OK, so here goes with our monthly (mid-month) round-up of the amusing and thought-provoking wisdom of the world recently encountered. In no special order …
Clutter is not just physical stuff. It’s old ideas, toxic relationships and bad habits. Clutter is anything that does not support your better self.
[Eleanor Brownn]
One awesome thing about Eeyore is that even though he is basically clinically depressed, he still gets invited to participate in adventures and shenanigans with all of his friends. And they never expect him to pretend to feel happy, they just love him anyway, and they never leave him behind or ask him to change.
[David Wolfe]
The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers of all kinds.
[Dalai Lama]
Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb but how well you bounce.
[Vivian Komori]
Every man identifies with Hamlet, it has been said, since every man imagines himself a disinherited monarch; every woman identifies with Alice, since every woman sees herself as the sole sane person in a world filled with lunatics who imagine themselves disinherited monarchs.
[Adam Gopnik]
Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.
[George Orwell]
We had a sermon a while back from our pastor talking about how shaming someone is to go against everything Christian. Yet children are natural nudists. The only way to keep them dressed is to teach them shame. “Don’t pull up your dress &,dash; someone will see your panties.” “Don’t go outside naked — someone will see your penis.” This occurs again and again until there is a wall of shame. Is nudity a dangerous path? I believe shame is far worse.
[“Jon” quoted in Naturist Life International]
“Consensual sex” is just sex. To say that implies that there is such a thing as “non consensual sex”, which there isn’t. That’s rape. That is what it needs to be called. There is only sex or rape. Do not teach people that rape is just another type of sex. They are two very separate events. You wouldn’t say “breathing swimming” and “non-breathing swimming”, you say swimming and drowning.
One of the best things about getting older: knowing that someone is an arsehole before they even speak.
Man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own companions, and who, in his natural actions, withdraws & hides himself from his own kind.
If God declared our unclothed naked bodies to be VERY GOOD on day 6th day of creation. THEN THEY MUST BE SO.
A fellow who I helped write two books about psychology and psychiatry was a renowned psychiatrist in London called Robin Skynner said something very interesting to me. He said, “If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behaviour.” And when you’re around super-sensitive people, you cannot relax and be spontaneous because you have no idea what’s going to upset them next. And that’s why I’ve been warned recently don’t to go to most university campuses because the political correctness has been taken from being a good idea, which is let’s not be mean in particular to people who are not able to look after themselves very well — that’s a good idea — to the point where any kind of criticism or any individual or group could be labelled cruel.
[John Cleese]
Christianity. The popular belief that a celestial Jewish baby who is also his own father, born from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he could ascend to heaven on a cloud and then make you live forever only if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood and telepathically tell him you accept him as your lord & master so he can remove an evil force from your spiritual being that is present in all humanity because an immoral woman made from a man’s rib was hoodwinked by a talking reptile possessed by an malicious angel to secretly eat forbidden fruit from a magical tree.
He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
[Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer, 1737-1809. With thanks to John Monaghan]