The Seven Social Evils are: 
  Politics without principle, 
  Wealth without work. 
  Pleasure without conscience. 
  Knowledge without character. 
  Commerce and industry without morality. 
  Science without humanity. 
  Worship without sacrifice.

Frederick Lewis Donaldson, 1860-1953 in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925

“Some people are so poor, all they have is money.” – Bob Marley

陆游的《钗头凤·红酥手》

红酥手，黄縢酒，满城春色宫墙柳。
东风恶，欢情薄。一怀愁绪，几年离索。错、错、错。

春如旧，人空瘦，泪痕红浥鲛绡透。
桃花落，闲池阁。山盟虽在，锦书难托。莫、莫、莫！

滕王阁序

  • 《丁登寺旁》（Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey）—— 威廉·华兹华斯 (William Wordsworth)

“And I have felt / A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts…"（我感受到一种存在，它因崇高思想的狂喜而令我震撼……）

  • 《冥想之地》（Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage，节选：第3卷第85-89节关于日内瓦湖与阿尔卑斯山）—— 拜伦勋爵 (Lord Byron)

“Clear, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake / With the wild world I dwelt in…"（清澈平静的莱曼湖啊！与我所处的那喧嚣狂野的世界形成了鲜明对比……）

  • 《秋色颂》（To Autumn）—— 约翰·济慈 (John Keats)

“Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are those? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too…"（春日的歌曲哪里去了呢？啊，它们在哪里呢？不要去想它们，你也有你的音乐……）

  • 物換星移幾度秋

辛棄疾: 物換星移知幾度，夢想珠歌翠舞 (賀新郎·高閣臨江渚)

曹冠: 物換星移，風景都如故

Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ozymandias: Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.

William Shakespeare – Sonnet 12: When I do count the clock that tells the time, / And see the brave day sunk in hideous night; / When I behold the violet past prime, / And sable curls all silver’d o’er with white…

  • 天高地迥，覺宇宙之無窮；興盡悲來，識盈虛之有數

蘇軾: 寄蜉蝣於天地，渺滄海之一粟。哀吾生之須臾，羨長江之無窮。

陳子昂: 前不見古人，後不見來者。念天地之悠悠，獨愴然而涕下！

Carl Sagan: “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

  • 落霞與孤鶩齊飛，秋水共長天一色

李白: 飛流直下三千尺，疑是銀河落九天。

王維: 大漠孤煙直，長河落日圓。

杜甫

Dante Alighieri (Italy) and William Shakespeare (England)

manipulations vs thinking clearly

demagogues and strongmen upended arrangements, institutions, and norms not by battering bodies but by manipulating minds. they exploited fear, hatred, and confusion just like the market exploits fear and greed. once those raw emotions are stirred, it will drive the market and people crazy.

the agents of mass manipulation are states, churches, and the capital. the hotbeds of manipulation are sex, race and politics, both personal and social.

unable to handle the uncertainties and the vicissitudes of life, human beings vacillate between unfounded hope and irrational fear. religious manipulators exploits this emotional tumult to their advantage.

we are finite creatures surrounded by the vast infinity, people, animals, plants, bugs, mountains, rivers, lands and stars.

notes

his mother, Natalis Ginzburg, 1916-1991, novelist. her novel Family Lexicon describes Italy family during and after World War II. it has a familar feel of life.

  • 持戒

泰戈尔：“让死者有那不朽的名，但让生者有那不朽的爱。”

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. **But one glance at it and you are inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an auther is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

one glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1000 years. To read is to voyage through time.

  • Issac Asimov

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

那间澡堂比许多景点更像中国。长城告诉他历史很长，故宫告诉他权力很大，兵马俑告诉他死人也可以排队。而澡堂告诉他，活人也在排队。排队洗澡，排队吃水果，排队搓背，排队睡觉，排队找一个便宜、热乎、可以暂时忘记自己的地方。

时代这趟列车，当时没挤上去，车门一关就真的开走了。

Chien Chung-Wei was born in 1968 and earned his master degree in Fine Arts at the National Taiwan Normal University.

Chien Chung-Wei: “color is the skin of the painting; values are the bone.”

don’t allow your brain to blind your eyes. – Skip Lawrence