Our usual monthly round-up of quotes, interesting and amusing. Let’s start with a really long quote …
This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I’ve learned about marriage: nothing.
Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.
It’s not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it’s what they mean.
Somebody’s got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn’t want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.
It’s not two broken halves becoming one.
It’s the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.
So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.
Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else’s love, nobody else’s marriage, is like yours,
and it’s a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.
And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.
And that’s all I know about love.
[Neil Gaiman]
And now for the rest …
The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.
[unknown]
Religion is about acquiring a system of beliefs that are often based on received tradition and cannot be tested. Spirituality, on the other hand, is a quest to know the deeper truths of life for oneself regardless of what tradition says.
[Brad Warner]
If science disproves some aspect of Buddhist belief, then Buddhist belief must change.
[Dalai Lama]
Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can’t explain what was not observed. And they’re not even good at that.
[Dr Sabine Hossenfelder, Physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, at
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/why-some-scientists-say-physics-has-gone-rails-ncna879346]
When a man only got his letters in the morning he was pretty safe from surprises for the rest of the day; but with the telegraph he has no remission from anxiety and is on the tenterhooks all day long.
[Philadelphia Medical Times, 1883]
Her legs were longer than seven minutes in heaven with a boy that doesn’t know you’re a lesbian.
[@nebulastucky]
David Davis has mastered a wide range of martial arts, including karate, origami, pastrami, macramé, asti spumante, and Haruki Murakami. He is also a black belt in jujitsu, tiramisu, Nosferatu, Mogadishu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
[Michael Deacon, Daily Telegraph, 09/06/2018]
I’ve read quite a lot of Raven. The books are basically Trollope written by a sex maniac. His books have their pleasures but he is not in Powell’s league.
[Nick Booth]
The ultimate definition of bravery is not being afraid of who you are.
[Chögyam Trungpa]
Being ordered to be ‘confident’ is like being ordered to be ‘happy’ – just saying it out loud makes it harder for someone to do.
[Girl on the Net, @girlonthenet]
Maybe DNA is a substance that allows molecules to band together into little teams that can, like, go off an have adventures and stuff and, like, y’know, be President of the United States, or work for a car wash in Van Nuys.
Maybe consciousness is a force in the universe, like gravity or electromagnetism. Maybe we can’t observe consciousness as an object because it’s the thing that is trying to observe. Maybe consciousness is another name for the act of observation. Or not. What do I know?
[Brad Warner at https://twitter.com/BradWarner/status/1007541226424406016]
There was something formless and perfect before the universe was born. It is serene. Empty. Solitary. Unchanging. Infinite. Eternally present. It is the mother of the universe. For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao.
[Lao Tzu]
British children seem under perpetual assault from the three horsemen of the apocalypse: obesity, social media and the manic gods of examination.
Simon Jenkins, Guardian, 15/06/2018]