Here’s this month’s collection of recently encountered quotes.
Borges wrote that a library is a labyrinth. This is also true – the rows of bookshelves running on for miles, with paths and passageways between them, the classification of the texts working as a kind of cipher that the reader must decode in order to find what she wants. That is only the superficial idea, however. Borges meant that literature is itself a labyrinth, and that every library contains the possibility of infinite places and infinite existences. Open a book in a library and you can disappear into a world, its cities, and its landscapes. All books, in turn, are labyrinths that express the winding shapes of their writers’ imaginations. Each writer builds the labyrinth, and then leads the readers through the myriad possibilities of their tale with a thread like that of Ariadne, guiding them down the paths of their story, wherever it might take them.
[Sofia Grammatiki, quoted at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/28/myth-monsters-and-the-maze-how-writers-fell-in-love-with-the-labyrinth]
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
[Lao Tzu]
Making others happy is not a question of sacrificing our own happiness. Trying to make others happy, even when we do not always succeed, is a source of great satisfaction. Anger and hatred are signs of weakness, while compassion is a sure sign of strength.
[Dalai Lama]
Any sufficiently oblivious technology is indistinguishable from malice.
[Rose Eveleth]
You don’t have to say anything to the haters. You don’t have to acknowledge them at all. You just wake up every morning and be the best you you can be. And that tends to shut them up.
[Michelle Obama]
Doors closed 15 minutes ago. As we do every evening, we’ve turned all the books upside down so the words don’t fall out overnight. It may seem like a silly waste of time, but ask yourself this; when did you last see piles of words on a Waterstones carpet? That’s right – NEVER.
[https://twitter.com/swanseastones/status/1027234913005830144]
A limerick is seldom essential,
And this one is inconsequential,
Just the standard five lines,
And some dubious rhymes,
And it’s pointlessly self-referential.
[https://twitter.com/daniel_barker/status/1027932616442474498]
The rigid low-sodium diet is insipid, unappetising, monotonous, unacceptable, and intolerable. To stay on it requires the asceticism of a religious zealot.
[Sir George Pickering, about 50 years ago, quoted at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/09/salt-not-as-damaging-to-health-as-previously-thought-says-study]
A Limerick on any occasion
Is great for debate or persuasion,
It dissipates bile
Just by raising a smile:
The perfect poetic equation.
[https://twitter.com/bernardstacey/status/1028189895519596544]
Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.
[Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche]
GOING TO THE DOGS
My granddad, viewing earth’s worn cogs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in his house of logs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in the Flemish bogs.
Said things were going to the dogs;
His granddad in his old skin togs,
Said things were going to the dogs;
There’s one thing that I have to state –
The dogs have had a good long wait.
[Anon; quoted at https://www.facebook.com/barnabyjpage/posts/10156805118473487]
Lighthouse-keepers Trinity House own a lot of land alongside Borough High Street, which is why Avon Place … has a bicentennial mural along its length featuring Henry VIII, osteopathy and a fox chewing a brake cable.
[diamond geezer at http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2018/08/51n-6.html]