Experience of a lifetime

If I were to have read a book each week of my adult life.... I would have read only a few thousand books.... the trick is knowing which books to read.
— Carl Sagan on a segment of his Cosmos television series.

Steve Allen spoke of his early 1960's controlled LSD (artist group) experience in which he saw a sheet of typewritten material, but then noticed each word had an asterisk denoting a footnote and then looking down to the bottom of the page he saw that it spread out to hold all these footnotes and then noticed that each word in every one of these footnotes also had an asterisk, etc., etc., until the page filled the universe. Compare Borges story "Aleph."

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.
— William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

....I've just discovered that to greet or leave someone with "shalom" is not equal to saying "peace." The Hebrew word means something closer to "fullness" of "wholeness." When you say "shalom" you are wishing that person the fulness of their being, to be and become all that they truly are. It's at the core of the Jewish faith, to be you and to become fully you, both. For example, Jacob, son of Isaac, became "Israel." Fully being himself — and this, including some sneaky activities by the way — Jacob was transformed and fully became himself, Israel, the father of a nation. "Shalom" then means "I wish you your fulness; be whole!" Isn't that beautiful? It hits at the core of life for me, especially said with love.
— Diane at the Second Unitarian Church of Chicago, circa 1982.

You can't hurt me, I'm ignorant.
— John Hayes

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

I suffer, I do, I really do, I do, I do suffer, I suffer, I do, I do, I do, O! O! O! I do suffer, I do....
Line from a theater piece seen in Milwaukee, circa 1983.

Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
— Pablo Picasso

When we talk of tomorrow, the gods laugh.
— Chinese proverb

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.
— Aldous Huxley, quoted in Readers Digest, March 1956.

No great thing is created suddenly.
— Epictetus, Discourses.