Once more unto the quotation mines, my friends …
Nudists don’t take their clothes off, we get dressed when we have to!
Well, today my neighbours spoke to me. So I did what I had to do. I strapped a monitor on my ankle, went outside with my shirt on inside out, and argued with a pine tree. That should hold them off for a while.
Imagine yourself alone in the midst of nothingness, and then try to tell me how large you are.
[Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928)]
We need leader not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.
[Martin Luther King]
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
[TS Eliot]
No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means.
[Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960)]
You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong, you lack empathy not religion.
“You sound a very educated man for a barbarian,” said Rincewind.
“I didn’t start out a barbarian. I used to be a school teacher. But I decided to give it all up and make a living by the sword.”
“After being a teacher all your life?”
“It did mean a change of perspective, yes.”
“But … well … Surely … the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death …”
Mr Saveloy brightened up. “Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?”
[Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times]
What I have found to be true for me in my … periods of derangement is that all the ‘shoulds’ line up and march about skreeking at me in a never ending loop of recrimination that don’t help a damn bit. I might be mental but I’m not fucking stupid … I know what I ‘should’ do, but one of the quirks of my poor mental health is I find it almost impossible to do the things I ‘should’ do because I am not very well. I have found that reminding myself of all the ‘shoulds’ that I can’t do generally tends to make me feel about a thousand times worse until they eventually paralyse me completely. I do not subscribe to ‘shoulds’. I subscribe to whatever gets me through the day.
[Katy Wheatley at https://katywheatley.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-school-of-me]
Don’t let anyone else ruin your day. It’s your day. Ruin it yourself.