In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.#Mark Twain One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.#Albert Einstein The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.#Albert Einstein I never worry about the future. It comes soon enough.#Albert Einstein My mind shall not be disturbed; no angry word shall escape my lips; I will remain kind and friendly, with loving thoughts and no secret spite.#Siddhartha Gautama Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.#Siddhartha Gautama Believe not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, believe not because you have been made to believe from your childhood, but reason truth out, and after you have analyzed it, then if you find it will do good to one and all, believe it, live up to it and help others live up to it.#Siddhartha Gautama You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.#Siddhartha Gautama My mind shall not be disturbed; no angry word shall escape my lips; I will remain kind and friendly, with loving thoughts and no secret spite.#Siddhartha Gautama Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.#Lucius Annaeus Seneca (the Younger) The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.#John Locke The beauty of the world consists wholly of sweet mutual consents, either within itself, or with the Supreme Being. As to the corporeal world, though there are many other sorts of consents, yet the sweetest and most charming beauty of it is its resemblance of spiritual beauties. The reason is that spiritual beauties are infinitely the greatest, and bodies being but the shadows of beings, they must be so much the more charming as they shadow forth spiritual beauties. This beauty is peculiar to natural things, it surpassing the art of man.#Jonathan Edwards God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon.#Thomas Paine The creation is the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the Creator himself, the certainty of His existence and the immutability of His power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him forgeries.#Thomas Paine The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.#Thomas Paine All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.#Thomas Jefferson History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose.#Thomas Jefferson Religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions. I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.#Thomas Jefferson We are all shaped and fashioned by what we love.#Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.#Ralph Waldo Emerson A loving heart is the truest wisdom.#Charles Dickens Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.#Soren Kierkegaard The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know.#Robert Ingersoll There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.#Robert Louis Stevenson Poetry is emotion, an expression of the soul at the moment of intuition.#Benedetto Croce I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in human beings.#Pearl Buck God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.#Joseph Campbell A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.#Carl Sagan This is my simple religion: there is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.#H.H. the Dalai Lama [Tenzin Gyatso] Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.#Paul Davies What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath.#Thomas Crum The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.#Ellen Par You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.#Thomas Jefferson There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.#George Sand Love is when you look into someone's eyes and see their heart.#Jill Petty You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived, are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.#Henry Drummond This is how I would die into the love I have for you:/
As pieces of cloud dissolve in Sunlight.#Rumi A lover knows only humility, he has no choice./
He steals into your alley at night, he has no choice./
He longs to kiss every lock of your hair, don't fret, he has no choice./
In his frenzied love for you, he longs to break the chains of/
his imprisonment, he has no choice.#Rumi The sky was lit by the splendor of the moon,/
so powerful I fell to the ground./
Your love has made me sure/
I am ready to forsake this worldly life/
and surrender to the magnificence of your being.#Rumi I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty,/
and wish to see you with a hundred eyes..../
I am in the house of mercy,/
and my heart is a place of prayer.#Rumi The heart has reasons that reason does not understand.#Jacques Benigne Bossuel You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.#Sam Keen A kiss is a lovely trick, designed by nature, to stop words when speech becomes superfluous.#Ingrid Bergmen Take away love, and our earth is a tomb.#Robert Browning Make me immortal with a kiss.#Christopher Marlowe It does not require many words to speak the truth.#Chief Joseph The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.#Chief Joseph The earth and myself are of one mind.#Chief Joseph It does not require many words to speak the truth.#Chief Joseph We may quarrel with men about things on earth, but we never quarrel about the Great Spirit.#Chief Joseph If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual. .#Frank Herbert