My Virtual Reading Room

[Error: unknown template qotd]There are many...but if I must choose one:

"To be kind and to hold one's own end up--that's all there is to life."

(anyone recognise the speaker? ;)

This answer is phrased far better than I ever could manage: http://med-cat.livejournal.com/424669.html

[Error: unknown template qotd]I do not know...not without Divine intervention, I'm afraid...

"...Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! who can tell how all will end?
Read the wide world’s annals, you, and take their wisdom for your friend.

Hope the best, but hold the Present fatal daughter of the Past,
Shape your heart to front the hour, but dream not that the hour will last.

Ay, if dynamite and revolver leave you courage to be wise:
When was age so cramm’d with menace? madness? written, spoken lies?
....
After madness, after massacre, Jacobinism and Jacquerie,
Some diviner force to guide us thro’ the days I shall not see?

When the schemes and all the systems, Kingdoms and Republics fall,
Something kindlier, higher, holier—all for each and each for all?
.....
Earth at last a warless world, a single race, a single tongue—
I have seen her far away—for is not Earth as yet so young?—

Every tiger madness muzzled, every serpent passion kill’d,
Every grim ravine a garden, every blazing desert till’d,

Robed in universal harvest up to either pole she smiles,
Universal ocean softly washing all her warless Isles.

Warless? when her tens are thousands, and her thousands millions, then—
All her harvest all too narrow—who can fancy warless men?

Warless? war will die out late then. Will it ever? late or soon?
Can it, till this outworn earth be dead as yon dead world the moon?..."

[Error: unknown template qotd]"...A student of mine told me that when sacred vessels used to break, they'd mend them with liquid gold. The more they broke, the more valuable they became. The same is true with hearts, she said. Still, it's important to know when to take a break from broken hearts and go shopping."

(From Geneen Roth's book "The Craggy Hole in My Heart & The Cat Who Fixed It")

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A day to remember and to reflect...If I may ask you to join me in a moment of silence?

**

(photos from www.fotosearch.com)

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"What is hateful to you, do not do to another."

(Hillel)

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An interesting question....  The jury is still out on that one and I'm sure it will be out for a long time, if not forever....

I would say both to both questions and also that we cannot determine which of the two has the greater influence, also to both questions.  However, nurture can control the nature to a large extent, in my opinion.

[Error: unknown template qotd]No to both; don't drink alcohol and don't go to bars :)

[Error: unknown template qotd]Ecological disaster, most likely; eventually, of course, the Sun will expand to a red giant and swallow the solar system....