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August 2008 
The most powerful passages you've ever read
Posted on Feb 27th, 2007
by 
Jon
Jon
I'm interested to find out the following from members of this community.
What are the most powerful passages you've ever read? You know, the stuff that really inspires you and drives your life. Here are tw of my top ones (I'll add more later):
1. Ken Wilber's Witness exercise - This is contained in a number of his writings including Grace and Grit. Reading this over and over again gives me a sense of peace of fearlessness that little else does.
2. Steve Pavlina's Empowering Beliefs blog post - This is sooo good. And covers so many bases.
OK, your turn!
What are the most powerful passages you've ever read? You know, the stuff that really inspires you and drives your life. Here are tw of my top ones (I'll add more later):
1. Ken Wilber's Witness exercise - This is contained in a number of his writings including Grace and Grit. Reading this over and over again gives me a sense of peace of fearlessness that little else does.
2. Steve Pavlina's Empowering Beliefs blog post - This is sooo good. And covers so many bases.
OK, your turn!
Access: Public
One of my favorite Quotes
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate… . Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, to be gorgeous, talented, and fabulous. Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us…
…And as we let our light shine, we consciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others
-Marianne Williamson
Here are my 2cents:
The world is but one country, and mankind its citizens… Let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.2 –Bahá'u'lláh
A neat flash video of the same idea: http://www.startafire.org/intro_new.html
There are so many that have made an impact in my everyday life,however here are a couple that I love:
Follow the path of the unsafe,independent thinker.Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy.Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity.And on issues that seem important to you,stand up and be counted at any cost.
~Thomas J. Watson
It is not the critic who counts;
Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly
so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
~Theodore Roosevelt
wow. what a great question.
and great passages above, guys. some of my favorites, too.
Was just reading some of my favorite quotes from The Dhamapada, The Gita, and Rumi…
Awesome. The Teddy Roosevelt quote was one I was looking for recently.
I posted this somewhere else and people suggested both the Howard Roark closing from the Fountainhead and the John Galt closing from Atlas Shrugged. I'd definitely second both of those.
This quote begins my journal, and inspires me everytime I read it:
I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration; I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.
And the book, How to be a Genius or the Science of Being Great, rarely ever leaves my side.
Seriously.
“Retire into yourself as much as you can. Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those whom you are capable of improving.The process is a mutual one. People learn as they teach.” (Seneca, Letter VII).
These are the words that I virtually live by.It says so much in so few words.Seneca said it himself “What is required is not a lot words, but effectual ones.”.Because of this it is very easy to remember and so powerful in effect, it is ingrained in my mind.It's innate, it's always been my attitude to a degree, then I saw Seneca describe it so well, and now it is always there.In every situation, in every aspect of my life, this attitude is always guiding my responses.In fact I was only going to post the next passage here, and nearly didn't post the Seneca one.That's because it is so deepset within me, I live by it, so it is never outside of myself to find.If you see what I mean? I don't need to pick my heart up off the floor, because it is already beating in my body.hehe, cool eh! :D
The next passage is taken from an Abraham Hicks workshop.It's sublime.So I'll just get on and post it:
“Appreciation is the secret to life: You could never attend a gathering like this and listen to Infinite Intelligence expressing from the broader view, in other words, you could never have an experience like this, and you could just have a little seed that was offered to you by someone, maybe your grandmother or a teacher, that said — “Become a person who appreciates.”
That is the secret to life. Without knowing anything about Law of Attraction, without knowing anything about Vibration, without ever knowing anything about anything, you would thrive, you would fulfill your reason for being, you would be an extension of who you really are. Every moment of your experience would be as full as it could possibly be. In other words, that one tool: become a person who appreciates.”
~ Abraham Hicks
Thankyou all for sharing your quotes and for expressing yourself.I Appreciate the opportunity to converse with you, here, now.
Cheers!
The fellow technician in an art hears and sees the small technical points. The artist himself is engrossed in the exact application of certain exact actions which produce, when done, his canvas, his score, his novel, his performance.
If you look at or listen to any work of art, there is only one thing the casual audience responds to en masse, and if this has it then you too will see it as a work of art. If it doesn’t have it, you won’t.
So what is it?
TECHNICAL EXPERTISE ITSELF ADEQUATE TO PRODUCE AN EMOTIONAL IMPACT. TECHNICAL EXPERTISE is composed of all the little and large bits of technique known to the skilled painter, musician, actor, any artist. He adds these things together in his basic presentation. He knows what he is doing. And how to do it. And then to this he adds his message.
And that is how good a work of art has to be to be good.
So the “expertise adequate” is important enough to be itself art. It is never great art. But it produces an emotional impact just from quality alone.
Living itself is an art form.
http://www.lronhubbard.org/eng/philoart/page52.htm