Have you had any profound thoughts lately, or heard any profound thoughts by someone else that you'd like to share?

“If, of thy mortal goods, thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves
alone to thee are left,
Sell one & from the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed the soul”

- Muslihuddin Sadi,
13th Century Persian Poet via a fluther member on her Facebook page.

(Snowing again now, with 8” more due tomorrow and endless days of below freezing temperatures. My soul needs some feeding.)

Let the mind rest inside the heart.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

I wish more people could apply this to their own opinions.

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own… Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.

Political tags – such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth – are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.

One man’s ‘magic’ is another man’s engineering. ‘Supernatural’ is a null word.

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

Robert A. Heinlein

Sorry for such a long response, but this guy’s words have a direct link to my soul hole.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that waiting for us.”

—Joseph Campbell

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”
– Denis Diderot

@SloanFaunus Thanks for the Heinlein quote. I would add an addendum to “Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.” Consider if the harm that may arise is worth the temporary satiation of a desire.

When you pick up a hot pot and it burns your hands, you will try to put it down, because you know the more you hold onto it, the more it will hurt. So why don’t you just give up anything painful in life so that you won’t have to suffer any more damage?

- My summary from an article I’ve read.

@Bill1939 I can agree with that, but only to an extent. I’m not so sure that life isn’t just a perpetual cycle of satisfaction seeking based on circumstances. I’m not so sure that utilitarianism and hedonism are distinctly different concepts. Human beings are incapable of lacking motive and therefore temptation must occur before legitimate want. That being said, I agree that we should exercise discretion in our actions, even when it means not missing out on an opportunity.

“I think happiness is overrated. People end up spending their lives trying to tweak this or that circumstance to bring it in line with an imagined ideal (the perfect mate, the perfect job, the perfect house…), or chasing the next peak experience to trigger another endorphine rush. Happiness is fundamentally a self-centered condition; “everything’s OK in my little world”. ”

This was a post by @Harp from a thread I was reading the other day. I related to it in a way that was different than the discussion. I had realized recently that I had been anticipating some things and pushing through other things so that I can get to that “happy place.” But then I realized that two things were happening: (1) I kept having new “anticipations” and new things to push through, and (2) it was rushing my life away because I kept forgetting about the present. This post helped me realize that it’s most important sit back and be happy about what’s going on in the present. There’s no rush to my death bed.

Here’s an analogy I thought of: If you live in a city or go to school at a college, you’ll see that often times there’s a ton of construction going on. It causes detours, noise pollutions, and unsightliness. But, everyone talks about how nice the new building (or whatever it is) will look once it’s done, and they even have pictures and 3D models of the new edifice. After a good deal of time, the place finally opens up and the construction is over. Now we’re finally in the “happy place” where the city/campus looks better with the new renovations, only to find out that something else has been fenced off and a new project has begun.

@SloanFaunus Nice quotes. I read your profile, and it says, “Do not merely tell me that I am wrong, prove it.” I wish arguments were more focused on an educated exchange of ideas instead of a race to see who can “win”. Someone said I was wrong about something the other day, and I got really upset over it. Even though the attitude was inappropriate, he didn’t even bother to back himself up. Needless to say I will not “exchange anymore ideas” with him.

No man is happy; he is at best fortunate.
– Solon

I have a relatively new life mantra: “There are a lot of Things.”

It sounds a little silly and ridiculous because it is but it also means a lot to me! It originated in a conversation with my boyfriend when I was going through a rough time earlier this year:

Rachel: Everything is bullshit.
M: No! That’s sad!
Rachel: Okay, a lot of things are bullshit.
M: A lot of things are not bullshit too!
Rachel: You can’t have a lot of bullshit and also a lot of not bullshit. That’s too many things.
M: There are a lot of things!

It reminds me that, throughout the course of my life, I have left some Things behind, and I have sought out new Things, and this has made my life better. And if I need to, I can always repeat the process.

There are a LOT of Things. When I first started high school, I liked high school Things. By the end of high school, I didn’t really like high school Things anymore. I was ready for new Things. Luckily, there are a lot of Things. I tried on college Things for size and it took some adjustment, but it turned out that I liked those Things quite a bit. Now, those Things don’t feel quite appropriate for me anymore. I’m getting ready for new Things again.

There are a lot of Things! If you don’t like the Things that you encounter in your daily life, you can always find new Things to surround yourself with. There is no way you will run out of Things before you find the Things you like. There are just too many Things for that.

“This too shall pass.”

Enough money is enough.

I watched a video a couple of weeks ago, in which children were asked to comment on gay marriage. One girl mentioned that homosexuality is often seen as “unnatural”. She followed up with a wonderfully dumbfounded expression and her take on it:

“If it happens…and there’s no chemicals involved…then it’s natural!”

The thought, as that, is not profound – the delivery was perfect, though, and has stuck with me.

All feelings must be felt. And if not felt as they arise, they get felt in sometimes awful and painful ways. So feel them as soon as you can.