on 19 Sept 1893.

If only man is fully aware of his all-perfect omnipotent, omniscient nature! But he is ignorant of his real spiritual identity and because of his ignorance, he feels himself imperfect, and the revolt against this sense of imperfection manifests itself as desires in the mental zone. Desire throw open the volcano peaks of the mind and they erupt to throw out the scorching lava of thought currents. Without a desire behind it no thought can rise. And when a desire gets fully established in the mind, in the onward flow of thoughts, generated by it. The very desire in self expression manifests as our action in the outer world.

 The grossness or divinity of an individuals actions express themselves in the quality and nature of desires, which, in their turn advertise the degree and depth of his ignorance

Isavasya Upanishad
Swami Chinmayanda
p.37

…

‘But is not God truly good, and must not he described as such’
‘Yes, why do you ask’
‘Well, nothing that is good is harmful, is it;”
‘I think not’
‘And does that which is not harmful do harm”
‘Certainly not’
‘And does that which does no harm, do any evil’
‘No’
‘Then would that which does no evil cause evil’
‘How could it’
‘Well is the good beneficial’
‘Yes’
‘And does it cause good fortune
“Yes”
“Than the good does not cause all things, it is responsible for the things that are good, but responsible for the evil’
‘That is certainly true”, he said,
‘Nor can God”, I said, “Since he is good, cause all things, as most people say. He is responsible for a few things that happen to man, but for many he is not, for good things we enjoy are much more fewer than the evil. The fortunate we must contribute to none else but God, but for evil we must find some other cause, not God.’

Republic - Plato p.60

If God changes at all, he must become worse, for we certainly cannot say that God is lacking in any excellence or beauty.

Republic – Plato - p.62

…

 Then the Roman asked the Egypt, ‘How do you do of your queen’

  The Egypt said ‘the best, like every city with lust, in the end.’

Cleopatra
…

(Some) Person posses a peculiar Psychology which instills extreme love and devotion but when they are faced with disappointment or find their environment unhealthy as unhappy, they seem to loose all the charms of life.

…

O
Is
Not
This
World
Slowly
Winding
Downwards
Aimlessly
Misjudging
Significant
Unacceptable
Vulnerability
Pathetically
Manifesting
Dispassion
Motivated
Entirely
Against
Kindly
Human
Help
For
Us
O.

…

            The secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that making people like their inescapable social destiny.
p.24

                        The child’s mind is these suggestion and the sum of the suggestion is the child’s mind. And not the child’s mind only, the adults mind too - all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides is made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestion, ‘suggestions from the state.’

p.80

    When the individual feels, the community reels.

p.120

    That’s all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater the man’s latent, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted… No offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviors. Murder kills only the individual and after all, what is an individual… We can make a new one with the greatest ease - as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at society itself. Yes, at society itself’.

    “We are not our own any uses that what we possess is our own, we did not make ourselves, we can not be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are god’s property. It is not our happiness thus to view the matter! Is it any happiness, or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way to depend on no one to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksome-ness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of mother. But as time goes on, they as all man will find that independence was not made for man that it is an unnatural state will do for a while, but will not carry us o safely to the end”. … “A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness of listless ness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age and feeling thus imagines himself merely sick, willing his fears with the nation that this discussing conditioning is due to some particular cause, from which as from an illness, he hopes to recover vain imaginings! That sickness is old age and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes man turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has queen me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings the religious sentiments tends to develop as we grow older to develop because as the passion grow calm  as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason become Len troubled in its working, Len obscured by the images, desires and distractions in which it used to be absorbed, where upon god emerges as from behind a cloud, our souls feels sees turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the would of sensations its life and charm has began to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impression from within or from without , we feel the reed to bear on something that abides,  something that will never play us false a reality an absolute and ever lasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to god, for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it makes up to us for all our other losses.”

p.181

    He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reasons for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons, that’s philosophy. People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to believe in God.’

p.183                

    Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended there obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren’t any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving anyone too much. There’s no such thing as divided allegiance, you’re so conditioned that you can’t help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there aren’t any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, any thing unpleasant should some how happen, why there’s always ‘soma’ to give you a holiday from the facts.

Books read:

1974-75

 1976

1. Karma Yoga - Vivekanand
2. Lust for Life - Inving Stone
   
3.