"The Illusion of Rewards", p. 43
Awareness (1992)
Context: Do you know what eternal life is? You think it's everlasting life. But your own theologians will tell you that that is crazy, because everlasting is still within time. It is time perduring forever. Eternal means timeless — no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How's that for good news? It is right now. People are so distressed when I tell them to forget their past. They're crazy! Just drop it! When you hear "Repent for your past," realize it's a great religious distraction from waking up. Wake up! That's what repent means. Not "weep for your sins.": Wake up! understand, stop all the crying. Understand! Wake up!
“In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep.”
Epistle from Esopus to Maria
Posthumous Pieces (1799)
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Robert Burns 114
Scottish poet and lyricist 1759–1796Related quotes
Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
“I have laid sorrow to sleep;
Love sleeps.
She who oft made me weep
Now weeps.”
Love and Sleep, st. 1.
“I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.”
Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
“Weep on! and as thy sorrows flow,
I 'll taste the luxury of woe.”
Anacreontic.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps.”
On Uncle Tom's Cabin in a letter to Lord Denman (20 January 1853).
“We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.”
"Address in New York City to the National Association of Manufacturers (496)," December 5, 1961, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1961. http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1961
Variant: We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.
“The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.”
[Maudsley, Henry, The Pathology of Mind, Macmillan, 1895, 978-0-598-47100-0, https://books.google.com/books?id=C5QXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA138, 138]