All the world’s a stage

The world is a stage

And you are a actor

passing from one scene to another.

No one wants the whole of you, no one takes interest of knowing the real you,

all they need is part of your function

as a labor, as a consumer, as an audience, as a companion, as a sexual partner, as a money provider,

who you are, what you do, how you think doesn’t matter to them

But, you are the one who has to deal with the whole of you,

the weakness, the evils, the ambitions, the hatred, the stirring emotions

the dark past, the numb present and the hopeless future.

You decide to  escape,

through doing things that don’t matter,

staying with people who you even don’t know

watching things which is totally boring.

You are just escaping, escaping the difficulty of facing yourself,

at time when you are transiting from one role to another.

 

 

Criminal Minds opening and closing quotes

Note: This is not a complete list,  this just includes the quotes I love.

Season 1 Episode 1 Extreme Aggressor

Gideon: Joseph Conrad said, “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary.  Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”

Gideon: Emerson said, “All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.”

Gideon: Winston Churchill said, “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you will see.”

Gideon: Nietzsche once said, “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”

Season 1 Episode 2 Compulsion

Gideon: Faulkner once said, “Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors.  Try to be better than yourself.”

Season 1 Episode 4 Plain Sight

Gideon: French poet Jacques Rigaut said, “Don’t forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror.”

Gideon: Rose Kennedy once said, “Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free to delight in whatever sunlight remains to them?”

Season 1 Episode 6 L.D.S.K.

Gideon: Nietzsche wrote, “The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.”

Hotchner: Shakespeare wrote, “Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable.”

Season 1 Episode 8 Natural Born Killer

Gideon: Carl Jung said, “The healthy man does not torture others.  Generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”

Season 1 Episode 9 Derailed

Gideon: Robert Oxton Bolt once wrote, “A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.”

Reid: Albert Einstein asked, “The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I or the others crazy?”

Season 1 Episode 11 Blood Hungry

Gideon: Harriet Beecher Stowe once said “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

Season 1 Episode 13 Poison

Gideon: Roman philosopher Lucretius said, “What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.”

Gideon: Confucius once said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

Season 1 Episode 14 Riding the Lightning

Gideon: Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Genesis 9:6.

Gideon: Albert Pine said, “What we do for ourselves dies with us.  What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.”

Season 1 Episode 16 The Tribe

Hotchner: Nietzsche wrote, “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.”

Season 1 Episode 17 A Real Rain

Gideon: W. H. Auden said, “Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness.”

Gideon: Gandhi said, “Better to be violent if there’s violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.”

Hotchner: Gandhi also said, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary.  The evil it does is permanent.”

Season 1 Episode 20 Charm and Harm

Gideon: The French philosopher Voltaire wrote, “There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts.”

Gideon: The author François de la Rochefoucauld wrote, “We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.”

Season 1 Episode 21 Secrets and Lies

Gideon: Albert Einstein said, “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

Gideon: George Orwell said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Reid: “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’  I do not agree.  The wounds remain.  In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens.  But it is never gone.” Rose Kennedy.

Season 2 Episode 3 The Perfect Storm

Gideon: Mark Twain wrote “Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel.  He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.”

Hotchner: Philosopher Kahlil Gibran wrote “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”

Season 2 Episode 4 Psychodrama

Hotchner: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.  Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”  Oscar Wilde.

Hotchner: “The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but that this humiliation is seen by everyone,” Milan Kundera.

Season 2 Episode 5 Aftermath

Gideon: Helen Keller once said “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”

Season 2 Episode 7 North Mammon

JJ: Legendary basketball coach John Wooden said: “It’s not so important who starts the game, but who finishes it.”

JJ: “The ultimate choice for a man, in as much as he is driven to transcend himself, is to create or to destroy, to love or to hate.” Erich Fromm.

Season 2 Episode 9 The Last Word

Hotchner: Elbert Hubbard once wrote “If men could only know each other, they would never either idolize or hate.”

Hotchner: Mahatma Gandhi once said “All through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall, always.”

Season 2 Episode 10 Lessons Learned

Gideon: Dale Turner mused “Some of the best lessons are learned from past mistakes.  The error of the past is the wisdom of the future.”

Gideon: Ralph Waldo Emerson said “In order to learn the important lessons in life, one must, each day, surmount a fear.”

Season 2 Episode 13 No Way Out

Gideon: Aristotle said, “Evil brings men together.”

Season 2 Episode 16 Fear and Loathing

Gideon: “From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.”  Socrates.

Reid: “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” Cicero.

Season 2 Episode 23 No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank

Gideon: “I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellect.” Oscar Wilde.

Season 3 Episode 3 Scared to Death

Hotchner: The Taoist philosopher Lao-tze once wrote, “He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.”

Hotchner: Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face; You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

Season 3 Episode 7 Identity

Rossi: “An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.” Martin Luther.

Season 3 Episode 9 Penelope

Garcia: William Shakespeare wrote, “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”

Season 3 Episode 12 3rd Life

Hotch: “No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies.” Daisy Bates.

Hotch: “It is a wise father that knows his own child.” William Shakespeare.

Season 3 Episode 14 Damaged

Rossi: “…Within the core of each of us is the child we once were. This child constitutes the foundation of what we have become, who we are, and what we will be.”  Neuroscientist Dr. R. Joseph.

Hotchner: “There is no formula for success, except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.” Arthur Rubinstein.

Prentiss: “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love, and to be greater than our suffering.” – Ben Okri.

Season 3 Episode 16 Elephant’s Memory

Reid: “A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.” John Steinbeck.

Reid: “We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.” – Tom Stoppard.

Season 3 Episode 18 The Crossing

Prentiss: Author Christian Nestell Bovee once wrote, “No man is happy without a delusion of some kind.  Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.”

JJ: Susan B. Anthony said, “A woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.”

Season 3 Episode 20 Lo-Fi

Hotch: Voltaire said, “The man visited by ecstasies and visions, who takes dreams for realities, is an enthusiast.  The man who supports his madness with murder is a fanatic.”

Season 4 Episode 2 The Angel Maker

Hotch: “We all die.  The goal isn’t to live forever.  The goal is to create something that will.” Chuck Palahniuk.

Hotch: Wendell Berry said, “The past is our definition.  We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it.  But we will escape it only by adding something better to it.”

Prentiss: “Reason is not automatic.  Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it.” Ayn Rand.

Season 4 Episode 6 The Instincts

Hotch: “Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind and finds the readiest response.” Amos Bronson Alcott.

Reid: “I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.” Bob Dylan.

Season 4 Episode 9 52 Pickup

Prentiss: Author Harlan Ellison wrote, “The minute people fall in love, they become liars.”

Rossi: P. J. O’Rourke wrote, “Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”

Season 4 Episode 14 Cold Comfort

JJ: “And so, all the night-tide, I lay down by the side/ Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride.  In the sepulchre there by the sea.  In her tomb by the sounding sea.” Edgar Allan Poe.

Rossi: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.” Stuart Chase.

Season 4 Episode 15 Zoe’s Reprise

Rossi: “I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” Albert Einstein.

Rossi: Austrian novelist Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach wrote, “In youth we learn; in age we understand.”

Hotchner: “Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call destiny.” John Hobbes.

Hotchner: “I have loved to the point of madness; That which is called madness, That which to me, is the only sensible way to love.” Françoise Sagan.

Season 4 Episode 20 Conflicted

Reid: “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong.  No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” Terry Pratchett.

Reid: “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.  They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” Stephen King.

Reid: “Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.”  Helen Keller.

Season 4 Episode 25 – 26 To Hell…And Back

Hotchner: “If there were no hell, we would be like the animals.  No hell, no dignity.” Flannery O’Connor.

Hotchner: Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day. Sometimes you do everything right, everything exactly right, and still you feel like you failed. Did it need to end that way? Could something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place? Eighty-nine murders at the pig farm, the deaths of Mason and Lucas Turner make 91 lives snuffed out. Kelly Shane will go home and try to recover, to reconnect with her family but she’ll never be a child again. William Hightower, who gave his leg for his country, gave the rest of himself to avenge his sister’s murder. That makes 93 lives forever altered, not counting family and friends in a small town in Sarnia, Ontario, who thought monsters didn’t exist until they learned that they spent their lives with one. And what about my team? How many more times will they be able to look into the abyss? How many more times before they won’t ever recover the pieces of themselves that this job takes? Like I said, sometimes there are no words or clever quotes to neatly sum up what’s happened that day.
The Reaper: You should have made a deal.
Hotchner: Sometimes, the day just…
(Fade to black.  A gunshot is heard)
Hotchner: … ends.

Season 5 Episode 1 Nameless, Faceless

Rossi: “A weak man has doubts before a decision.  A strong man has them afterwards.” Karl Kraus.

Season 5 Episode 4 Hopeless

Morgan: Kingman Brewster, Jr. said, “There is no lasting hope in violence, only temporary relief from hopelessness.”

Prentiss: Writer Cyril Connolly said, “Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.”

Season 5 Episode 8 Outfoxed

Morgan: “Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else unless it’s an enemy.” Albert Einstein.

Prentiss: “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and of unspeakable love.” Washington Irving

JJ: “Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.”         C.S. Lewis
Prentiss: “If I am what I have, and if I lose what I have, who, then, am I?” German psychologist Erich Fromm.

Rossi: “Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Season 5 Episode 19 Rite of Passage

Hotchner: “Many persons have the wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” Helen Keller.

Prentiss: “A lion’s work hours are only when he’s hungry. Once he’s satisfied, the predator and prey lie peacefully together.” Chuck Jones.

Season 5 Episode 20 …A Thousand Words

Rossi: “A sincere artist tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.” Painter William Dobell.

Season 5 Episode 21 Exit Wounds

Garcia: “Nature, in her most dazzling aspects or stupendous parts, is but the background and theater of the tragedy of man.” John Morley

Garcia: Ralph W. Sockman said, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength.”

Season 5 Episode 22 The Internet Is Forever

Hotchner: “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” George Bernard Shaw.

Rossi:  “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” Eric Schmidt.

Season 6 Episode 1 The Longest Night

JJ: “A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another.  If these minds love one another, the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one other it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden.” The Buddha.

Rossi: Mark Twain wrote, “When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. But my faculties are decaying now, and soon I shall be so that I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.”

Season 6 Episode 6 Devil’s Night

Hotchner: Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

Hotchner: Thomas Kempis wrote, “Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of its trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible.”

Season 6 Episode 7 Middle Man

Hotchner: “Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.” Bernard Malamud

Hotchner: “The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Season 6 Episode 8 Reflection of Desire

Garcia: “Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.” Marilyn Monroe

Garcia: I believe humanity was born from conflict. Maybe that’s why in all of us lives a dark side. Some of us embrace it. Some have no choice. The rest of us fight it. In the end, it’s as natural as the air we breathe. At some point, we’re forced to face the truth. Ourselves.

Season 6 Episode 9 Into the Woods

Morgan: Ralph Ellison said, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

Hotchner: Elise Cabot said, “Evil endures a moment’s flush, and then leaves but a burnt out shell.”

Season 6 Episode 10 What Happens at Home

Hotchner: “When we were children, we used to think that when we grew up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… to be alive is to be vulnerable.” Writer Madeleine L’Engle

Rossi: “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.” Writer Oscar Wilde

Season 6 Episode 11 25 to Life

Morgan: “There is no such thing as part freedom.” Nelson Mandela

Morgan: “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered. The point is to discover them.” Galileo

Reid: “The best and most beautiful things in life cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” Helen Keller.

Season 6 Episode 13 The Thirteenth Step

Prentiss: Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.”

Prentiss: “Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.” Novelist Vladimir Nabokov.

Season 6 Episode 16 Coda

Reid: “Tomorrow, you promise yourself, will be different, but tomorrow is too often a repetition of today.” Author James T. Mccay

Ian Doyle: Honore de Balzac once said, “Most people of action are inclined to fatalism, and most of thought believe in providence.” Tell me, Emily Prentiss, which do you think you’re gonna be?

Season 6 Episode 16 Coda

Reid: “Tomorrow, you promise yourself, will be different, but tomorrow is too often a repetition of today.” Author James T. Mccay

Ian Doyle: Honore de Balzac once said, “Most people of action are inclined to fatalism, and most of thought believe in providence.” Tell me, Emily Prentiss, which do you think you’re gonna be?

Season 6 Episode 17 Valhalla

Prentiss: Lao Tzu said, “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”

Prentiss: Journalist Dorothea Dix wrote, “Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence.”

Season 6 Episode 18 Lauren

JJ: Psychoanalyst Walter Langer wrote, “People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one, and if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it.”

Prentiss: “The secret to getting away with lying is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself, even moreso than lying to another.” Author Elizabeth Bear.

Season 6 Episode 21 The Stranger

Seaver: “Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false naming of real events.” Adrienne Rich

Season 6 Episode 23 Big Sea

Rossi: “The sea has never been friendly to man. At most, it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.” Joseph Conrad

Morgan: “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch, we are going back from whence we came.” John F. Kennedy

Season 6 Episode 24 Supply & Demand

Hotchner: Thomas Hardy said, “And yet to every bad there’s a worse.”

Rossi: “What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.” Aristotle.

Season 7 Episode 1 It Takes a Village

JJ: Queen Elizabeth I said, “The past cannot be cured.”

Prentiss: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” FBI oath of office.

Season 7 Episode 3 Dorado Falls

Reid: “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Rossi: “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.” Orson Welles

Season 7 Episode 4 Painless

Reid: “You may leave school, but it never leaves you.” Andy Partridge

Hotch: “Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” Kahlil Gibran

Season 7 Episode 6 Epilogue

Rossi: “To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.” Erich Fromm.

Rossi: “The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.” Mary Catherine Bateson.

Season 7 Episode 7 There’s No Place Like Home

Hotch: “For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather, every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.”  George Gissing.

JJ: “Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.” Arthur Golden.

Season 7 Episode 8 Hope

Garcia: “Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.”  George Iles.

Garcia: We are each on our own journey.  Each of us is on our very own adventure; encountering all kinds of challenges, and the choices we make on that adventure will shape us as we go; these choices will stretch us, test us and push us to our limit; and our adventure will make us stronger then we ever know we could be.” (Thank you, LuLu!)

Garcia: There’s a quote by my favorite author, Joseph Campbell, and it goes like this: “Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

Season 7 Episode 9 Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Morgan: Morgan: “Things do not change.  We change.”  Henry David Thoreau.

Col. Massey: Brotherhood is the very price and condition of man’s survival.
Morgan: Carlos P. Romulo

Morgan: “Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.”  Jean de la Fontaine.

Season 7 Episode 12 Unknown Subject

Hotch: “We do not suffer from the shock of our trauma, but we make out of it just what suits our purposes.” Alfred Adler.

Prentiss: “All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” Henry Ellis

Season 7 Episode 14 “Closing Time”

Hotch: “For trust not him that hath once broken faith.” William Shakespeare

Hotch: “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.” Frank Crane

Season 7 Episode 15 “A Thin Line”

Morgan: “Equality may perhaps be a right – but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”  Honore de Balzac.

Prentiss: “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it.  I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for – or against.” Malcolm X.

Season 7 Episode 16 “A Family Affair”

Morgan: Eckhart Tolle said, “Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.”

JJ: “Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.” H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Season 7 Episode 17 “I Love You, Tommy Brown”

Morgan: “It was once said that love is giving someone the ability to destroy you, but trusting them not to.”

Morgan: “For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth.” Bo Bennett.

 

 

 

Episode
Quote
Author
Who Said It
8×01 “The Silencer”
(2 quotes)
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.” Andrew Carnegie Hotch
  “A man is known by the silence he keeps.” Oliver Herford Hotch
8×02 “The Pact”
(2 quotes)
Evil is always devising more corrosive misery for man’s restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.” Ralph Steadman Rossi
  “If you win, say nothing. If you lose, say less. Paul Brown Rossi
8×03“Through The Looking Glass”
(2 quotes)
“Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their true image.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe JJ
  “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” Lewis Carroll Hotch
8×04 “God Complex”
(2 quotes)
“When a doctor does go wrong, he’s the first of criminals. He has the nerve and he has knowledge.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Reid
  “Body and soul cannot be separated for purposes of treatment, for they are one and indivisible. Sick minds must be healed as well as sick bodies.” Dr. Jeff Miller JJ
8×05“The Good Earth”
(2 quotes)
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity”. Edgar Allan Poe Reid
  “Show me your garden and I shall tell you who you are”. Alfred Austin JJ
8×06 “The Apprenticeship”
(2 quotes)
“Better than a thousand days of diligent study, is one day with a great teacher.” Japanese proverb Morgan
  “The greatest good you can do for another, is not to share your own riches, but to reveal to him, his own.” Benjamin Disraeli Reid
8×07 The Fallen”
(2
quotes)
“You never find yourself until you face the truth.” Pearl Bailey Rossi
  “I am not concerned that you have fallen. I am concerned that you arise”. Abraham Lincoln Rossi
8×08“The wheels on the bus
(2
quotes)
“I’m not afraid of death. It’s the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life”. Jean Giraudoux Hotch
  “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”. Frederick Douglass Morgan
8×09“Magnificent Light
(2 q
uotes)
“A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage.” Sydney Smith JJ
  “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky Morgan
8×10 “The Lesson
(2
quotes)
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone. We find it with another.” Thomas Merton Ried
  “Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.” William Shakespeare Reid
8×11“Perennials
(2quotes)
“The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.” Mason Cooley Rossi
  “I have never yet heard of a murderer who is not afraid of a ghost.” John Philpot Curran Reid
8×12 “Zugzwang
(1
quote)
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu Reid
8×13 “Magnum Opus
(2
quotes)
“My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long.” Marie Antoinette JJ
  “Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over.” Nicole Sobon Reid
8×14 “All That Remains
(2
quotes)
“The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in atime of pain or joy.” Alan Lightman Hotch
  Love never dies a natural death. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” Anaïs Nin Hotch
8×15 “Broken
(2
quotes)
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway Alex Blake
  A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” John 13:34 Rossi
8×16 “Carbon Copy
(1
quote)
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Charles Caleb Colton Rossi
8×17 “The Gathering
(2
quotes)
“I can resist anything except temptation.” Oscar Wilde Reid
“All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.” Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Reid
8×18 “Restoration
(2
quotes)
“For darkness restores what light cannot repair.” Joseph Brodsky. Morgan
  “I am dead. Only vengeance can restore me!” Terry Goodkind Rossi
8×19 “Pay It Forward
(2
quotes)
“There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again.” Eugene O’Neill Hotch
  “A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.” Eugene de Bono Rossi
8×20 “Alchemy
(2
quotes)
“I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil.” J.R.R. Tolkien Reid
  “Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?” Alfred Tennyson Rossi
8×21 “Nanny Dearest
(2 quotes)
“Alone, all alone. Nobody, but nobody can make it out here alone.” Maya Angelou JJ
  “Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.” Carl Jung Hotch
8×22 “#6” (1 quote) “We are not the same persons this year as we are last, nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” W. Somerset Maugham Blake
8×23 “Brothers Hotchner
(2
quotes)
“Cruel is the strife of brothers.”
Aristotle
Hotch
  “Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.” Richard Bach Hotch
8×24 “The Replicator”
(2 quotes)
“The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” Richard Bach Hotch
  “Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.” H. G. Wells Rossi

 

9×01 “The Inspiration”
(2 quotes)

“Who knows where inspiration comes from. Perhaps it arises from desperation. Perhaps it comes from the flukes of the universe, the kindness of the muses.” Amy Tan Rossi
  “There are two things for which we are never really prepared for: twins.” Josh Billings Hotch
9×02 “The Inspired”
(2 quotes)
“We are not only our brother’s keeper; in countless large and small ways we are our brother’s maker.” Bonaro Overstreet Morgan
  “They mess you up, your Mom and Dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had, and add some extra – just for you.” Philip Larkin Hotch
9×03 “Final Shot”
(1 quote)
“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” John F. Kennedy Rossi
9×04 “To Bear Witness”
(2 quotes)
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.” Mary Oliver Morgan
  “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” Norman Cousins Hotch
9×05 “Route 66″
(1 quote)
“Life is a dream, realize it.” Mother Teresa Hotch
9×06 “In the Blood”
(2 quotes)
“After all, what is every man but a horde of ghosts? Oaks that were acorns that were oaks.” Walter de la Mare Reid
  “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” Mitch Albom Garcia
9×07 “Gatekeeper”
(2 quotes)
“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” Benjamin Franklin Rossi
  “The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.” Frank Clark Reid
9×08 “The Return”
(2 quotes)
“There is no terror in the bang of the gun; only the anticipation of it.” Alfred Hitchcock Morgan
  “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.” Edmund Burke JJ
9×09 “Strange Fruit”
(1 quote)
“The universe doesn’t like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.” Lisa Unger Rossi
9×10 “The Caller”
(2 quotes)
“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.” Aristotle Reid
  “We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.” Albert Einstein Rossi
9×11 “Bully”
(2 quotes)
“Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet.” Vietnamese proverb Blake
  “Alone, we can do so little. Together we can do so much.” Helen Keller Blake
9×12 “The Black Queen”
(2 quotes)
“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.” Thomas Szasz Morgan
  “To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.” Bill Watterson Garcia
9×13 “The Road Home”
(2 quotes)
“Beware the fury of a patient man.” John Dryden Morgan
  “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” Paul Boese Rossi
9×14 “200″
(2 quotes)
“Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look.” James Burke Prentiss
  “When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche JJ
9×15 “Mr. and Mrs. Anderson”
(2 quotes)
“Marriage is a mosaic you build with your spouse – millions of tiny moments that create your love story.” Jennifer Smith Blake
  “Each relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you.” Michael Murdock Garcia
9×16 “Gabby”
(2 quotes)
“There is no footprint too small to leave an imprint on this world.” Author Unknown Hotch
  “A mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in them.” Victor Hugo JJ
9×17 “Persuasion”
(2 quotes)
“The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret.” Salvador Dali Reid
  “Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.” Arthur Erickson Rossi
9×18 “Rabid”
(2 quotes)
“It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.” Hippocrates Reid
  “True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils.” Baltasar Gracián Morgan
9×19 “The Edge of Winter”
(2 quotes)
“No one is ever a victim, although your conquerors would have you believe in your own victimhood. How else could they conquer you?” Barbara Marciniak Morgan
  “There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain, the mind must leave reality behind.” Patrick Rothfuss Morgan
9×20 “Blood Relations”
(1 quote)
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner Blake
9×21 “What Happens in Mecklinberg”
(1 quote)
“In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.” Albert Einstein Reid
9×22 “Fatal”
(2 quotes)
“He who is born to be hanged shall never be drowned.” Proverb Hotch
  “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” Jean de la Fontaine Rossi
9×23 “Angels”
(1 quote)
“The name written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the Earth.” Revelation 17:5 Rossi
9×24 “Demons”
(2 quotes)
“When truth is buried, it grows. It chokes. It gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it.” Émile Zola Reid
  “We must be willing to get rid of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” Joseph Campbell Reid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Temptation

The best way to resist temptation is simply to yield to it. –Oscar Wilder

序:写这篇是因为,我有一次po了一个很老的古文,格言联璧, 这是一个关于修身养性的古文,但一直一直有很多过来浏览。我不明白为什么这么多人看这篇,尤其是在这个号召解放天性,释放欲望的年代。我想是不是也有人同我一样感觉到了修身养性的重要性? 是不是对于这么多欲望或者诱惑的世界,也有人跟我一样意识到了要节制,要自律?有节制,对于自已的各种欲望对于外界提供的各种欢愉,我并不是为了什么直接的目的,比如有更好的工作或许有更好的成就,而仅仅是我觉得比起以前随便吃随便喝随便玩的享乐主义方式,有节制的生活让我感觉更好更快乐。希望自己能一直坚持下去。

For anyone who blame what technology advance has changed our lifestyle and feel nostalgic for the slowness  and closeness of passed days,  I will always say, you can still live the way people lived hundreds or even thousands years ago.  Technology is simply offering us more options, but never deleting the old one. You can still plant your own food, give up television, Internet, radio and live in a more closed space.

What stops you?

Temptation. We fail to resist the temptation offered by the new world,  we begin to be greedy on information, on material stuffs, on experience and on social connections and status.  Then, somehow, we refuse to acknowledge that it is our own fault and in stead, point our fingers to technology, to medias, to corporations.

By saying this, I am not proving those behaviors from main strain media or corporations, those who try to make us feel insecure, arouse  our desires of something we actually never need, picture a false image about happiness, advocate a lifestyle which is never real or sustainable.  They are not innocent, however, they are justified in our modern system.  So few actually can be done to stop this trend.

The only thing we could do is save ourselves. Save ourselves from all the temptations, be more selective on what you really want and what you really need. Besides, remember the ancient wisdom that desire is like a fire which will eventually burn you out.

burning-desire

Yong generation often laugh at the old when it comes to restrain oneself on desire.
Sexual liberation is a  failure to resist the sexual temptation, failure to realize the only joyful sex is between ones who deeply love each other.

Procrastination is a failure to resist the temptation on instant gratification, failure to restrain yourself on important tasks.

Over weight is a failure to resist the temptation on gluttony, forgetting that even the most enjoyable things can not be done excessively.

Addition to social network is a failure to overcome your narcissism. You are not so great that every bit of your life is worth broadcasting, even you are great, much of your daily life  still not deserves any attention.

Constantly checking news, friends’ update and emails is a failure to control your curiosity nature. Much of the things happening in the remote area of the planet has little to do with your life, and besides, you will not be punished for knowing it hours later.

The easiest way to resist the temptation is  to yield to it, as Oscar wilder puts it. Thus a lot of people do yield to their temptation, covering up with tons of excuses. However, by yielding to the temptation, you become the slaver of your inner desire, only one day you will find out how void life could be, how lost a person could be.

Ways to resist the temptation?

Morality. I know someone will laugh and think morality is not relevant those days. Who cares about it? But morality doesn’t exist merely for social restrain in the area left by law. It actually exists with the intention of guidance for a better life. As I grow older, I find out the benefits of  restraining and  controlling my desire.

 

 

 

 

 

Why do we read the news–By Max Novendstern

James Fallows’ awesomely-titled article on the future of journalism – “Learning to Love the (Shallow, Divisive, Unreliable) New Media” – is well worth reading in full, like almost everything he writes. It’s one of those articles that validates its central thesis by virtue of its existence: Fallows is a perfect example of what the future of journalism might look like. To wit: much more interdisciplinary (he combines investigatory reporting with economics, history, and small-scale social theory), mixed media, practically useful and – above all – experimental. Fallows is dead right when he says that journalists should be more like entrepreneurs, and that we should be should be “biased in favor of almost any new project”:

At no stage in the evolution of our press could anyone be sure which approaches would support life, and which would flicker out. Through my own career I have seen enough publications and programs start—and succeed, and fail—to know how hard it is to foresee their course in advance. Therefore I am biased in favor of almost any new project, since it might prove to be the next New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone, NPR, or Wired that helps us understand our world. Perhaps we have finally exhausted the viable possibilities for a journalism that offers a useful and accurate perspective. If so, then America’s problems of public life can only grow worse, since we will lack the means to understand and discuss them.

My only quibble is with the last part of the paragraph. His casual association of “America’s problems of public life” with the “possibilities [of] journalism,” seems to undermine his point. For if we simply stipulate that journalism exists in order to solve the “problems of public life,” then we limit the experimental possibilities of the form. Because journalism could do so much more.

The question that would need to come first is the most basic question possible: why does journalism exist at all? It’s a brazen line of reasonsing, no doubt, but it sits on the shadow-side of all the prognosticating we do about the future of the news industry: why, in the end, do we bother with the news?

Does anyone in the world need me, Max Novendstern, student of 21, taker of final exams in biology, frequenter of college parties and the occasional business conference — does anyone really need me to know the relative benefits of cap-and-trade over carbon taxes, or to have an opinion about whether the intervention in Libya was a good idea? Does my knowledge of these things indeed solve the “problems of public life”? And if it does, somehow, is it for this reason, descriptively, that I read? And does mainstream, “respectable” political journalism – the type that we’re wringing our hands to defend – depend on the myth that it is?

I ask this with the operating premise that if we want to figure out the future of news, we should begin by wondering why we bother reading it in the first place. So here’s my tentative list of why we read the news (and feel free to add your own in the comments):

The J.S. Mill Thesis: We read the news because it’s our duty as citizens. We have the privilege of voting, and of participating in the governance of our country, and we take that task seriously.

The Gawker Thesis: We read the news because we think it’s fun. Our relationship to politics is roughly the same as the video gamer’s relationship to video games.

The Habermas Thesis: We read the news because it gives us something to talk about. The news is part of our “public discourse,” our set of shared intellectual touchstones that help to affirm our membership in communities like campus and country. We value that.

The Ida Tarbell Thesis: We read the news because we have principles and personal projects, and “getting the facts” help us achieve our goals. I care about climate change because I want to stop it. I need to know about ethanol policy because my job depends on it. Etc.

The Chomsky Thesis: We read the news because powerful people lie, and it’s our “responsibility as intellectuals” to expose those lies.

I could probably go on, of course. But just acknowledging the fact that we read the news for different reasons helps us make the case for “new media.” The internet promises to diversify the ways we experience information. It helps us stretch more fibers in our reading muscle by pulling on them in different, diverse ways. Gawker, Politico, Talking Points Memo, Colbert Report, ProPublica, The Huffington Post, TED Talks, The Gutenberg Project, Twitter, Kindle Singles and Newsle — these represent not just alternative modes of journalism, but also different rationales for why we bother to read. But it’s only the beginning. I envision a world where news looks like fantasy football leagues, or David Foster Wallace novels, or Second Life.

And who could possibly argue that having all this together at once would be worse for the reader? It might be worse for the publishers of the traditional newspapers, of course. But that’s another story.

Becoming old

 

I feel old right after I turned into 25, in face  I am aware that  it is more about a  mental issue than a physical one. It is the mental fatigue which sets me unable to keep energetic, keep motivated, and keep striving for a better self.

Why?

I feel I have experienced enough, good or bad, success or failure, love or indifference, and everything feels like climbing mountains — hard to climbing to the top, few seconds to stay there and soon begin to descend. Life feels like a dream,  nothing left except those memories. Sadly, those memories are burden. They constantly remind you how pleasure , as well as  suffering, slips so quickly.  That is the curse of becoming old. That is why we stop trying, settling down for comfort, settling down with a perfect excuse, family, kids, mature, responsibility, etc. But secretly, we all know, we still have potential, but we just lost the motivation to keep going.

Thus, I admire those athletes who can still train themselves, day in and day out, even they have stood on the highest podium before. I admire those who can still push themselves to stay competitive. It is not “staying there”, it is not “winning again”, it is a victory of all the mental and physical resistance, a smash on the face of those including me, giving up too earlier.

So what is the secret of keeping improvement, keeping moving ?

I think it is the boredom of comfort, the boredom of staying in the same place day after day. It sounds minimizing the efforts, however, it is not as it looks like. For some people, it is a curse. That is why after resting for one year, I started to work again.

Rethink Work

For most people, the word “work” is always associated with tedious, repetitive labor which no one likes but has to do it simply for the pay check. This impression is also described in Charles Chaplin’s classical movie “modern times”. It is due to the labor division in capitalism for the sake of enhancing efficiency. As the trade off, the labor division deprives the employees of the joy in work.

How does it begin?

It all starts with Adam Smith, the father of industrial capitalism. He believes that people were naturally lazy and would work only for pay. “It is the interest of every man,” he wrote in 1776 in “The Wealth of Nations,” “to live as much at his ease as he can.”

This idea has been enormously influential. About a century later, it helped shape the scientific management movement, which created systems of manufacture that minimized the need for skill and close attention — things that lazy, pay-driven workers could not be expected to have.In his famous example of the pin factory, he extolled the virtues of the division of labor: “One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head.” Our work experience might be poorer, but we — or at least our bosses — would be richer.

But is the assumption true? Are human naturally lazy?

Actually it doesn’t matter at all. Ideology has the power to become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The way ideology becomes valid is first through changing how people think about their own actions, then changing how others respond to the actor, and then in return, reinforcing the thinking and further changing people’s behavior. The phrase “self fulfilling prophecy” was described by sociologist Robert Merton. He discussed examples of how theories that initially do not describe the world accurately can become descriptive if they are acted upon. In essence, a self-fulfilling prophecy is a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior that makes the originally false conception eventually true. So I believe this is the case in Adam Smith’s theory.

In the meanwhile, everyone needs a job,  to make oneself feel worthy in the society. Unemployment is coupled with a variety of negative health effects, including depression and anxiety. However, we are not money-driven by nature.  Money does not tap into the essence of human motivation,  as the opposite, people want engagement,autonomy  and meaning in work to become satisfied and establishing their self esteem. Besides,numerous studies across dozens of different industries  shows that workplaces that offered employees work that was challenging, engaging and meaningful, and over which they had some discretion, were more profitable than workplaces that treated employees as cogs in a production machine.

Thus, there is a desperate need to redesign our work and our attitude to work.

As the workplaces, we should giving employees more of a say in how they do their jobs, making sure we offer them opportunities to learn and grow, and  encouraging them to suggest improvements to the work process and listening to what they say.

As a worker, we should actively engage in the jobs we are doing, creating meaning through our work and view work as a way to contribute not simply to get paid.

Rethinking Inequality

Yes, we hear it again and again, the rhetoric about ever widening  inequality between the rich and the poor.The distinguished difference between the two classes make it seems like they are not living in the same world,  the same period, the same planet.

Sure, inequality exists and will exist in capitalism, however,  the 99% vs 1%  division is over exaggerating and it appeals to me as a left wing political strategy to divide the nation again.

Inequality is a very complex issue, especially combined with a lot of political factors. The truth about the real situation is still behind the fog, so before any further research, we should remain suspicious about all the claims out there.

The Root of Inequality

Inequality is built into capitalism, which is based on private property. As long as the scarcity of property and relatively abundance of labor still exist, owning property is always a better way to make money than labor. As a consequence, wealth will concentrate in those who owning property, creating the top rich in a society.

Besides, the so called “free market” is actually misguided. There is no free market in capitalism, simply another set of rules to do trades. Corrupted political institution will make it easy for the top rich to set laws in favor of them, than the rest. Thus, the inequality become even worse.

Tackle the Problem 

Inequality is hard to solve, simply because those in charge are exactly the same who are benefiting from inequality. Without any reformations, we can see a future with more upsets, frustrations from middle and lower class ,and even a collapse of the society. However, I believe, we still have hopes.

The solution should not be hating the rich, instead, we should unite the middle and lower class. United through labor unions, we can gather enormous political and economic powers.  Putting forward practical improvements, like raising minimum wages, even universal income for everyone, restraining CEO paycheck,  higher income and corporation taxes, etc. In essence, we should unite to force the government intervene in redistributing wealth.

 

Reference in this post:

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few by Robert B. Reich