Patterns Quotes - Page 26

When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.

M. Scott Peck

Growing Up, Fall, Successful

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We cannot make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern.

Harriet Lerner

Steps, Persons, Ifs

Harriet Lerner (2014). “The Dance of Anger: A Woman's Guide to Changing the Patterns of Intimate Relationships”, p.17, Harper Collins

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When we struggle to change ourselves we, in fact, only continue the patterns of self-judgement and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive.

Jack Kornfield

War, Struggle, Self

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Here then is the pattern in my carpet, the sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and commonplace things; hidden and yet burning and glowing continually if you care to look with purged eyes.

Arthur Machen

Eye, Glowing, Looks

"The London Adventure". Book by Arthur Machen, p.25, 1924.

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Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers.

Learned Hand

Upset, Taste, Furniture

Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase ones taxes.

Learned Hand

Patriotic, Advice, Pay

Helvering v. Gregory (1934)

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Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on a significant bases of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations.

August Strindberg

Memories, Reality, Imagination

August Strindberg (2014). “Strindberg Plays: 2: Dream Play; Dance of Death; The Stronger”, p.175, A&C Black

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But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there.

Knut Hamsun

Fall, Men, Space

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Christians often equate holiness with activism and spiritual disciplines. And while it's true that activism is often the outgrowth of holiness and spiritual disciplines are necessary for the cultivation of holiness, the pattern of piety in the Scripture is more explicitly about our character. We put off sin and put on righteousness. We put to death the deeds of the flesh and put on Christ. To use the older language, we pursue mortification of the old man and the vivification of the new.

Kevin DeYoung

Christian, Spiritual, Character

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Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.

Arthur Koestler

What Matters, Data, Facts

Arthur Koestler (1964). “The Act of Creation”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. So unless you deliberately fight a habit -- unless you find new routines -- the pattern will unfold automatically.

Charles Duhigg

Fighting, Focus, Decision

Charles Duhigg (2012). “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change”, p.20, Random House

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In the first grade, I already knew the pattern of my life. I didn't know the living of it, but I knew the line… From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.

Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

Art, School, Lines

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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such a fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself as anything less than a god? And, when you consider that this incalculably subtle organism is inseparable from the still more marvelous patterns of its environment - from the minutest electrical designs to the whole company of the galaxies - how is it conceivable that this incarnation of all eternity can be bored with being?

Alan Watts

Motivational, Eye, Jewels

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Year after year, we have had to explain from mid-year onwards why the global growth rate has been lower than predicted as little as two quarters back. This pattern of disappointment and downward revision sets up the first, and the basic, challenge on the list of issues policymakers face in moving ahead: restoring growth, if that is possible.

Stanley Fischer

Disappointment, Moving, Years

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We are all part of some cosmic pattern, and this pattern works toward good and not evil. It builds and does not destroy. So I shall go on in my search for a race where I can find kinship and happiness.

Henry Kuttner

Race, Evil, Doe

Henry Kuttner (1968). “The Creature from Beyond Infinity”

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I think that creativity depends on having sufficient indeterminacy around for a new pattern to arise up within it.

Rupert Sheldrake

Creativity, Thinking, Arise

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Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.

Fritjof Capra

Beautiful, Religious, Art

"The Tao of Physics". Book by Fritjof Capra, 1975.

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Gradually, physicists began to realise that nature, at the atomic level, does not appear as a mechanical universe composed of fundamental building blocks, but rather as a network of relations, and that, ultimately, there are no parts at all in this interconnected web. Whatever we call a part is merely a pattern that has some stability and therefore captures our attention.

Fritjof Capra

Block, Doe, Attention

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As time passed I became an avid reader of popular scientific books, wanting to know as much as I could about the world in which I lived. Gradually I began to see a pattern of nonsense in much scientific writing. Scientific explanations given regarding the origins or functioning of various phenomena simply didn't make sense.

Vine Deloria Jr.

Book, Writing, Avid

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Developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma. It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class-involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing-are not sustainable. A shift is necessary toward lifestyles less geared to environmentally damaging consumption patterns.

Maurice Strong

Food, Home, Air

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Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn't really much difference between the two. You are not conscious of this, of course, and will vehemently claim that you do not want pain. But look closely and you will find that your thinking and behavior are designed to keep the pain going, for yourself and others. If you were truly conscious of it, the pattern would dissolve, for to want more pain is insanity, and nobody is consciously insane.

Eckhart Tolle

Pain, Taken, Thinking

Eckhart Tolle (2010). “The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment”, p.38, New World Library

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Choice implies consciousness - a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present....Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life.

Eckhart Tolle

Running, Spiritual, Pain

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Sound doesn't always have to be heard. Sound can also be created by how a pattern is set up on a surface- how it moves across the surface, how light reflects the surface [and] can generate a feeling. Sound can also be through feeling, through color, through texture.

Nick Cave

Moving, Light, Color

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To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.

Dan Millman

Struggle, Focus, Energy

Dan Millman (2009). “Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives”, p.125, ReadHowYouWant.com

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A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?

Martin Gardner

Beautiful, Education, Musician

"Engaging. Interactive. Informative". The Dover Math and Science Newsletter, www.doverpublications.com. May 16, 2011.

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