Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh: "I'd like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart"


How a genius feels: "I'm a nonentity, an eccentric, an unpleasant person"


March 30th is the birthday of Vincent van Gogh, born in Holland in 1853, a famous painter and also great letter-writer. His letters were lively, engaging, and passionate; they also frequently reflect his struggles with bipolar disorder.

He wrote: "What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart."

He wrote thousands of letters to his brother Theo over the course of his life. Theo's widow published the van Gogh's letters to her husband in 1913.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Plato Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)  

Image source: Vincent van Gogh's 1890 painting At Eternity's Gate. Wikipedia, public domain.

Look to this day

Be Here Now...

Projecting our thoughts far ahead of us, instead of adapting ourselves to the present, is cause of fear. Foresight, the greatest blessing humanity has been given, is also a curse.
~ Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician, Letters to Lucilius

Quotes

Whatever you do, do with all your might. ~ Cicero



When something an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
~ Rousseau
 

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts. 
~ John Locke 
  



All things deteriorate in time. ~ Virgil





Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems. ~ Descartes 



Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil. ~ Marcus Aurelius 


    



You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one. ~ Rousseau


No one is laughable who laughs at himself. ~ Seneca


The energy of the mind is the essence of life. ~ Aristotle


It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law. ~ Thomas Hobbes



If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it. ~ Marcus Aurelius


 Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms. ~ Aristotle




You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one. ~ Rousseau




The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity. ~ Seneca



He who does not prevent a crime when he can, encourages it. ~ Seneca

 By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man. ~ Kant




A man of courage is also full of faith. ~ Cicero 




We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak. 
~ Epictetus 




The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions. ~ Cicero 






There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. ~ William James





You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long. ~ Marcus Aurelius 


 

You are here, this is now, make the best of it.

Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger, and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be so much more the grateful.

~ Horace


 "Unless you try to do something beyond
what you have already mastered,
you will never grow."
- Ronald E. Osborn 

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.  

- Charles DuBois

 

 

 

 

QUOTES ABOUT THE CRAFT OF WRITING

"Successful and unsuccessful people do
not vary greatly in their abilities.
They vary in their desires to
reach their potential."

-- John Maxwell






For a good writer, there is only one measure of success,
and that is found in his honoring the complexity and richness
of his subject while telling his story in a lucid way.

-- Joseph Epstein






The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.”

-–William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 55

EMBRACE CHANGE AND ALBERT SCHWIETZER'S VISION

EMBRACE CHANGE:

"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars."

- R. Tagore 
Build a better life according to your ideal Vision.
Do not wait for perfect timing, get started now.
What you do today, is all that matters.
Do your best with what you have and start from where you are.


"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." - Picasso

There is power in action so make plans and execute them.

Circumstance is a result of your past and does not indicate where you are heading.

The greatest journey begins with the first step and so does your building of a new business or whatever you are setting out to create.

We all need to start where we are and in the moment, find the strength to overcome obstacles we encounter, persevere and endure until we achieve a few goals and gain momentum in a positive direction.

Live according to your Vision of the well-lived life.

"One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity."
~Albert Schweitzer

Reverence for Life:

Lost in thought I sat on deck of the barge, struggling to find the elementary and universal concept of the ethical that I had not discovered in any philosophy. I covered sheet after sheet with disconnected sentences merely to concentrate on the problem. Two days passed. Late on the third day, at the very moment when, at sunset, we were making our way through a herd of hippopotamuses, there flashed upon my mind, unforeseen and unsought, the phrase : “Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben” (“reverence for life”). The iron door had yielded. The path in the thicket had become visible.”

— Albert Schweitzer

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh: "I'd like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart"


How a genius feels: "I'm a nonentity, an eccentric, an unpleasant person"


March 30th is the birthday of Vincent van Gogh, born in Holland in 1853, a famous painter and also great letter-writer. His letters were lively, engaging, and passionate; they also frequently reflect his struggles with bipolar disorder.

He wrote: "What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart."

He wrote thousands of letters to his brother Theo over the course of his life. Theo's widow published the van Gogh's letters to her husband in 1913.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Plato Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC)  

Image source: Vincent van Gogh's 1890 painting At Eternity's Gate. Wikipedia, public domain.

Quotes

“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious.” – Sun Tzu, Art of War

Children

Children give us the feeling of life going forward in new and beautiful ways.

AGAIN: All Red Meat is Bade For You!!!

All red meat is bad for you, new study says - latimes.com

All red meat is bad for you, new study says

A long-term study finds that eating any amount and any type increases the risk of premature death.

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Eating any amount and any type of red meat increases the risk of premature death, a new study says. (William Thomas Cain / Getty Images /

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times March 12, 2012, 4:28 p.m.

Eating red meat — any amount and any type — appears to significantly increase the risk of premature death, according to a long-range study that examined the eating habits and health of more than 110,000 adults for more than 20 years.

For instance, adding just one 3-ounce serving of unprocessed red meat — picture a piece of steak no bigger than a deck of cards — to one's daily diet was associated with a 13% greater chance of dying during the course of the study.

---

FOR THE RECORD:
Red meat: An article in the March 13 LATExtra section about a study linking red meat consumption to an increased risk of premature death said that preservatives like nitrates probably contributed to the danger. It should have included nitrites as well. —

---

Even worse, adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

"Any red meat you eat contributes to the risk," said An Pan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of the study, published online Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Crunching data from thousands of questionnaires that asked people how frequently they ate a variety of foods, the researchers also discovered that replacing red meat with other foods seemed to reduce mortality risk for study participants.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study. The team said choosing poultry or whole grains as a substitute was linked with a 14% reduction in mortality risk; low-fat dairy or legumes, 10%; and fish, 7%.

Previous studies had associated red meat consumption with diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all of which can be fatal. Scientists aren't sure exactly what makes red meat so dangerous, but the suspects include the iron and saturated fat in beef, pork and lamb, the nitrates used to preserve them, and the chemicals created by high-temperature cooking.

The Harvard researchers hypothesized that eating red meat would also be linked to an overall risk of death from any cause, Pan said. And the results suggest they were right: Among the 37,698 men and 83,644 women who were tracked, as meat consumption increased, so did mortality risk.

In separate analyses of processed and unprocessed meats, the group found that both types appear to hasten death. Pan said that at the outset, he and his colleagues had thought it likely that only processed meat posed a health danger.

Carol Koprowski, a professor of preventive medicine at USC's Keck School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the research, cautioned that it can be hard to draw specific conclusions from a study like this because there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that's good for you.

"If you want to eat red meat, eat the unprocessed products, and reduce it to two or three servings a week," he said. "That would have a huge impact on public health."

A majority of people in the study reported that they ate an average of at least one serving of meat per day.

Pan said that he eats one or two servings of red meat per week, and that he doesn't eat bacon or other processed meats.

Cancer researcher Lawrence H. Kushi of the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland said that groups putting together dietary guidelines were likely to pay attention to the findings in the study.

"There's a pretty strong supposition that eating red meat is important — that it should be part of a healthful diet," said Kushi, who was not involved in the study. "These data basically demonstrate that the less you eat, the better."

UC San Francisco researcher and vegetarian diet advocate Dr. Dean Ornish said he gleaned a hopeful message from the study.

"Something as simple as a meatless Monday can help," he said. "Even small changes can make a difference."

Additionally, Ornish said, "What's good for you is also good for the planet."

In an editorial that accompanied the study, Ornish wrote that a plant-based diet could help cut annual healthcare costs from chronic diseases in the U.S., which exceed $1 trillion. Shrinking the livestock industry could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of forests to create pastures, he wrote.

eryn.brown@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion

Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion - YouTube





Karen Armstrong's Charter for Compassion - YouTube

loaded by dalailamacenter on Mar 14, 2012

At the 2009 Vancouver Peace Summit with the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education, Karen Armstrong presented her Charter for Compassion. http://dalailamacenter.org
License:

Standard YouTube License

Khan Academy

Khan Academy: Model for Future of US Education? CBS News -- "He teaches millions of students a month, yet none of them has seen his face. Sal Khan is a disembodied voice on the Internet, but his teaching method has become so effective that he may be the future of American education. Dr. Sanjay Gupta speaks to Khan and to educators who use his popular educational website, "Khan Academy," for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, March 11 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT. Watch a preview above.

Gorilla blows away straw...

Is he looking for a needle in a haystack or instructing us?

Life is ephemeral

We need a definite purpose around which to organize our lives.

 Know what it is you want, set some goals to create the circumstances you desire and take action now. Don't wait around for the perfect time to get started.  There is power in action so start your journey to success.

"People with goals succeed because they know
where they are going. It's as simple as that."
- Earl Nightingale

Success or failure as a human being is not a matter of luck, circumstances, fate, or any of the other tiresome old clichés.  Those are only excuses.

The power to achieve the life of your dreams is in your hands—and the first step toward activating it is identifying the specific goals that will make your dreams real. 

After all, it’s much easier to get what you want out of life when you know where you’re going.

A mission statement is only a paragraph long, but it has specific, measurable outcomes and a deadline for accomplishing that outcome. It’s truly the best way to start your journey to success.

“You cannot change your destination overnight, 

but you can change your direction overnight.”

--Jim Rohn

Creating a mission statement will help you change your direction. In just five minutes from now, you will have made the shift from an ordinary existence to an extraordinary existence.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile Ideal.

Daniel Kahneman on Charlie Rose

Daniel Kahneman on Charlie Rose

Link to: Daniel Kahneman on Charlie Rose

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Related book: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Related previous posts:

Michael Lewis profiles Daniel Kahneman

Authors@Google: Daniel Kahneman