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How to Use
'Clicking' with your mouse on any date in the calendar points up a quotation for your consideration.
If you choose to meditate on it, please remember that the quotations published January range from the profound to the flippant. They are NOT offered as examples of eternal verities but merely as 'Food for Thought', and it is for you to judge for yourself whether and to what extent the words used accurately reflect your own beliefs and convictions. |
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... the player is full of the fear of not living up to the self-image which egotism has erected.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Play is a crucial word. Its other face is struggle. We have only play or struggle, because a transcended struggle resolves itself into play. (Playing and fighting lie close together — fighting is a play that has gone wrong, and play is a transcended or ritualised fight.)
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
The art of life is in this point: the art of 'do — let it be done'.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
When an artist creates, or a musician plays, he is enacting life itself — he is a living mediator in a world struggling towards balance.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
In life terms, a human being has to go through the agonising pull between irreconcilables until they resolve themselves into a play. He is then a divine man reflecting the wholeness of his Creator.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Every human being makes this momentous graduation from water to air when he emerges at birth from the water of the womb and makes his first sound. He has been impregnated with the breath of life and his life pattern has been clarified, for it is at this vital moment that the eternal self dives into time and his spoken word, his fate, is sealed.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Egotism is bitter, but the bitterness drives man to understand his own condition; and when this has been accomplished, there arises the oil of love by which a man's will may play freely through his substance. Substance is then the hand-maid of will. Man is struggling to this possibility — it is not yet his property.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
As he [man] fears and defends, the duality arises in him, 'Can I? — Can't I?'. Such duality is doubt; and doubt is the sworn enemy of immediacy.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
... error springs from aggression, from trying too hard, and from control by force.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
The wise man plays — he is a joker; and sometimes he may choose to put his jokes on canvas or on paper.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
In terms of the violin, the tightness of egotism can be seen in the tension of the string, and the new love can be seen in the relationship between the bow and the string. Bow and violin, in this new state, are two reciprocal parts of a whole — as in a successful relationship between man and woman.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Three is to do with the inherent nature of Absolute power. No creation is possible without the inter-functioning of the three aspects of this power. They stem from an original polar tension and have come down to us in many forms — positive, negative, neutral; father, mother, child; or, in Chinese philosophy, as heaven, earth, man. In each case the opposing poles are reconciled by a mediating third force.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
The dances of joy and sorrow both live in man, for he has both creative imagination and hard bones: he has free energy in him that longs to burst out from its confines.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
What is essential is to see that form involves the relationship of parts: it is relationship that is sought by man.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
... it is man's supreme indulgence that he and his ways are more likeable and superior to those of other beings. He is afraid to lose this image he has of himself, becomes dependent upon it, and goes to great lengths to defend it.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
... selflessness is the precondition of immediacy.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
The gulf between the academics and the men of action would be unbridgeable were it not for those in the feeling category: it is the artists who are always seeking to relate the two — the ideals and the violence in the world.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
As in a male-female relationship, over-aggressiveness by the male, or lack of response from the female, can destroy harmony. In the perfect balance of bow and violin lies the principle of 'here and now' awareness. Rosin represents the perfect control of spirit over matter, upon which man's conscious evolution depends.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Seven is a hierarchical structure that results, once three has become operative, in the manifest world: so we have seven colours, seven days, seven planets, the seven-year rhythm of a man's life, and so on. The seven steps are natural divisions in a particular waveband of activity.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
The consequence of the mechanical universe is man's subjection to its irreversible laws. Man now dances as a puppet, the strings of which are pulled from outside him — he is a creature of nature and at the mercy of all nature's laws.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
The moment of marriage is the beginning of the development section of his life — the first time a man really comes to terms with what he is.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Do not fear; do not be discouraged by the tiny insolences of people. For yourself be only careful that you are true.
Edward Carpenter, 1844-1929
The silly quacking goose is the quacking of the rational, pride-full mind — the noisy ego. The direction of evolution has led us into this trap, which has meant the loss of intuitive awareness. Released from this trap the bird is free — the whole dazzling purity of cosmic intelligence may be laid open before us. We must then observe the goose and the swan and make a choice.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Demand not that events should happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.
Epictetus, c. 55-135 CE
... it is the material world — the female force — that pulls down towards inertia, and the will — the male force — that opposes this inertia.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Man and the cosmos are deeply inter-related; and since music is the outer form of a cosmic secret, it is only a question of unlocking the mysteries it hides. In the unlocking of these mysteries, the numbers 3 and 7 are very powerful keys.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
... the 'dance of life' is the act of creation — a positive self-realising of the power of the Creator.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Whilst God's love is available, man has to drive upwards to reach it. ... When man has accomplished this task, the energy of the Absolute may then reach down to spiritualise the deadest of dead matter symbolised by the Moon.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Will you come forth? Will you do the daring deed? Will you strip yourself naked as you came into the world, and come before me [Nature], and regard unafraid the flashing of my sword? Will you lose your life, to Me?
Edward Carpenter, 1844-1929
Whether we see the word 'violin' as coming from 'vol' (German root) or 'vil' (Italian root), the violin is essentially to do with will.
Herbert Whone, b. 1925
Indolence of which a man is conscious, and indolence of which he is unconscious, are a thousand miles apart. Unconscious indolence is real indolence; conscious indolence is not complete indolence because there is still some clarity in it... Unconscious indolence is like a sickness without symptoms: it is not noticed.
Lu Yen, fl. 800 CE