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Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpractised -- when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
The voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully. and act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. To feel brave,act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and courage will very likely replace fear. If we act as if from some better feeling, the bad feeling soon fold its tent like an Arab and silently steals away.
The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning.
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
Our spontaneous action is always the best. You cannot, with your best deliberation and heed, come so close to any question as your spontaneous glance shall bring you.
Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.
Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.
The fact is that it takes more than ingredients and technique to cook a good meal. A good cook puts something of himself into the preparation - he cooks with enjoyment, anticipation, spontaneity, and he is willing to experiment.
To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.
Once you arrive {at a spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness}, remember: it isn't necessary to struggle to maintain unity with it. All you have to do is participate in it.
{There are two paths leading to oneness with the Tao.} The first in the path of acceptance. Affirm everyone and everything. Freely extend you goodwill and virtue in every direction, regardless of circumstances. Embrace all things as part of the Harmonious Oneness, and then you will begin to perceive it. The second path is that of denial. Recognize that everything you see and think is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth. Peel all the veils away, and you will arrive at the Oneness. Though these paths are entirely different, they will deliver you to the same place: spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness.
Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation. They always presuppose a soil seeded with preliminary knowledge and well prepared by labour, both conscious and subconscious.
We are all born charming, fresh, and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art.
Thomas Edison devoted ten years and all of his money to developing the nickel-alkaline storage battery at a time when he was almost penniless. . . . One night the terrifying cry of fire echoed through the film plant. Spontaneous combustion had ignited some chemicals. Within moments all of the packing compounds, celluloids for records, file, and other flammable goods had gone up with a whoosh. Fire companies from eight towns arrive, but the heat was so intense and the water pressure so low that the fire hoses had no effect. Edison was 67 years old - no age to begin anew. His daughter was frantic, wondering if he were safe, if his spirits were broken, how he would handle a crisis such as this at his age. She saw him running toward her. He spoke first. He said, "Where's your mother? Go get her. Tell her to get her friends. They'll never see another fire like this as long as they live." At 5:30 the next morning with the fire barely under control, he called his employees together and announced, "We're rebuilding." Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Oh, by the way, anybody know where we can get some money?" Virtually everything we now recognize as a Thomas Edison contribution in our lives came after that disaster.
During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please . . . please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!"
The preacher and the writer may seem to have an... easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men's hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliché, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology - dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Analysis kills spontaneity. The grain once ground into flour springs and germinates no more.
We need more spontaneous compassion and charity.
For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear. For I wear a thousand masks, masks that I am afraid to take off and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, but don't be fooled. For God's sake don't be fooled. I give the impression that I am secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name and coolness my game; that the waters are calm and I am in command, and that I need no one. But don't believe me, please. My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever-concealing 'Neath this lies no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, and aloneness. But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed. That is why I frantically create a mask to hide behind; a nonchalant, sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation. My only salvation. And I know it. That is, if it is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love. It is the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself, that I am worth something. But, I don't tell you this. I don't dare. I am afraid to. I am afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I am afraid you will think less of me, that you will laugh at me, and that you will see this and reject me. So I play my game, my desperate game, with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within. And so begins the parade of masks, and my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, of what is crying within me; So when I am going through my routine do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. What I would like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but I can't say. I dislike hiding, Honestly! I dislike the superficial game I am playing, the phony game. I would really like to be genuine and spontaneous, and me, but you have got to help me. You have got to hold out your hand, even when that is the last thing I seem to want. Only you can wipe away from my eyes that blank stare of breathing death. Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you try to understand and because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but wings. With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding, you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that. I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be the creator of the person that is me if you choose to. Please choose to. You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask. You alone can release me from my shadow world of panic and uncertainty; From my lonely person. Do not pass me by. Please . . . do not pass me by. It will not be easy for you; a long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I strike back. I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that love is stronger than walls, and in this lies my hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands for a child is very sensitive. Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet. _________________Charles C. Finn
All self-revelation and intimacy in friendship must be spontaneous and natural. It must come like the opening of a flower in the sunshine and cannot be forced.
