Photography: December 2007

Considering that you will find God's love in consolation feelings, you aren't seeking God,but yourself,your own consolation, and you go round the true way of suffering that leeds to Him, because you feel lost without this consolation. (Macarie of Optina)

God foretold that He would forgive our sins if we seek forgiveness, but not that we would live tomorrow (Varsanufie of Optina)

The shortest way to Jesus is to carry the other's one burden (Ambrozie of Optina)

The human constience is like an alarm clock. If it rings, you wake up suddenly, knowing that you have to go and do your work, and after, you will hear it always. But if you do not wake up, several days, sayng that you will do so later, then you will stop hearing the alarm clock. (Iosif of Optina)

Ravens in the mist

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;
This it is, and nothing more ...

(Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven - I st part )

Mechanical Masters - in Black and White

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

(Friedrich Nietzsche - Quotes)