The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see. " -Richard
. . . he makes me feel out of control and out of my head. He is exhilarating and terrifying. I see and feel him everywhere, and I'm always grasping for equilibrium even when he's not there. . . I feel like I'm always falling in love, falling and falling and falling.
Goverment is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are the most tolerable are arbitary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
Even when I can play Europe's most precious keyboard, to have to listen to people who don't understand, or do not want to understand, and who are incapable of grasping my intent, whatever I play, does surely forfeit my lust for playing at all.
Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature.
If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe.
Procrastination is hardly more evil than grasping impatience.
The United States has lost her unique position as a leader in the progress of civilization and has taken up her place simply as one of the grasping and selfish nations of the present day.
The only cause of happiness is love. The only cause of suffering is self grasping.
In grasping at uncertainties we lost that which is certain.
. . . any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious.
If we seek to be loved - if we expect to be loved - this cannot be accomplished; we will be dependent and grasping not genuinely loving.
Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a disappointment.
Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as Garfield Gets Spayed, and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: In Search of Excellence, Finding Excellence, Grasping Hold of Excellence, Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It, etc.
Seeing consists of the grasping of structural features rather than the indiscriminate recording of detail.
The rhetoric of theory is always in a bind. It pronounces ideas and denounces failures to accept or grasp them while insisting that there are no grounds either for accepting or grasping ideas.
Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism.
Most pastors have a hard time grasping a vision. But vision is the indispensable quality of a leader.
People who are hard, grasping and always ready to take advantage of their neighbors become very rich.
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.
