So here is this month’s collection of recently (re-)encountered quotes.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
[Homer, The Iliad]
Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky]
Camel Ride to the Tomb … I grasped at once that’s what life was. How could the description be bettered? Juddering through the wilderness, on an uncomfortable conveyance you can’t properly control, along a rocky, unpremeditated, but indefeasible track, towards the destination crudely, yet truly, stated.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish A Room]
The real problem of humanity is we have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.
[EO Wilson]
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
[George Carlin]
Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. The total number of minds in the
Universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.
[Erwin Schrödinger]
2024 Trump makes 2016 Trump sound like Pericles of Athens by comparison: his speeches have been getting simpler and more repetitive all the time as his vocabulary shrinks and the number of ideas in his head fight it out in an increasingly confined space.
[Derek Lowe; https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharmaceutical-tariffs-what-and-how]
The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!
[Prof. Brian Cox]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.
[Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former US Senator]
Clothing often becomes a mask, one that reflects status, style, and social norms. When we shed that mask, even temporarily, we step into a space of raw authenticity. Going naked outdoors can shift the way we view our bodies: not as objects of judgment, but as instruments of feeling. You begin to feel more in your body than about your body. The texture of tree bark beneath your hand, the warmth of sun on your back, the coolness of a breeze brushing against you – they all serve as reminders that the body is not just a vessel, but a sensory gateway to the world.
[Rick Dorociak]
I admire those with hairstyles. I don’t have a hairstyle. I have hair. Most days, it has zero caterpillars in it. That’s as good as it gets.
[unknown]