Another of our occasional round-ups of recently encountered quotes which interested or amused.
The sage falls asleep not because he ought to
Not even because he wants to
But because he is sleepy.
[Raymond Smullyan, The Tao is Silent]
Give up all this advertising of goodness and duty, and people will regain love of their fellows.
[Lao Tsu]
Peace comes from within, do not seek it without.
[Buddha]
I have never understood the Scots, and I defy anybody to understand the Scots.
[Sir Bernard Ingham]
Probably the most tactless woman I ever met.
[Sir Bernard Ingham on Margaret Thatcher]
Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
[Alan Watts]
There are three questions you need to ask about any new law: is it necessary, is it workable and will it do more good than harm?
[Original source unknown]
Only idiots refuse to change their minds.
[Brigitte Bardot]
Most of us suspect we’re frauds; few of us will ever produce such memorable proof.
[From http://newpsalmanazar.wordpress.com]
As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.
[George Harrison]
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
[Bertrand Russell]
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
[Ludwig Wittgenstein]
In a still photograph you basically have two variables, where you stand and when you press the shutter. That’s all you have.
[Henry Wessel]
I believe that the phrase ‘obligatory reading’ is a contradiction in terms. Reading should not be obligatory. Should we ever speak of ‘obligatory pleasure’? What for? Pleasure is not obligatory, pleasure is something we seek … If a book bores you, leave it; don’t read it because it is famous, don’t read it because it is modern, don’t read a book because it is old. If a book is tedious to you, leave it, even if that book is Paradise Lost – which is not tedious to me – or Don Quixote – which also is not tedious to me. But if a book is tedious to you, don’t read it; that book was not written for you. Reading should be a form of happiness.
[Jorge Luis Borges]
We are always the same age inside.
[Gertrude Stein]
In the ‘Book of Life,’ the answers aren’t in the back.
[Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz]