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be1b3a6
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It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful...
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Tom Robbins |
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de672aa
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Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. It's the deepest, wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snooze in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can't wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with a family-style restaurant or a new S and L. That's the p..
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Tom Robbins |
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1d899f2
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Christianity is merely a system for turning priestesses into handmaidens, queens into concubines, and goddesses into muses.
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Tom Robbins |
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2ae029c
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Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not the times that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When you put the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the solution. Just like those poor neurotics at the Care Fest. There's a tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsiblity and treat them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with your soul. It's not men who li..
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Tom Robbins |
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5ab22a7
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Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone.
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indigo
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Tom Robbins |
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f9cb8e3
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Humans have evolved to their relatively high state by retaining the immature characteristics of their ancestors. Humans are the most advanced of mammals - although a case could be made for the dolphins - because they seldom grow up. Behavioral traits such as curiosity about the world, flexibility of response, and playfulness are common to practically all young mammals but are usually rapidly lost with the onset of maturity in all but humans..
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rebellion
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Tom Robbins |
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053972d
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Ellen Cherry was from the south and had good manners. She didn't have any panties on, but she had good manners.
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Tom Robbins |
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f2dbce3
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Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.
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Tom Robbins |
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01ccfb8
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Growing up is a trap," snapped Dr. Robbins. "When they tell you to shut up, they mean stop talking. When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Reach a nice level plateau and settle there, predictable and unchanging, no longer a threat."
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Tom Robbins |
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50d0487
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It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, conservative, repressed, fearful, and aggressive, like the thunder lizards; a lesson, by the way, that the Earth has yet to learn.
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peace
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Tom Robbins |
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99fa28a
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There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more..
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tribute
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Tom Robbins |
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b121750
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Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in the bodies and their minds but by economics. D..
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economics
capitalism
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Tom Robbins |
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206bdac
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To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?
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Tom Robbins |
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27b8f3e
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When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.
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life
humans
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Tom Robbins |
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ce0b745
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The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's Day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.
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Tom Robbins |
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d25b59e
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Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there.
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life
thought-provoking
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Tom Robbins |
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09b6c53
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There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained?...how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring?...If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desir..
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Tom Robbins |
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73c18ef
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The camel has a big dumb ugly hump. But in the desert, where prettier, more streamlined beasts die quickly of thirst, the camel survives quite nicely. As legend has it, the camel carries its own water, stores it in its stupid hump. If individuals, like camels, perfect their inner resources, if we have the power within us, then we can cross any wasteland in relative comfort and survive in arid surroundings without relying on the external. Of..
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Tom Robbins |
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f40e768
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Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.
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Tom Robbins |
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a1f7f0a
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Meet me in Cognito, baby. In Cognito, we'll have nothing to hide.
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Tom Robbins |
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65d5693
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Our great human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.
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inspirational
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Tom Robbins |
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5532446
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Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.
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louisiana
south
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Tom Robbins |
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5e71bb6
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The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society. Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dogmatists. Those greedy, underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of us are busy living - busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and goofing and growing - they are busy taking over.
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Tom Robbins |
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edd39e0
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Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.
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Tom Robbins |
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0fcba36
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Heterosexual relationships seem to lead only to marriage, and for most poor dumb brainwashed women marriage is the climactic experience. For men, marriage is a matter of efficient logistics: the male gets his food, bed, laundry, TV, pussy, offspring and creature comforts all under one roof, where he doesn't have to dissipate his psychic energy thinking about them too much - then he is free to go out and fight the battles of life, which is w..
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Tom Robbins |
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9d27832
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The rich are the most discriminated-against minority in the world. Openly or covertly, everybody hates the rich because, openly or covertly, everybody envies the rich. Me, I love the rich. Somebody has to love them. Sure, a lot o' rich people are assholes, but believe me, a lot o' poor people are assholes, too, and an asshole with money can at least pay for his own drinks.
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Tom Robbins |
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8dfa32a
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Often, moreover, it is...that aspect of our being that society finds eccentric, ridiculous, or disagreeable, that holds our sweet waters, our secret well of happiness, the key to our equanimity in malevolent climes.
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happiness
inspirational
eccentric
ridiculous
hard-times
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Tom Robbins |
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d36049b
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red hair is caused by sugar and lust.
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Tom Robbins |
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09fe52f
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When we accept small wonders, we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders.
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Tom Robbins |
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f4afdd5
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I'll follow him to the ends of the earth,' she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.
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love
flat-earth
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Tom Robbins |
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415917b
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There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.
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moon
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Tom Robbins |
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fc375b4
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As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may..
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war
heaven
religion
military
tyranny
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Tom Robbins |
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174c635
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But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.
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average
mediocrity
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Tom Robbins |
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cfedd25
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The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.
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religion
desire
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Tom Robbins |
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f14e6e1
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Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.
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Tom Robbins |
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ad90763
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You know what I mean? Real and unreal, beautiful and strange, like a dream. It got me high as a kite, but it didn't last long enough. It ended too soon and left nothing behind." That's how it is with dreams," said Priscilla. "They're the perfect crime."
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Tom Robbins |
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b316c07
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Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird..
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artists
music
mocking-birds
improvisation
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Tom Robbins |
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386be6b
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This did not annoy Amanda for it had long been her theory that human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.
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Tom Robbins |
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0bcdf37
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All a person can do in this life is gather about him his integrity, his imagination, and his individuality - and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.
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Tom Robbins |
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f2b9dac
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Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops?
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Tom Robbins |
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67c5968
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The difference between a criminal and an outlaw is that while criminals frequently are victims, outlaws never are. Indeed, the first step toward becoming a true outlaw is the refusal to be victimized. All people who live subject to other people's laws are victims. People who break laws out of greed, frustration, or vengeance are victims. People who overturn laws in order to replace them with their own laws are victims. ( I am speaking here ..
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vs
outlaw
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Tom Robbins |
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994d9ad
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salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb.
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religion
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Tom Robbins |
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00db0fc
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Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.
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Tom Robbins |
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f0aa508
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Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. The catch is, mysticism does not lend itself to institutionalization. The moment we attempt to organize mysticism, we destroy its essence. Religion, then, is mysticism in which the mystical has been killed. Or, at least diminished.
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religion
mysticism
mystical
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Tom Robbins |