Axel Deussen

“A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.” ~ Aesop, Aesop’s Fables   “You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.” ~ Idries Shah, Reflections   ”if a human knows shame then he knows boundaries, and if he knows boundaries then he's reliable.” ~ Priest, Tùng Phong   ”Amicu certus in re incerta cernitur' [A true friend is a friend when in difficulty]” ~ Quintus Ennius   “Being good at what you do is partially about competence, but not exclusively.  Two other things that matter:  Reliability. You do what you say you're going to do—on time and as expected. Enthusiasm. You're excited to be here and eager to work on this problem.  Skills matter, but in many cases it's your reliability or attitude that separates you from the pack.” ~ James Clear

“...I may say that in my opinion true Science and true Religion neither are nor could be opposed.” “Examples ... show how difficult it often is for an experimenter to interpret his results without the aid of mathematics.” “The history of science teaches only too plainly the lesson that no single method is absolutely to be relied upon, that sources of error lurk where they are least expected, and that they may escape the notice of the most experienced and conscientious worker.” ~ Sir John William Strutt, Lord Rayleigh “The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. Nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to a limit, i.e., whenever the circumstances of experiment are such that extreme cases can be examined. Such examination almost surely leads, not to the overthrow of the law, but to the discovery of other facts and laws whose action produces the apparent exceptions. As instances of such discoveries, which are in most cases due to the increasing order of accuracy made possible by improvements in measuring instruments, may be mentioned: first, the departure of actual gases from the simple laws of the so-called perfect gas, one of the practical results being the liquefaction of air and all known gases; second, the discovery of the velocity of light by astronomical means, depending on the accuracy of telescopes and of astronomical clocks; third, the determination of distances of stars and the orbits of double stars, which depend on measurements of the order of accuracy of one-tenth of a second-an angle which may be represented as that which a pin's head subtends at a distance of a mile. But perhaps the most striking of such instances are the discovery of a new planet or observations of the small irregularities noticed by Leverrier in the motions of the planet Uranus, and the more recent brilliant discovery by Lord Rayleigh of a new element in the atmosphere through the minute but unexplained anomalies found in weighing a given volume of nitrogen. Many other instances might be cited, but these will suffice to justify the statement that “our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.” ~ A.A. Michelson

“The more you make your thoughts and beliefs into your identity, the more cut off you are from the spiritual dimension within yourself.” “Surrender is the inner transition from resistance to acceptance, from no to yes.” “Every fragment of self-talk is a little story in the head that goes around, and then you look at reality through the lens of the little story.” “The ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.” “Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence.” “Being aware of your breathing takes attention away from thinking and creates space. It is one way of generating consciousness. Although the fullness of consciousness is already there as the unmanifested, we are here to bring consciousness into this dimension.” “If you don't have a good relationship with the now, you don't have a good relationship with life.” “When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently.” “There’s a huge amount of suffering that is generated not by the actual challenges of life but by the fictitious problems that the mind creates.” “Do I want the present moment to be my friend or my enemy?" The present moment is inseparable from life, so you are really deciding what kind of relationship you want to have with life.” “It may look as if the situation is creating the suffering, but ultimately this is not so - your resistance is.” “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” “You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.” “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” ~ Eckhart Tolle