"A relationship is like a rose,
How long it lasts, no one knows;
Love can erase an awful past,
Love can be yours, you'll see at last;
To feel that love, it makes you sigh,
To have it leave, you'd rather die;
You hope you've found that special rose,
'Cause you love and care for the one you chose."
Cella, Rob.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
My symphony
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony.
Channing, William Ellery.
Not a bad idea
“It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.”
Colegate, Isabel.
Colegate, Isabel.
Time to go
“They know the time to go!
The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastens to bed.”
Coolidge, Susan.
The fairy clocks strike their inaudible hour
In field and woodland, and each punctual flower
Bows at the signal an obedient head
And hastens to bed.”
Coolidge, Susan.
Books
“Books should, not Business, entertain the Light;
And Sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.”
Cowley, Alexander.
And Sleep, as undisturb'd as Death, the Night.”
Cowley, Alexander.
Wholeness
“I think wholeness comes from living you life consciously during the day and then exploring your inner life or unconscious at night.”
Cuyler, Margery.
Cuyler, Margery.
James Matthew Barrie
1. “A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.”
2. “Always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”
3. “Ambition is the last infirmity of noble minds.”
4. “As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on your way to being a remarkable man.”
5. "Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough, You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it."
6. “Every time a child says, "I don't believe in fairies," there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.”
7. "Facts were never pleasing to him. He acquired them with reluctance and got rid of them with relief. He was never on terms with them until he had stood them on their heads."
8. “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”
9. “If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.”
10. “I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching.”
11. “I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.”
12. “It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?”
13. "Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow."
14. “Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary.”
15. “The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.”
16. “The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.”
17. “Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”
18. “To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
19. "We are all failures—at least, all the best of us are."
20. “What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?”
21. “When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one.”
22. “You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by.”
Steven Wright
1. "A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory."
2. “A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, "Wish you were here."” ‘
3. “A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I'm afraid of widths.”
4. "A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could have only one book, what would it be? I always say 'How To Build A Boat.'"
5. "Ballerinas are always on their toes. Why don't they just get taller ballerinas?"
6. “Black holes are where God divided by zero.”
7. “Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.”
8. “Ever notice how it's a penny for your thoughts, yet you put in your two-cents? Someone is making a penny on the deal.”
9. “Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.”
10. ”For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.”
11. "I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met."
12. ”I bought some powdered water, but I didn't know what to add.”
13. “If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?”
14. ”If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?”
15. ”I bought some batteries, but they weren't included. So I had to buy them again.”
16. ”I have a hobby. I have the world's largest collection of sea shells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen some of it.”
17. “I have an existential map; it has you are here written all over it.”
18. ”I have an answering machine in my car. It says, - I'm home now, but leave a message and I'll call when I'm out.”
19. ”I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once in a while I turn it on and off. One day I got a call from a woman in France who said, -Cut it out!”
20. “I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
21. ”I put instant coffee in a microwave and almost went back in time.”
22. “I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.”
23. ”I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place.”
24. ”I've been doing a lot of abstract painting lately, extremely abstract. No brush, no paint, no canvas, I just think about it.”
25. ”I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”
26. ”I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.”
27. ”I went to a restaurant that serves -breakfast at any time. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.”
28. ”I wrote a song, but I can't read music. Every time I hear a new song on the radio, I think, -Hey, maybe I wrote that.”
29. ”I Xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra Xerox machine.”
30. ”Last night I fell asleep in a satellite dish. My dreams were broadcast all over the world.”
31. “Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.”
32. ”Last week, I went to a furniture store to look for a decaffeinated coffee table. They couldn't help me.”
33. ”On the ceilings in my house, I have paintings of the rooms above so I never have to go upstairs.”
34. ”Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.”
35. ”Well, you know when you're rocking in a rocking chair, and you go so far that you almost fall over backwards, but at the last instant you catch yourself? That's how I feel all the time.”
36. “When I was a baby I kept a diary. Recently I was reading it. It said: (1) Still tired from the move. (2) Everybody keeps talking to me like I'm an idiot.”
37. “When the guy who made the first drawing board got it wrong, what did he go back to?”
38. ”What's another word for - thesaurus?”
39. “You can't have everything. Where would you put it?”
Salman Rushdie
1. "A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return."
2. “America finds itself facing an ideological enemy that may turn out harder to defeat that Islam: that is to say, anti-Americanism, which is presently taking the world by storm.”
3. ”A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.”
4. “Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”
5. ”Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.”
6. “I don't think it is always necessary to take up the anti-colonial - or is it post-colonial? - cudgels against English. What seems to me to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it-assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.”
7. ”If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you're dumb and blind.”
8. “I once spent a day at the immigration barriers at London's Heathrow Airport, watching the treatment of arriving passengers by immigration personnel. It did not amaze me to discover that most of the passengers who had some trouble getting past the control point were not white but black or Arab-looking. What was surprising is that there was one factor that overrode blackness or Arab looks. That factor was the possession of an American passport. Produce an American passport, and immigration officers at once become color blind, and wave you quickly on your way, however suspiciously non-Caucasian your features. To those to whom the world is closed, such openness is greatly to be desired. Those who assume that openness to be theirs by right perhaps value it less. When you have enough air to breathe, you don't yearn for air. But when breathable air gets to be in short supply, you quickly start noticing how important it is. (Freedom's like that, too.)”
9. ”It's very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it. To say that the book which you have not opened, which you have not read, which you do not possess, offends you seems to me to be not just a peculiar position but a reprehensible position.”
10. "Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart."
11. “No, little rich boy, there is no third principle; there is only money-and-poverty, and have and lack, and right-and-left; there is only me-against the world! The world is not ideas, rich boy; the world is no place for dreamers or their dreams; the world, little Snotnose, is things. Things and their makers rule the world. For things, the country is run. Not for people. When you have things, there is time to dream; when you don't, you fight.”
12. "Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith."
13. "One of the extraordinary things about human events is that the unthinkable becomes thinkable."
14. "Our lives teach us who we are."
15. ”Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems -- but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems incredible.”
16. "Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts."
17. "The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins."
18. “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas - uncertainty, progress, change - into crimes.”
19. "The liveliness of literature lies in its exceptionality, in being the individual, idiosyncratic vision of one human being, in which, to our delight and great surprise, we may find our own vision reflected."
20. “The most important part of the title is the comma. Because it seems to me that I am that comma.”
21. “The real risks for any artist are taken...in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it--when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.”
22. "Throughout human history, the apostles of purity, those who have claimed to possess a total explanation, have wrought havoc among mere mixed-up human beings."
23. “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
24. “When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.”
25. "Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy."
26. "Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory."
Benjamin Franklin
1. “A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.”
2. ”All mankind is divided into three classes: those who are immovable, those who are movable; and those who move.”
3. “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
4. “As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
5. “Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few.”
6. “Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn.”
7. ”Beware of the young doctor and the old barber.”
8. “Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.”
9. "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."
10. “For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.”
11. “Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.”
12. “He who multiplies riches multiplies cares.”
13. “Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade.”
14. “Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.”
15. “If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it away from him. An investment of knowledge always pays the best interest.
16. ”If Jack's in love, he's no judge of Jill's beauty.”
17. “If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.”
18. “If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Roman Catholic Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England.”
19. “If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.”
20. ”If your head is wax, don't walk in the sun.”
21. “Life's Tragedy is that we get old to soon and wise too late.”
22. “Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.”
23. “Reading makes a full man, meditation a profound man, discourse a clear man.”
24. “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of. If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality; since lost time is never found again and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy. Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure. Since thou art not sure of a minute, throw not away an hour.”
25. "I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
26. "Never confuse motion with action."
27. “The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.”
28. “The height of foolishness is to discard an idea without proper investigation.”
29. “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
30. “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
31. “To err is human, to repent divine, to persist devilish.”
32. “Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that don't have brains enough to be honest.”
33. "Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
34. “Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.”
35. ”Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.”
36. "Wine is proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy"
Escape from reality
”For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality.”
Branden, Nathaniel.
Branden, Nathaniel.
Broken English
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
Brown, H. Jackson.
Boring
"Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody."
Brown, Helen Gurley.
Brown, Helen Gurley.
Center of the world
“The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "Look under foot." You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.”
Burroughs, John.
Burroughs, John.
Knowledge
“Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.”
Burritt, Elihu.
Burritt, Elihu.
A form of love
”Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.”
Byrne, David.
Byrne, David.
Bad geography
“Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography.”
Byrne, Robert.
Insincerity
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
George Orwell
George Orwell
Mystery
"Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised"
Chesterton, Gilbert
Chesterton, Gilbert
Graham Greene
1. ”Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.”
2. “Our worst enemies here are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt.”
3. “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
4. "The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths."
5. “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1. “Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead.
She wept tear after tear, with the blood which was shed,--
And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close;
Her tears, to the wind-flower,--his blood, to the rose.”
2. “And each man stand with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.”
3. “As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.”
4. “A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.”
5. “Behold me! I am worthy
Of thy loving, for I love thee!”
6. “Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.”
7. “Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light.
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.”
8. “But I love you, sir:
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.”
9. “Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
And only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
10. “Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.”
11. “First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since it grew more clean and white.”
12. "For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life."
13. “For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.”
14. “Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all.”
15. “God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.”
God Himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is His song.”
16. “He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.”
17. “He said true things, but called them by wrong names.”
18. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”
19. ”I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”
20. ”If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.”
21. “If we tried / To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure / The future would not stand.”
22. “I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”
23. “It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me - the fullness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy. and only I know what was behind - the long wilderness without the blossoming rose..and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve - not you - but my own fate? Was ever anyone taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do?”
24. “Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.”
25. “Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.”
26. “Light tomorrow with today!”
27. “Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the
Lightest part,
Love me in full
Being.”
“Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,
By reiteration chiefly.”
28. “Since when was genius found respectable?”
29. “The beauty seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.”
30. “The devil's most devilish when respectable.”
31. “The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love.”
32. “The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'”
33. "Think, In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence."
34. “Unless you can feel when the song is done
No other is sweet in its rhythm;
Unless you can feel when left by one
That all men else go with him.”
35. “We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.”
36. “What monster have we here?
A great Deed at this hour of day?
A great just deed -- and not for pay?
Absurd -- or insincere?”
37. ”What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Light, that never makes you wink;
Memory, that gives no pain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
- Something out of it, I think.”
38. “Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll--
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me--toll
The silver iterance!--only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.”
39. “Whoever lives true life, will love true love.”
40. “Who so loves believes the impossible.”
41. “WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound / I strive and struggle to deliver right / That music of my nature, day and night / With dream and thought and feeling interwound / And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height / Which step out grandly to the infinite / From the dark edges of the sensual ground. / This song of soul I struggle to outbear / Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, / And utter all myself into the air: / But if I did it,--as the thunder-roll / Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, / Before that dread apocalypse of soul.”
42. “World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.”
43. “You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.”
She wept tear after tear, with the blood which was shed,--
And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close;
Her tears, to the wind-flower,--his blood, to the rose.”
2. “And each man stand with his face in the light of his own drawn sword. Ready to do what a hero can.”
3. “As the moths around a taper,
As the bees around a rose,
As the gnats around a vapour,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood, as if drinking its repose.”
4. “A woman's always younger than a man at equal years.”
5. “Behold me! I am worthy
Of thy loving, for I love thee!”
6. “Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.”
7. “Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light.
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.”
8. “But I love you, sir:
And when a woman says she loves a man,
The man must hear her, though he love her not.”
9. “Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
And only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
10. “Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.”
11. “First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since it grew more clean and white.”
12. "For frequent tears have run
The colors from my life."
13. “For none can express thee, though all should approve thee.
I love thee so, Dear, that I only can love thee.”
14. “Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all.”
15. “God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.”
God Himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is His song.”
16. “He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.”
17. “He said true things, but called them by wrong names.”
18. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”
19. ”I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”
20. ”If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.”
21. “If we tried / To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure / The future would not stand.”
22. “I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”
23. “It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me - the fullness must be in proportion, you know, to the vacancy. and only I know what was behind - the long wilderness without the blossoming rose..and the capacity for happiness, like a black gaping hole, before this silver flooding. Is it wonderful that I should stand as in a dream, and disbelieve - not you - but my own fate? Was ever anyone taken suddenly from a lampless dungeon and placed upon the pinnacle of a mountain, without the head turning round and the heart turning faint, as mine do?”
24. “Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.”
25. “Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.”
26. “Light tomorrow with today!”
27. “Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the
Lightest part,
Love me in full
Being.”
“Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,
By reiteration chiefly.”
28. “Since when was genius found respectable?”
29. “The beauty seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.”
30. “The devil's most devilish when respectable.”
31. “The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love.”
32. “The Greeks said grandly in their tragic phrase, 'Let no one be called happy till his death;' to which I would add, 'Let no one, till his death, be called unhappy.'”
33. "Think, In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us, and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence."
34. “Unless you can feel when the song is done
No other is sweet in its rhythm;
Unless you can feel when left by one
That all men else go with him.”
35. “We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.”
36. “What monster have we here?
A great Deed at this hour of day?
A great just deed -- and not for pay?
Absurd -- or insincere?”
37. ”What's the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Light, that never makes you wink;
Memory, that gives no pain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
- Something out of it, I think.”
38. “Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll--
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me--toll
The silver iterance!--only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence, with thy soul.”
39. “Whoever lives true life, will love true love.”
40. “Who so loves believes the impossible.”
41. “WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound / I strive and struggle to deliver right / That music of my nature, day and night / With dream and thought and feeling interwound / And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height / Which step out grandly to the infinite / From the dark edges of the sensual ground. / This song of soul I struggle to outbear / Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, / And utter all myself into the air: / But if I did it,--as the thunder-roll / Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, / Before that dread apocalypse of soul.”
42. “World's use is cold, world's love is vain, world's cruelty is bitter bane; but is not the fruit of pain.”
43. “You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1. “A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.”
2. ”A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.”
3. “A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.”
4. ”But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.”
5. “Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”
6. “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
7. “Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.”
8. “Happiness is as a butterfly which when pursued is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly may alight upon you.”
9. "If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances."
10. “In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”
11. “Is it a fact--or have I dreamt it--that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?”
12. “It is not the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe that they are now or have – name.”
13. ”It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.”
14. “Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.”
15. “Life is made up of marble and mud.”
16. “Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.”
17. “Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.”
18. “No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.”
19. “Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”
20. “Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.”
21. “No man, for any considerable time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
22. “Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.”
23. “She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”
24. “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers - stern and wild ones - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”
25. “The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.”
26. “The world, that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable.”
27. “Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”
28. “We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.”
29. “What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!”
30. “Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
George Herbert
1. “Go not for every grief to the physician, nor for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot.”
2. “Life is half spent before we know what it is.”
3. "Living well is the best revenge."
4. “Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue; life's poor span
Make not an ell by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.”
5. “Man is all symmetrie,
Full of proportions, one limbe to another,
And all to all the world besides:
Each part may call the farthest, brother:
For head with foot hath privite amitie,
And both with moons and tides.”
6. ”Storms make oaks take deeper root.”
7. “The eyes have one language every where.”
8. “War makes thieves and peace hangs them.”
9. “Words and feathers the wind carries away.”
2. “Life is half spent before we know what it is.”
3. "Living well is the best revenge."
4. “Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue; life's poor span
Make not an ell by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.”
5. “Man is all symmetrie,
Full of proportions, one limbe to another,
And all to all the world besides:
Each part may call the farthest, brother:
For head with foot hath privite amitie,
And both with moons and tides.”
6. ”Storms make oaks take deeper root.”
7. “The eyes have one language every where.”
8. “War makes thieves and peace hangs them.”
9. “Words and feathers the wind carries away.”
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Clear mind
”It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. I wish I believed, as J. B. Priestley did, that consciousness continues after disembodiment or death, not forever, but for a long while. Three score years and ten is such a stingy ration of time, when there is so much time around. Perhaps that's why some of us are insomniacs; night is so precious that it would be pusillanimous to sleep all through it! A "bad night" is not always a bad thing.”
Aldiss, Brian W.
Be brave
”Be brave enough to live creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work, risking, and by not quite knowing what you're doing. What you'll discover will be wonderful: yourself."
Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Armory of genius
“Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly, books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon; of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars; actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as they rise and roll.”
Alcott, Amos Bronson.
Alcott, Amos Bronson.
The beginning
“The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.”
Abelard, Pierre.
Abelard, Pierre.
If you must play
If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of thegame, the stakes, and the quitting time.
Chinese Proverb
Chinese Proverb
Stretched
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its originaldimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809 - 1894
Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809 - 1894
Margot Asquith
1. “All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light.”
2. "From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war."
3. "He could not see a belt without hitting below it."
4. "The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth --the power to love --although I have put it last, is the rarest."
5. "There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs -- apart from discernment -- a certain greatness to find him."
6. "To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has ''never had a chance, poor devil,'' you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone."
2. "From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war."
3. "He could not see a belt without hitting below it."
4. "The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth --the power to love --although I have put it last, is the rarest."
5. "There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs -- apart from discernment -- a certain greatness to find him."
6. "To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has ''never had a chance, poor devil,'' you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone."
Norman Vincent Peale
1. "Anybody can do just about anything with himself that he really wants to and makes up his mind to do. We are capable of greater things than we realize."
2. "Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities -- always see them, for they're always there."
3. “Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
4. "It's always too early to quit."
"Many barriers between people are due to non-listening. The sun rises and sets daily on numberless conversations leading exactly nowhere, because people are so taken with their own preconceived ideas that the other fellow's views never register."
“Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.”
“There is a basic law that like attracts like. Negativie thinking definitely attracts negative results. Conversely if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully, his positive thinking sets in motion creative forces -- and success instead of eluding him flows toward him.”
“There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”
“Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.”
"Too much caution is bad for you. By avoiding things you fear, you may let yourself in for unhappy consequences. It is usually wiser to stand up to a scary-seeming experience and walk right into it, risking the bruises as hard knocks. You are likely to find it is not as tough as you had thought. Or you may find it plenty tough, but also discover you have what it takes to handle it."
"When the mind is agitated by the noise, hurry, and confusion of modern life, you cannot consult the creative depths within yourself for answers to your perplexing problems."
Sidney J. Harris
1. "A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future."
2. "An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run."
3. “If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?”
4. "If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, ''You Only Live Once.''"
5. "Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting."
6. “It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task.”
7. "Middle Age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, ''Why not?'' and the other, ''Why bother?''"
8. “Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”
9. “One of the greatest unsolved riddles of restaurant eating is that the customer usually gets faster service when the restaurant is crowded that when it is half empty; it seems that the less that the staff has to do, the slower they do it.”
10. "Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better."
11. ”Our real enemies are the people who make us feel so good that we are slowly, but inexorably, pulled down into the quicksand of smugness and self-satisfaction.”
12. "Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice."
13. "The art of listening needs it highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying."
14. "The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face."
15. ”The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.”
16. "The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational."
17. “There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.”
18. “The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.”
19. “The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, butmoral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong."
20. “The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.”
21. ”The two words "information" and "communication" are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through.”
22. “We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until... we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say "I lost it."”
23. “When I hear somebody say 'Life is hard', I am always tempted to ask 'Compared to what?'”
24. “When we have "second thoughts" about something, our first thoughts don't seem like thoughts at all - just feelings.”
25. “When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.”
Bob Dylan
1. “All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.”
2. “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
3. "But to live outside the law, you must be completely honest."
4. “I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some peopleare terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.”
5. ”I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.”
6. “I could stay with you forever, and never realize the time.”
7. "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."
8. “In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.”
9. “Money doesn't talk, it swears.”
10. “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”
11. "She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all."
12. ”The truth is where the truth is, and it's sometimes in the candy store.”
13. “...You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
2. “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
3. "But to live outside the law, you must be completely honest."
4. “I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some peopleare terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.”
5. ”I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.”
6. “I could stay with you forever, and never realize the time.”
7. "I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."
8. “In the dime stores and bus stations,
People talk of situations,
Read books, repeat quotations,
Draw conclusions on the wall.
Some speak of the future,
My love she speaks softly,
She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all.”
9. “Money doesn't talk, it swears.”
10. “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”
11. "She knows there's no success like failure
And that failure's no success at all."
12. ”The truth is where the truth is, and it's sometimes in the candy store.”
13. “...You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Travelers and tourists
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
Controversy
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt
Universal misunderstanding
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Against emotional values
Against emotional values arguments have no power, because arguments are only arguments, in other words, not even truths.
Unamuno, Miguel
Delight
"I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others."
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Primary sign
"The primary sign of a well-ordered mind is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company."
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
The key
“Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.”
Edward O. Wilson
Edward O. Wilson
The cure
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Well behaved
"Well behaved women rarely make history".
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Harvard historian whose _Midwife’s Tale_ won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for history 2007
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Harvard historian whose _Midwife’s Tale_ won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for history 2007
Jonathan Swift
1. “A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.”
2. “As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.”
3. “A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than yesterday.”
4. “A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.”
5. “Books, the children of the brain.”
6. “Bread is the staff of life.”
7. “Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying,
Never finding full repast,
Till I eat the world at last.”
8. “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
9. "Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light."
10. “It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.”
11. “It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.”
12. “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
13. ”It may be prudent in me to act sometimes by other mens reason, but I can think only by my own.”
14. “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
15. “May you live all the days of your life.”
16. “No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
17. “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
18. “So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.”
19. “That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.”
20. “The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”
21. “The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.”
22. "The Manner whereby the Soul and Body are united, and how they are distinguished, is wholly unaccountable to us. We see but one Part, and yet we know we consist of two; and this is a Mystery we cannot comprehend any more than that of the Trinity."
23. “The most accomplished way of using books at present is two-fold; either first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly and then brag of their acquiantance. Or secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For, to enterthe palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting only what comes from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of book, as boys do sparrows with flinging salt upon their tails.”
24. “There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.”
25. “The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.”
26. “The two noblest things, which are sweetness and light.”
27. “Those dreams, that on the silent night intrude,
And with false flitting shades our minds delude,
Jove never sends us downward from the skies;
Nor can they from infernal mansions rise;
But are all mere productions of the brain,
And fools consult interpreters in vain.”
28. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."
29. "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
30. ”We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.
The other project was a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For it is plain that every word we speak is in some degree a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on. And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction
with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion, unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.”
31. “When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
2. “As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.”
3. “A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than yesterday.”
4. “A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.”
5. “Books, the children of the brain.”
6. “Bread is the staff of life.”
7. “Ever eating, never cloying,
All-devouring, all-destroying,
Never finding full repast,
Till I eat the world at last.”
8. “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
9. "Instead of dirt and poison we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light."
10. “It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.”
11. “It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.”
12. “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
13. ”It may be prudent in me to act sometimes by other mens reason, but I can think only by my own.”
14. “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”
15. “May you live all the days of your life.”
16. “No wise man ever wished to be younger.”
17. “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
18. “So, naturalists observe, a flea
Has smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ’em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.”
19. “That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.”
20. “The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.”
21. “The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.”
22. "The Manner whereby the Soul and Body are united, and how they are distinguished, is wholly unaccountable to us. We see but one Part, and yet we know we consist of two; and this is a Mystery we cannot comprehend any more than that of the Trinity."
23. “The most accomplished way of using books at present is two-fold; either first, to serve them as some men do lords, learn their titles exactly and then brag of their acquiantance. Or secondly, which is indeed the choicer, the profounder, and politer method, to get a thorough insight into the index, by which the whole book is governed and turned, like fishes by the tail. For, to enterthe palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms; therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back door. For the arts are all in a flying march, and therefore more easily subdued by attacking them in the rear. Thus physicians discover the state of the whole body by consulting only what comes from behind. Thus men catch knowledge by throwing their wit on the posteriors of book, as boys do sparrows with flinging salt upon their tails.”
24. “There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.”
25. “The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.”
26. “The two noblest things, which are sweetness and light.”
27. “Those dreams, that on the silent night intrude,
And with false flitting shades our minds delude,
Jove never sends us downward from the skies;
Nor can they from infernal mansions rise;
But are all mere productions of the brain,
And fools consult interpreters in vain.”
28. "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."
29. "We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
30. ”We next went to the school of languages, where three professors sat in consultation upon improving that of their own country.
The first project was to shorten discourse by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but nouns.
The other project was a scheme for entirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great advantage in point of health as well as brevity. For it is plain that every word we speak is in some degree a diminution of our lungs by corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our lives. An expedient was therefore offered, that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on. And this invention would certainly have taken place, to the great ease as well as health of the subject, if the women, in conjunction
with the vulgar and illiterate, had not threatened to raise a rebellion, unless they might be allowed the liberty to speak with their tongues after the manner of their forefathers; such constant irreconcilable enemies to science are the common people.”
31. “When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
William Somerset Maugham
1. “Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”
2. “At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.”
3. ”Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It islike the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all."
4. “But loving-kindness is not coloured with that transitoriness which is the irremediable defect of love. It is true that it is not entirely devoid of the sexual element. It is like dancing; one dances for the pleasure of the rhythmic movement, and it is not necessary that one should wish to go to bed with one's partner; but it is a pleasant exercise only if to do so would not be disgusting. In loving-kindness the sexual instinct is sublimated but it lends the emotion something of its own warm and vitalizing energy. Loving kindness is the better part of goodness. It lends grace to the sterner qualities of which this consists and makes it a little less difficult to practise those minor virtues of self-control and self-restraint, patience, discipline and tolerance, which are the passive and not very exhilarating elements of goodness. Goodness is the only value that seems in this world of appearances to have any claim to be an end in itself.”
5. "Common sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers."
6. “Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.”
7. “Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”
8. "Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
9. “Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner.”
10. “I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.”
11. “If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.”
12. “If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.”
13. "I have never pretended to be anything but a story teller. It has amused me to tell stories and I have told a great many. It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. In endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude."
14. “I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”
15. “Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.”
16. “In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.”
17. “It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”
18. “It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.”
19. "It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic."
20. “It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.”
21. "It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it."
22. “It wasn't until quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say 'I don't know'.”
23. ”It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.”
24. ”I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all.”
25. “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”
26. “Love is only the dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.”
27. ”Love is what happens to men and women who don´t know each other.”
28. "Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe."
29. "Most people cannot see anything, but I can se what is in front of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a brick wall. My vision is not so penetrating."
30. “No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.”
31. “No professional writer can afford only to write when he feels like it. If he waits till he is in the mood, till he has the inspiration, he waits indefinitely and ends by producing little or nothing. The professional writer creates the mood. He has his inspiration too, but he controls and subdues it to his bidding by setting himself regular hours of work. But in time writing becomes a habit, and like the old actor in retirement, who gets restless when the hour arrives at which he has been accustomed to go down to the theatre and make up for the evening performance, the writer itches to get to his pens and paper at the hours at which he has been used to write. Then he writes automatically.”
32. “No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood.”
33. “Only a mediocre person is always at his best.”
34. "People ask for criticism, but they only want praise."
35. “Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.”
36. “Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way.”
37. “She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
38. “She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious.”
39. "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit."
40. “The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”
41. “The ballet. I saw in the fugitive beauty of a dancer's gesture a symbol of life. It was achieved at the cost of unending effort but, with all the forces of gravity against it, a fleeting poise in mid-air, a lovely attitude worthy to be made immortal in a bas-relief, it was lost as soon as it was gained and there remained no more than the memory of an exquisite emotion. So life, lived variously and largely, becomes a work of art only when brought to its beautiful conclusion and is reduced to nothingness in the moment when it arrives at perfection.”
42. ”The best style is the style you don't notice.”
43. ”The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic, and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant, and kind. Failure makes people cruel and bitter.”
44. “The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”
45. “The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love. Not the least of the evils of life, and one for which there is small help, is that someone who you love no longer loves you; when La Rochefoucald discovered that between two lovers there is one who loves and one who lets himself be loved he put in an epigram the discord that must ever prevent men from achieving in love perfect happiness.”
46. “The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.”
47. “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
48. “There are times when I look over the various parts of my character with perplexity. I recognize that I am made up of several persons and the person which at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real me? All of them, or none?”
49. “There are two good things in life -- freedom of thought and freedom of action.”
50. “There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.”
51. “There is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.”
52. “There is only one thing about which I am certain, and that is there is very little about which one can be certain.”
53. “There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish; to bewail it senseless. . . With all my limitations, physical and mental, I have been glad to live. I would not live my life over again. There would be no point in that. Nor would I care to pass again through the anguish I have suffered. . . The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening.”
54. “There's no one so transparent as the person who thinks he's devilish deep.”
55. “There was an immeasurable distance between the quick and the dead: they did not seem to belong to the same species; and it was strange to think that but a little while before they had spoken and moved and eaten and laughed.”
56. ”The summer came upon the country like a conquerer. Each day was beautiful. The sky had an arrogant blue which goaded the nerves like a spur.”
57. “The tragedy of love is not death or separation… The tragedy of love is indifference.”
58. “The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.”
59. “Time, because it is so fleeting, time, because it is beyond recall, is the most precious of human goods and to squander it is the most delicate form of dissipation in which man can indulge.”
60. “Tolerance is only another name for indifference.”
61. “Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.”
62. “Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.”
63. “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
64. “We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”
65. “When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me.”
66. “When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.”
67. ”When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.”
68. ”You can´t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
1. "A lot of people think or believe or know they feel (experience) -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling (experiencing). Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel (experience). Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel (experience), you're nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
2. "A proverb is much matter distilled into few words."
3. "Dare to be naive."
4. "Don't fight forces, use them."
5. “Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.”
6. "Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking."
7. "God is a verb."
8. ”Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.”
9. “Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis - a crisis without precedent. First, it is a crisis brought about by cosmic evolution irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole. Second, we are in an unprecedented crisis because cosmic evolution is also irrevocably intent upon making omni-integrated humanity omnisuccessful, able to live sustainingly at an unprecedentedly higher standard of living for all Earthians than has ever been experienced by any; able to live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending its cosmic energy savings account (i.e., the fossil fuels) or spending its cosmic-capital plant and equipment account (i.e., atomic energy)-the atoms with which our Spaceship Earth and its biosphere are structured and equipped-a spending folly no less illogical than burning your house-and-home to keep the family warm on an unprecedentedly cold midwinter night. Humanity's cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity-and star (99 percent Sun)-distributed cosmic dividends of water power, tidal power, wave power, wind power, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vulcanism, and so on. Humanity's present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one percent of the rate of its energy income. ...Ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to make it economically on this planet and in the Universe. We do.”
10. "If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference."
11. "If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf."
12. "I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience."
13. ”I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented.”
14. "Integrity is the essence of everything successful."
15. ”Love is metaphysical gravity.”
16. "Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't."
17. “Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.”
18. "Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable."
19. "Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding spaceship earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it."
20. "People should think things out fresh and not just accept conventional terms and the conventional way of doing things."
21. “Unity is plural and, at minimum, is two.”
22. "The earth is like a spaceship that didn't come with an operating manual."
23. “The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment. To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.”
24. “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.”
25. “Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before-that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will b a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.”
26. "Thou mayest as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading. Too much overcharges Nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and give health and vigor to the mind."
27. “Up until the twentieth century, 'reality' was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum...humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one millionth of reality. Ninety-nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.”
28. "We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."
29. “We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable.... Advancing science has now discovered that all the known cases of biological extinction have been caused by over specialization, whose concentration of only selected genes sacrifices general adaptability.... Specialization has bred feelings of isolation, futility, and confusion in individuals. It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.”
30. "We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody."
31. "What are the resources? What are the tasks necessary to make 100% of humanity a success? How can we ever do so without ever advantaging one human at the expense of another? How may we render all the world and all its treasures enjoyable available to all men without having one interfering with or trespassing upon the other? How may we reform the environment so that the integrity of all society is not violated by the free initiatives of the individual nor the integrity of the individual violated by the developing welfaring advantage and happiness of the many? Man is born a potentially complete success. The reasons humanity loves its children is that they start off in such perfection of potential. Man, as designed, is obviously intended to be a success just as the hydrogen atom is intended to e a success. It is only the fabulous ignorance of man and his long and wrongly conditioned reflexes that he continually allowed the new life to be impaired albeit lovingly and unwittingly."
32. "Whenever I draw a circle, I immediately want to step out of it."
33. “When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
34. "You can never learn less, you can only learn more."
35. "You can't learn less."
36. “You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men.”
37. "You must choose between making money and making sense. The two are mutually exclusive."
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