Category Archives: quotes

quotes

Monthly Quotes

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Welcome to this month’s collection of quotes.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.
[Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones]

And it is according to his faith; his faith in the power of numbers, in the stability of order, in the assurance and perfection of law; and deviation and irregularity stand revealed as results of the perfection of order and the assurance of law; or – to go to the essence and reality of which order and law are but the apparent and sensible exponents – of the presence in his providence, faithfulness, and power, of HIM who calleth all these stars out by name, and leadeth them on in order.
[Scientific American; 11 June 1847]

Clubbing is, and always was, shit … If I wanted to feel some sweaty man’s bollocks pushed into the curve of my equally sweaty back whilst being deafened by indecipherable garbagio, I’d hop on the Central Line.
[Harriet Richardson; https://substack.com/@harrietrichardson/p-166601507]

If he ejaculates semen it’s because his body is full of toxins and he has had too many sexual partners. Men are not supposed to have semen, its unclean! Vegan men with few sex partners ejaculate fresh water.
[unknown]

Capitalism is based on ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed finite system. In biology, such behaviour of cells is called cancer.
[unknown]

Don’t waste time worrying about things you can’t control. You can’t fight every battle. Choose which ones are worth fighting and let the others go.
[unknown]

The purpose of propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are human.
[Aldous Huxley]

Polyamory might actually be friendship operating within a patriarchal framework that continues to essentialize sex and romantic relationships.
[unknown]

A computer can never be spiteful or horny; therefore a computer must never make art.
[unknown]

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky]

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This Month’s Poem

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A Modern Hiawatha
George A Strong

When he killed the Mudjokivis,
Of the skin he made him mittens,
Made them with the fur side inside,
Made them with the skin side outside.
He, to get the warm side inside,
Put the inside skin side outside;
He, to get the cold side outside,
Put the warm side fur side inside.
That’s why he put the fur side inside,
Why he put the skin side outside,
Why he turned them inside outside.

Find this poem online at Poetry Nook

quotes

Monthly Quotes for August

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As befits this slow news season, here’s this month’s smaller than usual collection of quotes.

Dire dealings with the fiendish race
Had mark’d strange lines upon his face;
Vigil and fast had worn him grim,
His eyesight dazzled seem’d and dim …
[Walter Scott, Marmion]

Life is strange. You arrive with nothing, spend your whole life chasing everything and still leave with nothing. Make sure your soul gains more than your hands.
[unknown]

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.
[George Orwell]

There’s a funny thing in fiction, where it’s important that the motivations of the characters are clear to the reader. But in real life, the motivations that any of us have are often not even clear to ourselves!
[Reo Eveleth]

So many people from your past know a version of you that no longer exists anymore.
[Eric Partaker]

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then
I contradict myself
I am large,
I contain mult1tudes
[Walt Whitman]

“Why should we wish to ruminate on your most secret orgies?” said Dr Trelawney. “What profit for us to muse on your nights in the lupanar, your diabolical couplings with the brides of debauch, more culpable than those phantasms of the incubi that rack the dreams of young girls, or the libidinous gymnastics of the goat-god whose ice-cold sperm fathers monsters on writhing witches in coven?”
[Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones]

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This Month’s Poem

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Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

Find this poem online at Poetry Foundation

quotes

Quotes for July

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We have only a short list of quotes encountered this month …

I reflected, not for the first time, how mistaken it is to suppose there exists some “ordinary” world into which it is possible at will to wander. All human beings, driven as they are at different speeds by the same Furies, are at close range equally extraordinary.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]

Most “bad” people are actually good people lacking in skills to appropriately get what they legitimately need.
[Dr Chris Stevens]

Capitalism has invented something called “Cost of Living” where your very existence is an ever-inflating expense that you must overcome just to survive.
[unknown]

At all stages of life, people will gladly offer you unsolicited lists of things you “must” do, be, or have. Most of the time you can nod your head, walk away, and ignore them.
[unknown]

If you can imagine something, then someone in history has carved, drawn, painted, etched, handwritten, collaged and sewn it into pornography.
[Hannah Rose Woods]

And finally remember …
Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

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This Month’s Poem

The Rolling English Road
GK Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

Find this poem online at Poetry Foundation

quotes

June Monthly Quotes

Rather thin pickings in the way of quotes encountered this month.

In a sense, nothing in life is planned – or everything is – because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]

Most dictionaries define happiness as “the feeling of being happy”. This has the bizarre quality of being correct while containing no useful information whatsoever.
[Dr Dean Burnett, Science Focus, May 2025]

People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.
[Dalai Lama]

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
[Carl Jung]

You can seem like a millionaire to one person and a homeless person to the next. The ants think you are a giant, and the trees don’t even notice you. You think you have a boring life, but the next person might be striving for your lifestyle. Comparison is the thief of joy, so stay kind and keep loving life. Life is all just a big game of perspective.
[unknown]

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.
[Noam Chomsky]

Chocolate lines up planetarily with the sun. Chocolate is an octave of sun energy. In fact, it’s the energy of the centre of the sun.
[David Avacado Wolfe (b.1970)]

Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.
[James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)]