Another collection of recently encountered quotes.
At Toulon there was a lot of sun and a breeze from the sea. The interior of the railway station appeared neatly arranged for the opening act of a musical comedy. Sailors with white trousers and red pom-poms in their caps wandered about pointing at Cocteau’s latest on the bookstalls, or watched the engines puffing up and down the line. Some Tonquinese infantrymen were entraining for the Buddhist temple at Frejus. Overgrown blacks from Senegal, with their waists pinched in by red cummerbunds and wearing high tarbooshes on their tiny heads, leant against the wall, finding perpetual amusement in the antics of the French. A Captain of Spahis in a scarlet tunic, baggy trousers, and a long cloak strode up and down as if he were about to sing the first number of the show.
[Anthony Powell; What’s Become of Waring]
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
[Warren Buffett]
Given the existence of the universe, all the molecules in it have been here for billenia or something. They just keep juggling around. So you’ve got three of Shakespeare’s molecules and you’ve got two of Himmler’s or whatever it is, you know. Part of your fingernail was part of St Joseph of Aramathea’s frontal lobe or something. And you know, large parts of you were once a daffodil in Nova Scotia or something. You know, your feet used to be Winston Churchill. The same things keep getting recycled. It could be that when we pass away our psyches dissolve into lots of sort of strips of feeling. All the things that comprised us that were held together by our bodies dissolve. You know, hence the line in the song ‘When I Was Dead’, “I wasn’t me to speak of just a thousand ancient feelings”. Feelings that have been around since the beginning of human time.
[Robyn Hitchcock]
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we are wired to seek fame, wealth and sexual variety. These things make us more likely to pass on our DNA. Had your cave-man ancestors not acquired some version of these things (a fine reputation for being a great rock sharpener; multiple animal skins), they might not have found enough mating partners to create your lineage. But here’s where the evolutionary cables have crossed: We assume that things we are attracted to will relieve our suffering and raise our happiness. My brain says, “Get famous”. It also says, “Unhappiness is lousy”. I conflate the two, getting, “Get famous and you’ll be less unhappy”. But that is Mother Nature’s cruel hoax. She doesn’t really care either way whether you are unhappy – she just wants you to want to pass on your genetic material. If you conflate intergenerational survival with well-being, that’s your problem, not nature’s. And matters are hardly helped by nature’s useful idiots in society, who propagate a popular piece of life-ruining advice: “If it feels good, do it”. Unless you share the same existential goals as protozoa, this is often flat-out wrong.
[Arthur C Brooks; “Love People, Not Pleasure”; New York Times; 20/07/2014]
The idea of one side suffering defeat while the other side triumphs is out of date. Instead we have to develop dialogue. We have to make an effort if we want a peaceful, more compassionate world. It requires education, based on patience, tolerance and forgiveness. Too often violence results from greed, so we also need contentment and self-discipline.
[Dalai Lama]
Teachers open the door; but you must enter by yourself.
[Chinese proverb]
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
[Oscar Wilde; Lady Windermere’s Fan]
Human beings to me are as much a part of nature as trees or birds, and the unclothed body expresses this belongingness directly and powerfully.
[Wynn Bullock]
I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me.
[Dylan Thomas]
(Or in my case just leave out the angel.)
No one on earth lives separated from angels and spirits.
[Emanuel Swedenborg]
And in the morning they shook their pillows violently, hoping all the dreams they lost that night would tumble out.
[Joseph Gordon-Levitt; The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 2]
But then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.
[John Green, Paper Towns]