Actually not quite such sparse pickings as I first thought for this month’s collection of miscellaneous quotes. We’ll start with a long one, and end with a short one.

When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by. I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.
“What are you struggling with?”, he asked.
I gestured around me and said, “I dunno man. Life.”
Not satisfied with my answer, he said, “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”
I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to have something more substantial. Something more profound. But I didn’t.
So I told him, “Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”
I felt like an idiot even saying it. What kind of grown ass woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with actual problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes?
But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said, “RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”
I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.
“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares?! Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”
It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express. That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times. I felt like I had conquered a dragon.
The next day, I took a shower lying down. A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever the fuck they fit. There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.
Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower
standing up. I sort my laundry.
But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:
“THERE ARE NO RULES. RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!!!”
[Quoted by @VodkaAuntTBH, @VodkaAuntTBH]

You may fascinate a woman by giving her a piece of cheese.
[Kathryn Paulsen, The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft, 1971]

In the early modern period (roughly 1450-1750) the creation of the universe was also thought of by some in terms of cheesemaking: “all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed – just as cheese is made out of milk – and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels.”
[Tabitha Stanmore, “The spellbinding history of cheese and witchcraft”, https://theconversation.com/amp/the-spellbinding-history-of-cheese-and-witchcraft-153221]

We all get heavier as we get older, because there’s a lot more information in our heads. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Expertise – the wisdom based on experience that allows people to give sensible guidance about what to do and what not to do.
[Roger Kneebone in New Scientist; 6 February 2021; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933200-300-how-to-be-an-expert-what-does-it-really-take-to-master-your-trade/ (£££)]

In medicine, there’s the mantra that a surgeon knows how to operate, a good surgeon knows when to operate and a really good surgeon knows when not to operate.
[Roger Kneebone in New Scientist; 6 February 2021; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933200-300-how-to-be-an-expert-what-does-it-really-take-to-master-your-trade/ (£££)]

Becoming an expert has a beginning, but it doesn’t have an end … It is a continuous progression.
[Roger Kneebone in New Scientist; 6 February 2021; https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933200-300-how-to-be-an-expert-what-does-it-really-take-to-master-your-trade/ (£££)]

I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.
[Mark Twain]

We have multiple backup redundant overlapping mechanisms to make sure that we eat food, because every organism in the past that didn’t do an effective job of that is no longer with us. Our ancestors were the other guys.
[Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline]

Sometimes I’m truly amazed at what humans can do. We’re all set up to just eat and reproduce and fight off a couple predators and some time goes by and we decide to go out and put self-driving cars and helicopters on a planet 200 million km away. Because we want to know things.
[Katie Mack; @AstroKatie]

I am getting tired of being part of a major historical event.

Here goes with our first collection of quotes, thought-provoking or amusing, for this shiny new year …

I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.
[Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret]

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it’s another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
[Bill Vaughan]

While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn’t. It’s a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you’re determined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavoury, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person’s entire life story — their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that’s better not done.
[Alyson Noel, Shadowland]

If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?
[Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals]

Leaving the EU was an emotionally charged political proposition, not an economic one. It was a desire rooted in a vision of British sovereignty richly marinaded in a heady mix of nostalgia and bogus victimhood, fanned by Britain’s media, and which made the enormous error of confusing sovereignty with power.
[Martin Kettle, Guardian, 24 December 2020; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/24/boris-johnson-brexit-deal-britain-eu-sovereignty-economy]

It is all very well for the Westminster magistrate to inflict a fine on a man for ringing his muffin bell to the annoyance of the inhabitants of that rather aristocratic city, but after all it is very much in the nature of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. The muffin man’s bell is not quite the noisiest thing in London, and it is a passing nuisance at the best. He rings as he goes, and soon out of hearing. But what of church bells especially the one-string sort? What of piano organs, German orchestras, Salvation Army bands, and such abominations of noise and clatter as motor ‘buses and motor-cars? In London it is by no means uncommon to have a motor-car or taxi-cab rumbling and snorting outside one’s door for five or ten minutes at a time.
[John Bull magazine; 4 February 1911]

The lesson I have learned after so many Ebola outbreaks in my career are be fast, have no regrets. You must be the first mover. The virus will always get you if you don’t move quickly … If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. The greatest error is not to move.
[Michael J Ryan, WHO; quoted at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-isn-t-the-only-one-to-blame-for-britain-s-covid-crisis]

What do you mean, rock can’t think? The whole of modern technology is based on the fact that, actually, it can!
[Terry Pratchett]

I regard a compassionate, warm, kind-hearted person as healthy. If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, something automatically opens your inner door, through which you can communicate much more easily with other people – you’ll find that they are just like you.
[Dalai Lama]

If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the lower class.
[unknown]

Science is not about building a body of known “facts”. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good.
[Terry Pratchett]

There are enduring irritants – late trains, extortionate taxi fares, youths misbehaving on buses, rudeness on the telephone, and the lack of discipline and moral fibre. The answer to these problems is corporal punishment and temperance, it seems.
Carol singers are a nuisance and wine should not be served with Christmas lunch. Then there are the Mormons who are coming to take our women, the ever-present danger posed by the Church of Rome, fast cars, appalling things on the radio, cinema and television, people singing, dancing and playing sports on a Sunday, mixed bathing and women – “female relatives, friends or fancy bits” – who are allowed to wear the hallowed uniform of the Home Guard.
[Nigel Cawthorne; Outraged of Tunbridge Wells: Original Complaints from Middle England]

… reader Tim Hall “needed to measure [his] dog correctly for his Christmas present”, and found the advice online was to ensure the dog was standing “with all 4 feet (1.2m) on the floor”. We suspect the leaden hand of algorithmic proofreading here. Certainly, it is something New Scientist’s all-too-terrifyingly flesh-and-blood subeditors would never have let pass. They wouldn’t have had a non-metric dog in the house in the first place.
[“Feedback”; New Scientist; 9 January 2021]

And for the final time this year, here’s our monthly round-up of quotes interesting and amusing.

The philosopher Diogenes (c.412-323 BCE) was described by Plato as “a Socrates gone mad”. He lived in a barrel & believed man must embrace nature & reject shame. He openly masturbated in public, saying “If only it were so easy to soothe hunger by rubbing an empty belly”.
[@WhoresofYore on Twitter]

The two greatest defences against infectious diseases are:
1. Clean water
2. Vaccines – the the single most life-saving medical innovation in the history of medicine.
[Prof. Alice Roberts]

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.
[Robert M Pirsig]

Each person has come into manifestation for a certain purpose and that purpose will be accomplished whether he considers himself to be the actor or not.
[Ramana Maharshi]

The present is no more a real feature of the world than the deliciousness of haggis. It is just a feature of how we experience time.
[Will Bynoe; Logic and Monsters]

A corollary of “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is that actually coaxing that technology into functioning properly is indistinguishable from spell-casting.
[Katie Mack, @AstroKatie on Twitter]

My standard response to tech complaints is “have you painted yourself blue & turned 3x widdershins while saying an incantation?” Response “No” of course. Me: “Then you haven’t tried *everything*.”
[@WTEDyke on Twitter]

The eminent seat of delectation in women when they engage in venery.
[16th-century Italian anatomist Realdo Colombo on the clitoris]

A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
[Carl Sagan]

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
[Douglas Adams]

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.
[George Carlin]

In the past 10,000 years, humans have devised roughly 100,000 religions based on roughly 2,500 gods. So the only difference between myself and the believers is that I am skeptical of 2,500 gods whereas they are skeptical of 2,499 gods. We’re only one God away from total agreement.
[Michael Shermer]

Sex at 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.
[George Burns]

Stars, too, were time travellers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries – but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.
[Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children]