Greetings! How are you? My name is Benedict of Constantinople and, yes, I am a real person. If, by any chance, I do not respond to your messages, please kindly assume that real life got in my way and I am dealing with it. Other than that, please feel free to leave as many messages as you want (without vandalizing my talk page) here.
I am a major supporter of Western ideology and culture. That is not to say that I hate everything to do with the Orient, rather it is to say that I merely enjoy studying about the West better.
So, then, without further ado, see you around if I have the chance! Have a nice day!
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.
-Cicero, Roman author, orator, & politician (106 BC - 43 BC), Pro Publio Sestio
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-George Santayana, US (Spanish-born) philosopher (1863 - 1952), The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
-Albert Einstein, US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
-HH The Dalai Lama
Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.
-Spinoza
Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.
-Immanuel Kant
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
-Henry David Thoreau
The Nazca lines are a group of geoglyphs made in the soil of the Nazca Desert in southern Peru. They were created in two major phases – the Paracas phase (from 400 to 200 BC) and the Nazca phase (from 200 BC to 500 AD). The combined length of all the lines is more than 1,300 km (800 mi), and the group covers an area of about 50 km2 (19 sq mi). Most lines run straight across the landscape, but there are also figurative designs of animals and plants. Scholars differ in interpreting the purpose of the designs, but in general, they ascribe religious significance to them. The lines were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. This is an aerial view of the geoglyph known as the "monkey", one of the most well-known in the Nazca lines.Photograph credit: Diego Delso
.svg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.svg)
.svg){kind=small}
pano2.jpg){kind=small}
_-002.jpg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
.svg)
.svg)
.jpg){kind=small}
