Heather: What are you up to?
Jeremy: Tidying up the hard drives.
Heather: Why, because we're having company?
Characteristically, Pangbourne's one affair in the high-rise had been with a laboratory researcher on the 2nd floor, a slim, silent brunette who probably spent all her time tormenting small mammals.
from High Rise by J.G. Ballard
Shugyo teaches us to commit every moment of our lives. If we commit every moment of our lives we will be a "Total Being" in every situation. When it's time to eat we eat; to work, we work; to be nice, we become nice. This will make us clear-minded and will make others feel clear with us. This is nothing special or spectacular but is the common and most fulfilling way. It sounds easy, but is the most difficult to do. To be a person like this we have through Shugyo to get rid of the attachment to our ego.
Shiohira Shihan of Pacific Aikido, from "Shihira Shihan's Aikido Philosophy"
She just stared at him, as if he were a stain on the wall, a stain that might resemble a person if you squinted at it in a certain way.
from Last Call by Tim Powers
Don't be humble; you're not that great.
Golda Meir
it's hard to find pictures of panties without going through a ton of porn at work.
Brent Thomas, personal communication
You know, only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.
Chris Rock in Premiere of March 2001
I am NOT nuts!! I am holy.
Brice Wellington
Wherever I go, everyone is a little safer.
Wherever I am, anyone in need has a friend.
When I return home, everyone is happy I am there.Dr. Robert L. Humphrey (1923-1997)
[Jeremy and Heather are watching Branagh's Henry V]
Heather: I don't understand what's going on.
Jeremy: That's the Bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely. They're discussing a bill which would take away lands currently controlled by the church, so they want King Henry to...
Heather: Those guys have cool hats!
A good soldier is not violent. A good fighter is not angry.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
The secret of aikido is to cultivate a spirit of loving protection for all things.
Morihei Ueshiba
I do not think badly of others when they treat me unkindly. Rather, I feel gratitude towards them for giving me the opportunity to train myself to handle adversity.
Morihei Ueshiba
You should realize what the universe is and what you are yourself. To know yourself is to know the universe.
Morihei Ueshiba
I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother
to be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion.
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
we are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us.
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
we are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
if you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being.
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
Walk on the mat
Sweat a while
Walk off
David Heal
It seems as though his beauty, his absolute clarity of being, sweeps everything before it, so that he can touch any person, or object or subject, and impart his cleanness to it, endow it with the fresh air of his presence.
Unknown, from J. Krishnamurti: A Biography by Pupul Jayakar
You have a concept of what you should be and how you should act, and all the time you are in fact acting quite differently; so you see that principles, beliefs and ideals must inevitably lead to hypocrisy and a dishonest life. It is the ideal that creates the opposite to what is, so if you know how to be with 'what is', then the opposite is not necessary.
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
There is an element of violence in most of us that has never been resolved, never been wiped away, so that we can live totally without violence. Not being able to be free of violence we have created the idea of its opposite, non-violence. Non-violence is non-fact. Violence is a fact. Non-violence does not exist, except as an idea. What exists, "what is," is violence. It is like those people in India who say they worship the idea of non-violence, they preach about it, talk about it, copy it - they are dealing with a non-fact, non-reality, with an illusion. What is a fact is violence, major or minor, but violence. When you pursue non-violence, which is an illusion, which is not an actuality, you are cultivating time. That is, "I am violent, but I will be non-violent." The "I will be" is time, which is the future, a future that has no reality; it is invented by thought as an opposite of violence. It is the postponement of violence that creates time. If there is an understanding and so the ending of violence, there is no psychological time.J. Krishnamurti, The Flame of Attention
...it is essential for a man to strive with all his heart, and to understand that it is difficult even to reach the average if he does not have the intention of surpassing others in whatever he does.
From Budoshoshinshu (The Warrior's Primer) by Daidoji Yuzan, trans. William Scott Wilson
Ueshiba... also had many mistresses. He used to encourage his young disciples to build their sexual ki by masturabting in front of proper shoji screens. 'If one of you can punch a hole through a shoji with just your ejaculation, then you'll be a real martial artist!'
From Angry White Pyjamas by Robert Twigger
19. Make a desperate effort. (Issho kenmei monogoto o suru koto)
Here is another lesson direct from iaijutsu training. In important matters, a "strong" effort usually results in only mediocre results. Whenever we are attempting anything truly worthwhile our effort must be as if our life is at stake, just as if we were under a physical attack! It is this extraordinary effort--an effort that drives us beyond what we thought we were capable of--that ensures victory in battle and success in life's endeavors.From Flashing Steel: Mastering Eishin-Ryu Swordsmanship by Masayuki Shimabukuro and Leonard J. Pellman
Why aren't there more websites about ninjas?
It is a little embarrassing that, after 45 years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other.
Aldous Huxley, This Timeless Moment
Why read a book that does not disturb you? If a book does not give you a blow in the head why bother with it?
Franz Kafka [source & authenticity unknown--if you can give me any information on this, please do.]
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin--real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin.
At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
Alfred Souza
This is definitely "stick" country not "carrot" country... watch out for the preemptive strike.
Charlie Hill
Jeremy: How are you feeling?
Heather: I have propped my corpse up at my desk.
Waterhouse is going to fix the church's organ. This project will be sure to have side benefits for his own organ, a single-pipe instrument that needs attention just as badly.
Neal Stephenson, in Cryptonomicon
Well, if I publish a story in The Atlantic Monthly, then eleven intellectuals will read it, nod sagely, scratch their gray pates, and that will be the end of that. If, on the other hand, some sexist, racist, no-neck gazooney of a truck driver is sitting in a pay toilet in the Howard Johnson's on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and he's whacking off to a picture of a woman with a vagina the size of Au Sable Chasm, and then he turns the page and finds my story, and maybe that story says to him, "You are a no-neck, slavering, prognathous-jawed, gimlet-eyed moron, and you should be better, because you are human," then maybe it'll do some good.
Harlan Ellison, in an interview
the good thing about true hopelessness is that you don't have to try again.
Jamie Zawinski, personal communication
"I have the new kind of memory," I said. "It's a cranial implant. You don't have to speak out loud. You just think, and it talks to you in a quiet little voice in your head."
Conrad Metcalf, in Jonathan Lethem's Gun, with occasional music
i used to feel like i was the pinacle of evolution, like all those poor schmucky forfathers of mine only existed to make me happen. today i just feel like a rung any evolved ape can step on during their climb up my dna.
i say: fuck you evolution!
Heather Smioly, personal communication
I'm sick but my razor-sharp wit is still... slicing... at stuff.
Heather Smioly, while sick in bed watching TV
I will never call myself an aikidoka. I am a budoka who expresses himself through aikido.
Francis Takahashi Sensei, during training
We put the "harm" in "harmony" and the "end" in "blend".
Jimmy Friedman Sensei of Suginami Aikikai
ESTRAGON
I can't go on like this.
VLADIMIR
That's what you think.
Samuel Beckett, from Waiting for Godot
She is achingly pretty, the kind of woman that you want to take care of for the rest of her life for a few years.
Alan of http://www.heinovision.com
I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
Mahatma Gandhi
If you deny the traditional approach, as a reaction, you will have created another pattern in which you will be trapped.
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known
Throughout her life she [Yehonala, one of the author's grandmothers and the second-to-last Empress of China] was a devout Buddhist and would not go into the garden in the summer, saying that she was afraid of trampling any ants to death. Yet although she was so benevolent towards ants she was merciless when it came to beating servants.
Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, from his autobiography From Emperor to Citizen
First they came for the Communists, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.... Then they came for me, and I said, "Wait! You forgot about the gays! And I know where they're hiding!
Angus Johnston
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
Samuel Beckett
"How can such a hard man be so gentle?" she asked wonderingly.
"If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive."
from Playback by Raymond Chandler
The doctor made his patient suck his oiled cock
Says it is their mother's absent breastSook-Yin Lee, from "Field Therapy" on the album Lavinia's Tongue
Buy your pizza, wear your dress, and mind your own business.
some spazzy guy on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley to jeremy, after jeremy tried to calm him down a bit after he ran his bicycle into a car on purpose to cause trouble, 2/7/98.
Minds of equivalent quality think alike.
jeremy, after hearing some idiot say "great minds think alike" to another idiot, circa 1/17/98.
I don't believe that the human race will prosper forever so all I have to do is to relax and wait for the time when cats will reign.
the cat, in Wagahai wa Neko de aru (I am a Cat), by Soseki Natsume, trans. Shibata Katsue & Kai Motonari
Hey, look at the Dali Lama doing jiu-jitsu!
random person watching jeremy and cyndy doing aikido while waiting in line to get into a movie (jeremy was more or less bald at the time)
Once, when a woman correspondent from France came to the dojo, O'sensei was so sick he couldn't even stand up. The woman pleaded with him to give a demonstration, saying that she was never coming back to Japan again. So, O'sensei consented. Students had to carry him onto the mat on a litter. They stood him up, and he told his ukes to attack. Suddenly, he was a different man. He put on a 20-minute demonstration, almost non-stop. He just said, "Keep coming!" It was awesome. But, when it was over, he couldn't stand up any more. Students had to put him back on the litter and carried him off the mat.
Henry Kono Sensei, in Aikido Today Magazine #31, Vol. 7, No. 5; Dec. '93 / Jan. '94, p. 10.
A bear however hard he tries,
Grows tubby without exercise.A. A. Milne, brought to my attention by Sonic
neck/infamous butcher[broadcast]: UKE WITH TERRIFYING BEAR-LIKE-PILLOW KUNG FU STYLEfrom spacebar 1997-02-04
This is like a large ball of worms.
Sriram Subraminian, personal communication, 1991
Make me whimper and beg for your tiny rubber love.
Harry, in Thing-Fish (1984) by Frank Zappa
Bruises are a sure sign of enjoyment in my book.
Alston Neal, personal communication, 1996-06-22
The waiter's argument with Wu had been cut short by the arrival of a Buddhist missionary, who entered to drop tracts on each table and whose ejection, once he proved to be an expert staff fighter, occupied the full attention of the bar's employees.
Walter Jon Williams, Angel Station, 1989
Normal people are those whom you don't know very well.
Kyrie Martin Hale, personal communication, 1996
We came, Takver thought, from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is because he comes from so far away that nothing can separate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that's already between us, the distance of our sex, the difference of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world.
Urusla K. LeGuin, The Disposessed, 1974
Many people who are new to the martial arts labor under the fantasy that when they get proficient they will be able to "really kick ass." Likewise, many who begin psychotherapy imagine that "cured" means they'll be able to boss people around. Having spent much of their lives afraid to assert themselves to "get what they want," they imagine that their new power will give them the nerve or self-confidence to get back at all the people and situations which have made them feel small all these years. They carry with them a great deal of anger which they cannot release, and it is this anger which directs their fantasy of revenge.
What they don't realize is that it is really their lack of connection to themselves that prevents them from functioning well. If their training in martial arts, or their therapy, is "successful," they appear quite different from their original fantasy. Having found their spirit and experienced their energy, they never quite get around to "kicking ass." The need for revenge is gone because their reconnection with their own centers has put them back into connection with all life.
Terry Dobson and Victor Miller, Aikido in Everyday Life, 1978
"To forge a change that you may be reluctant to forge, that may be problematical for this or that reason, you have to tell people. You have to talk and tell people. Jack sees what I'm getting at. You have to bring it out. Even if you have no intention at the time of doing it out of whatever fear or trembling, you still must make it begin to come true by articulating it. This changes the path of your life. Just telling people makes the change begin to happen. If, in the end, you choose to keep going with whatever you've been doing that's been this problematical thing in your life, well and good, it's up to you. But if you need to feel you're on the verge of a wonderful change, whether you are or not, the thing to do is tell people. 'I am on the verge of a wonderful change. I am about to do something electifying. The very fibers of your being will be electrified, sir, when I tell you what it is I propose to do.' To speak it in words is to see the possibility emerge. Doesn't matter what. Don't bother your head over what. For the purposes of this discussion it could be mountain-climbing we're talking about or this friend of Jack, the oft-mentioned scaly chap who plans to swim the North Sea left-handed. Our lives are enriched by these little blurbs we send each other. These things are necessary to do. 'I am going back to school to learn Arabic, whatever.' Say it to people for six months. 'I am going to live in Maine or else.' Jack sees my point. Tell people, tell them. Make something up. The important thing is to seem to be on the verge. Then it begins to come true, a little bit. I don't know, maybe talking is enough. Maybe you don't want to forge the change. Maybe telling people *is* the change. How should I know? Why ask me? Lyle, where is Lyle? Say good night to Lyle."
from Chapter 3 of Players by Don DeLillo