“In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it. This is because there is nothing that can take its place.”
“That the weak overcomes the strong/ And the submissive overcomes the hard/ Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put/ This knowledge into practice.”
Lao Tzu II.LXXVIII.186-187
In my latest Epoch Times column I say the difficulty people have condemning calls for churches to burn is a worrying sign of our rapid descent into a vindictive and pitiless neopagan mindset.
“Did someone already make the point that if faith in God is absurd, faith in man is pitiful?”
Again I quote myself, a thought prompted on August 14, 2001 by forced abortions in the People’s Republic of China
“Everyone is in the best seat.”
John Cage quoted in Jon Winokur Zen to Go
“Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.”
Søren Kierkegaard, quoted in Jon Winokur Zen To Go
“It is often observed that it is human nature to dislike those whom we have injured…”
David Frum Dead Right
“Napoleon had everything men usually crave – glory, power, riches – yet he said at St Helena: ‘I have never known six happy days in my life’; while Helen Keller – blind, deaf, dumb – declared, ‘I have found life so beautiful.’ If half a century of living has taught me anything at all, it has taught me that ‘Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.’”
Dale Carnegie How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“The [French] Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion… the modern argument of scientific relativity; in short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment and institutions; in fact, that each people practically got, not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have. ‘I know nothing of the rights of men,’ he said, ‘but I know something of the rights of Englishmen.’ There you have the essential atheist.”
G.K. Chesterton What’s Wrong with the World