Quotes About Material

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need — but are at constant risk of forgetting what we need — within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.

A feeling of beauty is a sign that we have come upon a material articulation of certain of our ideas of a good life.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

Our weak understanding of our needs is aggravated by what Epicurus termed 'idle opinions' of those around us, which do not reflect the natural hierarchy of our needs, emphasizing luxury and riches, seldom friendship, freedom and thought. The prevalence of idle opinion is no coincidence. It is in the interest of commercial enterprises to slew the hierarchy of our needs, to promote a material vision of good and downplay an unsaleable one.

Objects mimic in material dimension what we require in a psychological one

Worldly things have their value and spiritual gifts have their value. There is no crossover between the two.

To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head - and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It's an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that's not the most important thing. It's the work itself.

Perhaps the entire over-engineered concept of endless rebirth only recapitulates the much smaller, simpler idea that nothing material is destroyed – we already know that the matter of our bodies is reincarnated endlessly in both organic and inorganic form. We have continuity with everything that our bodies will ever be or have already been, shit and stars alike. How

Faith, to his mind, was a willed asserting of the sacred. If it were made more or less than this then it was mere belief, as children will believe the goblin tale they hear for just so long as it is being told. To hold belief in a material fact was only vanity, easily shattered, where the ideal was a truth eternal in whatever form expressed.

This is Resolute Thread. The more pressure applied, the stronger it gets. It's very rare. They say it was made from the stomach lining of an emperor dragon, over 2000 years ago." "Was it?" "No, it's just really strong thread.

Dharma is more about empathy than ethics, about intent rather than outcome. I follow dharma when I am concerned about your material, emotional or intellectual hunger. I follow adharma when I focus on my hunger at the cost of yours.

They have forgotten why dharma was instituted and kingdoms established in the first place: to create extra material resources so that man can look beyond survival and look for meaning.

The purpose of life is to grow—materially, intellectually and emotionally. Unfortunately, the Kauravas focus only on material growth. By embracing Krishna, the Pandavas are offered intellectual and emotional growth, besides material growth, that has the power to help them break their own self-imposed limitations.

Vratas are not concerned with lofty spiritual goals like moksha. They are concerned with ordinary household material aspirations: marriage, children, health and prosperity.

Both greed and outrage stem from insecurity; insecurity is the result of a poor understanding of, and a lack of faith in, one's true nature and the true nature of the world around us. The Veda says that as long as we do not accept life for what it is, as long as we try to control and change things, there will always be conflict. Conflict ends when we realize that beyond tangible material reality, there is intangible spiritual reality.

Buddha began to spread his philosophy, which propagated that all sorrows arise from desire; so to end sorrow, one must give up desire. The sanyas tradition, renunciation of material life, took root in a big way.

In religious traditions around the world, there is invariably a medium between the spiritual and the material, between the deity and the devotee, between the transcendental and the phenomenal.

Why then do you call this tale "Jaya"? There is no real victory.' 'There are two kinds of victory in this world,' said the storyteller-sage, 'Vijaya and Jaya. Vijaya is material victory, where there is a loser. Jaya is spiritual victory, where there are no losers. In Kuru-kshetra there was Vijaya but not Jaya. But when Yudhishtira overcame his rage and forgave the Kauravas unconditionally, there was Jaya. That is the true ending of my tale, hence the title.

And we can't have that. Plastic is no comparison for

scientific knowledge is advanced by the systematic criticism and purging of what currently passes for knowledge, so in religion too we need to criticize and expel all the illusory and dysfunctional religious material we have inherited.

Beer was the driving force that led nomadic mankind into village life. It was this appetite for beer-making material that led to crop cultivation, permanent settlement and agriculture.

To know the brain...is equivalent to ascertaining the material course of thought and will, to discovering the intimate history of life in its perpetual duel with external forces.

I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.

Let the moment come when nothing is left but life, and you will find that you do not hesitate over the fate of material possessions.