Ampat > Ampat's Quotes

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
― Mark Twain

“Discourse about God is radically different from every l other discourse on every other subject because God is not an object. Were God to be spoken of as object, God would become nothing more than an idol.”
― Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery

“The concepts of physics-energy, force, mass, number-are as mysterious as the word God. But in physics, even though in many ways we do not know what physical reality is, we nevertheless devise or affirm parameters that permit us to measure regularity or to formulate possible laws in regard to the functioning of physical reality. Such an operation is not possible in regard to God. There are no adequate parameters that would permit us to speak of the "functioning" of that reality we call God.”
― Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery

“Discourse about God is unique and cannot be compared to any other human language. It is irreducible to any other discourse.”
― Raimon Panikkar, The Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery

“...if I do not take my intellectual vocation seriously, putting it before everything else even at the risk of appearing inhuman, then I am also incapable of helping people in more concrete and proximate ways. Conversely, if I am not alert and ready to save people from a conflagration, that is to say, if I do not take my spiritual calling in all earnestness, sacrificing to it all else, even my own life, then I shall be unable to help in rescuing the manuscript. If I do not involve myself in the concrete issues of my time, and if I do not open my house to all the winds of the world, then anything I produce from an ivory tower will be barren and cursed. Yet if I do not shut doors and windows in order to concentrate on this work, then I will not be able to offer anything of value to my neighbors.”
― Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience: Mantrama-Njari : An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and Contemporary Celebration

“Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, "Boys will be boys." Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found.”
― bell hooks

“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.”
― Ruth Bell Graham

“Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.”
― Samuel Beckett, Collected Poems in English and French