Another selection of amusing or thought-provoking quotes recently encountered. For some reason we seem to have quite a few heavyweights this time. In no particular order …
Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid. Doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
[Joseph Campbell]
Language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests.
[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]
If our minds are ruled by destructive emotions, by self-centredness, with little regard for others, we won’t be happy. As social animals we need to work together. With friends around us, we feel secure, happy and our minds are calm. We’re physically well too. When we’re filled with anger, fear and frustration, our minds are upset and our health declines. Therefore, the ultimate source of happiness is warmheartedness.
[Dalai Lama]
When you talk you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.
[Dalai Lama]
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
[Eleanor Roosevelt]
So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.
[Matthew B Crawford in his essay “Shop Class as Soulcraft”]
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
[Marcel Proust]
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
[WB Yeats]
The kind of pleasure and understanding that I get from studying natural history has long vanished from most contemporary teaching institutions that have become part of intensive care units, which are supposed to save the residual intellectual machinery of medical students. The teeming mass of hope and pain, technical virtuosity, and depersonalization called a “health center” delivers packets of what is termed “medical care”. The capacity to look remains, but the capacity to see has all but vanished. Teachers and students forget that the ability to palpate is not the same as the ability to feel.
[Prof. William B Bean]
The less you worry about what people think, the less complicated life becomes.
[unknown]
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision
[Bertrand Russell]
The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole.
[Shakespeare; As You Like It]
Granny grasped her broomstick purposefully. “Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.”
[Terry Pratchett; Equal Rites]
There goes more to matrimony than four bare legs in bed.
[Ben Jonson]
And finally …
Tip for the Day: Treat every problem as your dog would. If you can’t eat it or fuck it, piss on it and walk away.
[unknown]