Fragrances of human flowering: living creatively

Culture

In part 12, Shanti lets artists and poets speak: Michelangelo, Robert Frost, Rabindranath Tagore, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Miguel de Cervantes, Gertrude Stein, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ōtagaki Rengetsu, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Maria Angelou, Sappho

Poets, writers and novelists
Michelangelo, Robert Frost, Rabindranath Tagore, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Miguel de Cervantes, Gertrude Stein, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikos Kazantzakis, Ōtagaki Rengetsu, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Maria Angelou, Sappho (all images commons.wikimedia.org)

Rabindranath Tagore

poet

“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity.
I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow
patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

“Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.”

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

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

“Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.
This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again,
and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales,
and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy
and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.”

Sappho

poet

“From all the offspring of the earth and heaven
love is the most precious.”

Maya Angelou

poet and civil rights activist

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”

“Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin – find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

poet

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively, he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.”

Gertrude Stein

writer

“There is no answer.
There never was an answer.
There will never be an answer.”

“Punctuation is necessary only for those
who don’t know the world is one sentence.”

“No one can possibly know what is about to happen:
it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.”

Robert Frost

poet

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.”

Michelangelo

sculptor, painter, and architect

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.”

Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, sculptor and architect:

“I love those who can smile in trouble…”

“One has no right to love or hate anything if one has not acquired a thorough knowledge of its nature. Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know it but little, you will be able to love it only a little, or not at all.”

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

architect and sculptor

“What we have is given by ‘God’ and to teach it to others is to return it to him.”

Miguel de Cervantes

writer

“One man scorned and covered with scars still strove, with his last ounce of courage, to reach the unreachable stars, and the world will be better for this.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

writer

“To love someone means to see him as ‘God’ intended him.”

Nikos Kazantzakis

writer and poet

“The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.”

“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.”

“I felt deep within me that the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge or Virtue or Goodness or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!”

“Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet, and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us.”

“Every man is half God, half man; he is both spirit and flesh. That is why the mystery of Christ is not simply a mystery for a particular creed: It is universal.”

Otagaki Rengetsu

poet

“If only we could cut down the weeds in our hearts
as cleanly as the razor sharp sickle clears the debris on a mountain.”

“If I too could somehow open the lotus blossom within my own heart
and color it pure white, how happy I would be.”

“My hope for the afterworld: to rest upon a blooming lotus flower
gazing at a full moon in a cloudless sky.”

To be continued…

Related articles on Osho News
Shanti

Shanti is the creator and compiler of this series, including At Home in the Universe and 1001 Tales.

Comments are closed.