A monthly round-up of recently encountered quotes, interesting and amusing …
Hospitals are a dominion of streets and mapped lines. Their psychogeography filled up with each body that has passed through them. How many people have slept in this bed? A commonwealth of wards, a confederacy of the sick. Anyone who presents themself for care, cure or examination must accept the role of patient, which requires them to give up something: freedom/free will/free movement.
[Sinéad Gleeson, Constellations: Reflections From Life]
There was an old woman from Slough
Who developed a terrible cough
So she drank half a pint
Of warm honey and mint
But sadly she didn’t pull through.
[unknown]
Me: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Dad: Never whistle with a mouth full of custard.
[Annie Morris on Twitter]
When I’m good I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.
[Mae West]
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
[Richard Feynman]
There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician.
[Hans Bethe on Richard Feynman]
First, what bothers me isn’t just that people said 5-HTTLPR [a gene, thought to have a role in depression] mattered and it didn’t. It’s that we built whole imaginary edifices, whole castles in the air on top of this idea of 5-HTTLPR mattering. We “figured out” how 5-HTTLPR exerted its effects, what parts of the brain it was active in, what sorts of things it interacted with, how its effects were enhanced or suppressed by the effects of other imaginary depression genes. This isn’t just an explorer coming back from the Orient and claiming there are unicorns there. It’s the explorer describing the life cycle of unicorns, what unicorns eat, all the different subspecies of unicorn, which cuts of unicorn meat are tastiest, and a blow-by-blow account of a wrestling match between unicorns and Bigfoot.
[Quoted by Derek Lowe at https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/10/there-is-no-depression-gene]
The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman – who is only a mere superhero.
[Eliezer Yudkowsky]
I love this waterway [Regent’s Canal]. I’d like to have a private barge, and float down it waving to the tarts.
[X Trapnel in Anthony Powell’s, Books Do Furnish A Room]
There once was a man from Nantucket,
who, tired of life
inside a lewd limerick,
moved out
and set up home
in a piece of free verse,
situated
just on the outskirts
of Chepstow.
[Brian Bilston]
There was a young harpist called Niamh,
who would wear her heart on her sliamh.
But then she plucked Sean
(he played the French hean).
They married before New Year’s Iamh.
[Brian Bilston]
Don’t ever let a recipe tell you how much garlic to put in. You measure that with your heart.
[unknown]
Women are angels. And when someone breaks our wings, we simply continue to fly. On a broomstick. We’re flexible like that.
[unknown]
More next month.