Cultivation Quotes - Page 4

• Cultivation of meditative stability alone, will not destroy the discrimination of inherent existence. Afflictive emotions can return, making all sorts of disturbances

  Gautama Buddha

  Inspiration, Return, Emotion

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• The beginning of wisdom is the awareness that there is insufficient evidence that a god or gods have created us and the recognition that we are responsible in part for our own destiny. Human beings can achieve this good life, but it is by the cultivation of the virtues of intelligence and courage, not faith and obedience, that we will most likely be able to do so.

  Paul Kurtz

  Good Life, Destiny, Atheism

  Paul Kurtz (1986). “The Transcendental Temptation: A Critique of Religion and the Paranormal”

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• Men who have flattered themselves into this opinion of their own abilities, look down on all who waste their lives over books, as a race of inferior beings condemned by nature to perpetual pupilage, and fruitlessly endeavouring to remedy their barrenness by incessant cultivation, or succour their feebleness by subsidiary strength. They presume that none would be more industrious than they, if they were not more sensible of deficiences; and readily conclude, that he who places no confidence in his own powers owes his modesty only to his weakness.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Men, Race

  Samuel Johnson (1823). “The Works of Samuel Johnson: LL.D. A New Edition in Twelve Volumes. With an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.83

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• Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances.

  Kevin DeYoung

  Hard Work, Self, Evil

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• The fruits of the earth do not more obviously require labor and cultivation to prepare them for our use and subsistence, than our faculties demand instruction and regulation in order to qualify us to become upright and valuable members of society, useful to others, or happy ourselves.

  Isaac Barrow

  Happiness, Order, Preparation

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• Even men who were engaged in organizing debt-serf cultivation and debt-serf industrialism in the American cotton districts, in the old rubber plantations, and in the factories of India, China, and South Italy, appeared as generous supporters of and subscribers to the sacred cause of individual liberty.

  H. G. Wells

  Men, Political, Liberty

  H. G. Wells (1933). “Shape Things Come”

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• I know, indeed, and can conceive of no pursuit so antagonistic to the cultivation of the oratorical faculty ... as the study of Mathematics. An eloquent mathematician must, from the nature of things, ever remain as rare a phenomenon as a talking fish, and it is certain that the more anyone gives himself up to the study of oratorical effect the less will he find himself in a fit state to mathematicize.

  James Joseph Sylvester

  Nature, Math, Talking

  James Joseph Sylvester (2008). “The Collected Mathematical Papers of James Joseph Sylvester”, p.72, American Mathematical Soc.

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• A good roast of sun, it slows you, lets you relax–and out here if there's anything wrong, you can see it coming with bags of time to do what's next. This is the place and the weather for peace, for the cultivation of a friendly mind.

  A.L. Kennedy

  Weather, Mind, Friendly

  A. L. Kennedy (2007). “Day”, Random House

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• Keeping a slow hunch alive poses challenges on multiple scales. For starters, you have to preserve the hunch in your own memory, in the dense network of your neurons. Most slow hunches pass in and out of our memory too quickly, precisely because they possess a certain murkiness. You get a feeling that there's an interesting avenue to explore, a problem that might lead you to a solution, but then you get distracted by more pressing matters and the hunch disappears. So part of the secret of hunch cultivation is simple: write everything down.

  Steven Johnson

  Memories, Writing, Simple

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• It is possible to evade a multitude of sorrows by the cultivation of an insignificant life.

  John Henry Jowett

  Sorrow, Multitudes, Insignificant

  John Henry Jowett (1910). “The School of Calvary”

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• The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity.

  George Steiner

  Real, Moving, Risk

  George Steiner (1987). “George Steiner: A Reader”, p.31, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Sorcery: the systematic cultivation of enhanced consciousness or non-ordinary awareness & its deployment in the world of deeds & objects to bring about desired results.

  Hakim Bey

  Deployment, Sorcery, Ordinary

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.22, Autonomedia

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• The great benefit of science is that it can contribute tremendously to the alleviation of suffering at the physical level, but it is only through the cultivation of the qualities of the human heart and the transformation of our attitudes that we can begin to address and overcome our mental suffering...

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Attitude, Heart

  "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality". Book by Dalai Lama, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2005.

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• Old money is fully as moronic as new money but it has inherited an appearance of cultivation.

  Mary McCarthy

  Appearance, Old Money

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• Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason. We may have uneasy sensations from seeing a creature in distress, without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

  Samuel Johnson

  Children, Men, Compassion

  "Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey Into North Wales".

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• By the ruler's cultivation of his own character there is set up the example of the course which all should pursue.

  Confucius

  Love, Inspirational, Funny

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• When your practice has led you to experiences that you can't understand, you need a better theory. Otherwise, if you try to understand these transcendent experiences with 'profane' or, we might say, 'materialistic' ways of thinking, your cultivation will be set back.

  Betty Sue Flowers

  Thinking, Practice, Experience

  Peter M. Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers (2005). “Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society”, p.226, Crown Business

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• Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  People, Evil, Giving

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• The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Spiritual, Taken, Heart

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Essays”, p.90, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional flowers.

  Gore Vidal

  Weed, Flower, Criticism

  Gore Vidal (1968). “Sex, Death, and Money”

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• ... in the present State of America, our welfare and prosperity depend upon the cultivation of our lands and turning the produce of them to the best advantage.

  George Washington

  Land, America, Prosperity

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson (1786). “The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799”

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• . . .nature is still predominant, and there are those who regret that with the improvements of cultivation the sublimity of the wilderness should pass away: for those scenes of solitude from which the hand of nature has never been lifted, affect the mind with a more deep toned emotion than aught which the hand of man has touched. Amid them the consequent associations are of God the creator-they are his undefiled works, and the mind is cast into the contemplation of eternal things.

  Thomas Cole

  Nature, Regret, Men

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• Not only do these abominable weapons lie buried in silence and in their millions waiting to kill or maim innocent women and children; but the presence or even the fear of the presence of a single landmine can prevent the cultivation of an entire field, rob a whole village of its livelihood, place yet another obstacle on a country's road to reconstruction and development

  Kofi Annan

  Country, Children, Lying

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• Forgiveness entails the authentic acceptance of our own worthiness as human beings, the understanding that mistakes are opportunities for growth, awareness and the cultivation of compassion, and the realization that the extension of love to ourselves and others is the glue that holds the universe together. Forgiveness...is not a set of behaviors, but an attitude.

  Joan Z. Borysenko

  Forgiveness, Attitude, Mistake

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• There is broad scientific consensus that genetically engineered crops currently on the market are safe to eat. After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops.

  Pamela Ronald

  Years, Environmental, Acres

  "Scientists Are Happy California Won't Label Genetically Modified Food" by Christie Wilcox, www.businessinsider.com. November 7, 2012.

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