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 European spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus), is a species of bark beetle in the true weevil family, Curculionidae. It is found in Europe and Asia Minor and east to China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea. Bark beetles are so named because they reproduce in the inner bark, living and dead phloem tissues, of trees. Their preferred trees in which to reside include spruces, firs, pines and larches. The species has the ability to spread quickly over large areas and some scientists hypothesize that long-distance movements originating from the Iberian Peninsula may have contributed to its invasion of northern Norway spruce forests. This female European spruce bark beetle was photographed in Naninne in the province of Namur, Belgium.Photograph credit: Ivar Leidus
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