Farewell to my father Marinos Dovrolis (November 26, 1936- March 28, 2014). Also, an audio recording of my father talking to his grandson, Grigoris, about his youth.
Farewell to my student Saamer Akhshabi (April 1, 1987- March 6, 2014).
Farewell to my best friend Norberto Franciolly Mangolin (May 8, 1972 - September 7, 2012).
Farewell to my mentor Grigoris Pentzikis (1945 - 2012). Also as audio recording (in Greek).
The quest for fire occurred not because anyone knew
what the practical uses for fire would be,
but because it was fascinating.
Joseph Campbell
Physics is like sex.
Sure, it may give some practical results,
but that's not why we do it.
Richard P. Feynman
The purpose that you were created Man is exactly this:
to prove, you too, with your life and
with your work that everything can and
should be done without any purpose.
To be accomplished
as the entire creation is accomplished.
Odysseas Elytis
When someone seeks,
it can easily happen that his eyes only see the thing he is seeking
and that he is incapable of finding anything,
incapable of taking anything in,
because he is always only thinking about what he is seeking,
because he has an object, a goal,
because he is possessed by this goal.
Seeking means having a goal,
but finding means being free, open, having no goal.
Hermann Hesse
What we know as "life" is the analytical realization
in the seriality of time of our eternal reality.
Wei Wu Wei
Life is not the opposite of death.
Birth is the opposite of death.
Life has no opposite.
Life is eternal.
Eckhart Tolle
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
Khalil Gibran (thanks to Manish Jain for sending us this most precious wedding gift)
Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mohandas Gandhi
In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity,
in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even,
we are mortal;
but in dealing with truth we are immortal,
and need fear no change nor accident.
Henry David Thoreau
The most beautiful emotion we can experience
is the mysterious.
It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle
of all true art and science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.
To sense that behind anything that can be experienced
there is something that our minds cannot grasp,
whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly:
this is religiousness.
In this sense, and in this sense only,
I am a devoutly religious man.
Albert Einstein
Man cannot live without a permanent trust
If I hold you with my emotions
There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.
Enlightenment is not about becoming divine.
We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.
Yes, it is a jungle out there
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked..
Your children are not your children.
It is because my roots are so strong that I can fly.
Your beliefs become your thoughts
Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health
All things come into being by conflict of opposites.
The Oath of Alexander the Great (Opis, 324 BC)
Alexander swore the following oath at a symposium attended by
9,000 officers and nobility - Greek, Persians, Medes,
Egyptians, Phoiniciens, Indians and others (note however
that some researchers
question the
historical evidence behind this oath).
It is my wish, now that the wars are coming to
Imagine, John Lennon
Imagine there's no heaven
"If" by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
in something indestructible in himself,
though both the indestructible element and the trust
may remain permanently hidden from him.
One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself
is through faith in a personal god.
Franz Kafka
you'll become a wished-for companion.
If I hold you with my eyes
you'll grow old and die.
So, I hold you where we both mix with the infinite.
Rumi
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple.
Dalai Lama
Instead it is about becoming more fully human.
It is the end of ignorance.
Lama Surya Das
Franklin D. Roosevelt
But there is also love in everyone.
Can you survive the jungle
Without missing the love?
??
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart
and you shall find it is only that which has
given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight.
Khalil Gibran
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
Khalil Gibran
Mira Nair
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
Your values become your destiny
Mahatma Gandhi
in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his
health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not
enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present
or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies
having never really lived.
Dalai Lama XIV
Heraclitus
an end, that you should all be happy in peace.
From now on, let all mortals live as one
people, in fellowship, for the good of all.
See the whole world as your homeland, with laws
common to all, where the best will govern
regardless of their race. Unlike the
narrowminded, I make no distinction between
Greeks and barbarians.
The origin of Citizens, or the race into which
they were born, is of no concern to me. I have
only one criterion by which to distinguish
them - Virtue. For me, any good foreigner is a
Greek, and any bad Greek is worse than a
barbarian.
If disputes ever occur among you, you will not
resort to weapons but will solve them in peace.
If need be, I shall arbitrate between you.
See God not as an autocratic despot, but as the
common father of all, and thus your conduct
will be like the lives of brothers within the same
family.
I, on my part, see you all as equal, whether you
are white or darkskinned. And I should like you
not simply to be subjects of my commonwealth,
but members of it, partners of it. To the best of
my ability I shall strive to do what I have
promised.
Keep as a symbol of love this Oath which we
have taken tonight with our libations.
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!