What a book a devil's chaplain might write by Charles Darwin

What a book a devil's chaplain might write
by Charles Darwin

A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting
on his past actions and their motives -
of approving of some and disapproving of others.
- Charles Darwin

If the misery of the poor be caused
not by the laws of nature,
but by our institutions,
great is our sin.
- Charles Darwin

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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me,
that man with all his noble qualities...
still bears in his bodily frame
the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
- Charles Darwin

The mystery of the beginning
of all things is insoluble by us;
and I for one, must be content to remain an agnostic.
- Charles Darwin

The highest possible stage in moral culture
is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
- Charles Darwin

To kill an error is as good a service as,
and sometimes even better than,
the establishing of a new truth or fact.
- Charles Darwin

I have called this principle,
by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term of Natural Selection.
- Charles Darwin

It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin

The very essence of instinct is that
it's followed independently of reason.
- Charles Darwin

Animals, whom we have made our slaves,
we do not like to consider our equal.
- Charles Darwin

In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
- Charles Darwin

How paramount the future is to the present
when one is surrounded by children.
- Charles Darwin

A man who dares to waste one hour of time
has not discovered the value of life.
- Charles Darwin

On the ordinary view of each species
having been independently created,
we gain no scientific explanation.
- Charles Darwin

In the struggle for survival,
the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals
because they succeed in adapting
themselves best to their environment.
- Charles Darwin

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare,
and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
- Charles Darwin

The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect
if there is, at bottom, no design,
no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
- Charles Darwin

The book of life is filled with incoherent riddles.
Life's true lessons are inscribed in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The Lessons of the Book of Life are
Writ Small in its Margins.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is a Book of Riddles,
with the Real Lessons Writ Small in its Margins.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains,
but the thought which it suggests;
just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones
but in the echoes of our hearts.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The real lessons from the book of life
are inscribed in a corner of the margin.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The most important thing about Spaceship Earth -
an instruction book didn't come with it.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

The Book of Life is a Book of Riddles,
with its Real Lessons Writ Small in the Margins.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back.
- Charles M. Schulz in his Peanuts cartoon

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth,
and that is that no instruction book came with it.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

The things of this world exist;
they are; you can't refuse them.
- Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching - Book One #2 - version by Ursula K. Le Guin

The important thing is this: to be able, at any moment,
to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
- Charles Du Bos (1882-1939), from his book Approximations (1922)
(not Charles DuBois or Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

The only way to store information is by agreement.
The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind.
Our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive.
Humans punish themselves endlessly
for not being what they believe they should be.
We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others,
but we cannot accept and love ourselves.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
- Omar Khayyam

Faith:
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have
and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen:
...
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
or, you will be taught how to fly
- Patrick Overton - from his book of poems: The Leaning Tree, 1975
[Widely mis-attributed to Barbara J. Winter, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and others]

Not everyone is always going to like what you do.
Your job application, your book proposal,
your offer of marriage is going to
get rejected sometimes - perhaps often.
Your boss, your spouse, even the person
behind you in the supermarket checkout line
is occasionally going to think that you are doing it all wrong.
Don't take it personally.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
- William Butler Yeats

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil.
If they would only expend the same
amount of energy loving their fellow men,
the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
- Helen Keller

Lord, grant that I might not so much
seek to be loved as to love.
- St. Francis of Assisi

Life may not be the party we hoped for,
but while we are here we might as well dance.
- Anonymous

For all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these, "It might have been.
- John Greenleaf Whittier

Through humor, you can soften some
of the worst blows that life delivers.
And once you find laughter,
no matter how painful your situation might be,
you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby

Bold Light of Spirit:
Out of the darkness and into the light,
Open our eyes and behold such a sight.
Brilliance of day takes the place of the night,
Boldness and courage are swords of His Might.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"Good morning!" he said at last.
"We don't want any adventures here, thank you!
You might try over The Hill or across The Water."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Let's have faith that right makes might;
and in that faith let us, to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it.
- Abraham Lincoln

If you want reality to be different than it is,
you might as well try to teach a cat to bark.
- Byron Katie

You got to be careful if you
don't know where you're going,
because you might not get there.
- Yogi Berra

Life is too short, time is too precious,
and the stakes are too high
to dwell on what might have been.
- Hilary Clinton

Trust your own instinct.
Your mistakes might as well be your own,
instead of someone else's.
- Billy Wilder

No stream rises higher than its source.
Whatever man might build, could never
express or reflect more than he was.
He could record neither more nor less
than he had learned of life.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

We are never afraid of what is happening in this instant -
It is what MIGHT happen next that frightens us.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents,
and only one for birthday presents, you know.
- Lewis Carroll

In war as in life, it is often necessary
when some cherished scheme has failed,
to take up the best alternative open,
and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
- Winston Churchill

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone
who has just done you a small favor
wish that he might have done you a greater one.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Might I perhaps win my wings?
I've been waiting for over 200 years now, sir,
and people ARE beginning to talk.
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946 movie)

Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be;
and if it were so, it would be;
but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
- Lewis Carroll

One cannot have wisdom without perspective,
but once gaining perspective, one attains wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to view every situation
as each person who is in any way affected
by that situation might view it.
Wisdom benefits from having a knowledge of history,
and therefore a historical perspective,
as well from as having the perspective of imagination -
the realm of the what-might-be
inhabited by futurists and science-fiction writers.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Anxiety is love's greatest killer.
It makes one feel as you might
when a drowning man holds unto you.
You want to save him, but you know
he will strangle you with his panic.
- Anais Nin

Essentially all suffering is the result of...
1. Comparing what we have (or don't have) today
... with what we had yesterday.
2. Comparing what we fear we might have (or not have) tomorrow)
... with what we have today.
3. Comparing what we have (or don't have) with what others have.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

In many ways, it is easier to be a good giver than a good receiver.
The giver chooses the gift and the timing.
More important, societal and religious traditions
tend to elevate the status of giver and lower the status of receiver.
When the Bible (Acts 20:32-35) speaks of it being
more blessed to give than to receive,
I believe that a better translation might be
"take" rather than "receive," as the context
of that passage is "coveting."
Certainly there is nothing blessed about coveting,
stealing, begging, or demanding,
however the skill of graciously receiving a freely offered gift
is another matter entirely.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it,
I should not mind a bit.
but if a friend of mine had a sorrow
and refused to allow me to share it,
I should feel it most bitterly.
If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me,
I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted
so that I might share in what I was entitled to share.
If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him,
I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
- Oscar Wilde

If you don't know where you are going,
you might wind up someplace else.
- Yogi Berra

I was thinking that I might fly today.
Just to disprove all the things you say...
please be careful with me, I'm sensitive,
and I'd like to stay that way.
- Jewel

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy
between the genius and his human qualities
that one has to ask oneself whether
a little less talent might not have been better.
- Carl Jung

How many things there are concerning which we might
well deliberate whether we had better know them.
- Henry David Thoreau

Perspective:
Do you always look at life from the same point-of-view?
Consider viewing a situation as another might view it.
Look from behind, underneath, from the distant heavens.
View the situation as someone of a different religion,
race, or nationality might view it.
Pretend you are an alien from a distant galaxy -
that should be good for a laugh.
Troubles only appear troubling to those close to them.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Write your Sad times in Sand,
Write your Good times in Stone.
- George Bernard Shaw

The illiterate are not those who cannot read and write,
but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
- Alvin Toffler

Write it on your heart that every day
is the best day in the year.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

What a book a devil's chaplain might writeby Charles Darwin

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What a book a devil's chaplain might write
by Charles Darwin