Here’s this month’s bumber collection of quotes …

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When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.
[Isaac Asimov]

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Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
[Samuel Johnson, 1775]

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Words … I know exactly what words I’m wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.
[Roald Dahl]

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Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it … or because is it traditional, or because you yourselves have imagined it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But, whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings–that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
[Buddha]

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I think we all do have a guardian angel. I believe they work through us all the time, when we are thoughtful and good and kind to each other.
[Roma Downey]

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When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed.
[Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957]

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Hendrix is like Beethoven, Vivaldi is more Des O’Connor
[Nigel Kennedy]

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The National Gallery’s autumn exhibition, Poussin and the Dance, opens next week. The central work in the show, the maypole if you like, is Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time (c.1634), which has been lent by the Wallace Collection. You know the one. The beautiful, wistful painting that opens Anthony Powell’s great novel cycle A Dance to the Music of Time … This isn’t a daring show, this isn’t a ground-breaking show, but it is a show to make you wistful. Poussin’s pictures are celebrations of youth and music, wine and sun and the sheer pleasure of sandals kicked off before dancing till dawn.
[Laura Freeman writing about the National Gallery’s Poussin exhibition (Poussin and the Dance, 9 October to 2 January 2022; Times; 01/10/2021)]

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You spend your whole career telling people not to blame the positions of the planets for problems in their personal lives and then you almost get hit by a car because Jupiter and Saturn are so pretty tonight.
[Katie Mack on Twitter]

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Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is a total masterpiece. I will never get over it. I don’t think there is a better written work that is also wrong about everything.
[Joseph Rezek on Twitter]

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What the pandemic’s shown, particularly if you’ve got children, is you don’t want to be living in a flat doing home schooling. What people need – what families need – are homes with gardens. They need big rooms.
[Jackie Sadek, Expert in Urban Regeneration]

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I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog that growls every morning, a parrot that swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.
[Marie Corelli, Novelist (1855-1924)]

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The expression “call a spade a spade” comes from the work of Plutarch, who originally wrote “call a fig a fig”. Fig was crude slang for the vulva, so “call a c**t a c**t” is closer.
[Whores of Yore on Twitter]

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[Biodiversity] is the engine that produces everything that we consume. You can think of it like a wild supermarket that provides us with food and other gifts without us doing anything. The fact that we have several different varieties of apples, tomatoes and other foods is down to biodiversity – and when it is diminished we lose out.
[Professor Andy Purvis, Natural History Museum]

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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes.
[Marcel Proust]

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Once the realisation is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
[Rilke]

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Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls …
[Gerard Manley Hopkins]

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Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day and allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
[Ralph Waldo Emerson]

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The last thing the African continent needs is a failed British politician. This isn’t the 19th Century.
[Nick Dearden, Director of Global Justice Now, 16/10/2021]

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There are very few things good about being an adult, but fancying chips for breakfast and so having chips for breakfast is certainly one.
[@NickMotown on Twitter]

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Always remember that the most important thing is to live life in the present moment, and that happiness is not a by-product of external factors, but the result of positively conditioning your mind. Happiness is at the grasp of everyone.
[Khedrupchen Rinpoche]

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My monthly round-up of quotes various I’ve recently encountered.

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I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
[Marcel Duchamp, artist (1887-1968)]

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I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life”. I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
[Maya Angelou]

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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]

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Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself; I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.
[Groucho Marx]

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Your mind will serve you better than any trinket under the suns … It is a weapon … and like any weapon, you need practice to be any good at wielding it.
[Jay Kristoff, Nevernight]

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Pick a leader who will keep jobs in your country by offering companies incentives to hire only within their borders, not one who allows corporations to outsource jobs for cheaper labour when there is a national employment crisis. Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies.
[Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem]

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The martin cat long shagged of courage good
Of weazle shape a dweller in the wood
With badger hair long shagged & darting eyes
And lower then the common cat in size
Small head & running on the stoop
Snuffing the ground & hind parts shouldered up
[John Clare ]

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Here’s this months collection of recently encountered, miscellaneous quotes.

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Facts alone are wanted in life. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else … nothing else will ever be of service to them.
[Charles Dickens, Hard Times]

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The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.
[William Blake]

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What is now proved was once only imagined.
[William Blake]

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I give you the end of a golden string
Only wind it into a ball
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.
[William Blake]

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Combining reason with empathy is a powerful force for good – it is both logical and morally right to see all humans as equal, regardless of sex, gender, race, religion or worldview.
[Prof. Alice Roberts]

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the morning after i ‘lost my virginity’

i stared into the bathroom mirror, searching for the change
i counted all my freckles, everyone of them in place
i counted every hair, every eyelash, every brow
five knuckles on each hand still, thirty-one teeth in my mouth

I pulled apart my flesh, counted seven layers deep
for a minute, held my heart, counted eighty solid beats
lips still as red as blood, I spat into the sink
walked into the world again
i hadn’t lost a thing

[Holly McNish]

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A fool who knows he is a fool has a little intelligence, but a fool that thinks he is intelligent is really a fool. [Sanskrit Proverb]

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A fool is like all other men as long as he remains silent.
[Danish Proverb]

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Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.
[Jewish Proverb]

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The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.
[Mark Twain]

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The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you’ll grow out of it.
[Doris Day]

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This is the garden
of being and not being,
of rocks and no rocks.
Here, when you enter and are,
is and is not are equal.
[a Zen waka]

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This is a common problem for smart people, especially ones who are highly verbal. They use words as a smoke screen, and it’s all the more effective when their words are true. Less articulate people tend to vent through physicality. They yell, punch, kick, run, scream, sob, dance, jump for joy … I explain. And when I’m done explaining, everything I’ve explained is still stuck inside me, only now it has a label on it.
[Marcus Gedult at https://www.quora.com/When-does-intelligence-become-a-curse/answer/Marcus-Geduld]

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Lady Mary was continually exasperated by the exploits of her son Edward, a chap so dissolute and useless that he eventually had no option but to become an MP.
[Caroline Rance at https://londonhistorians.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/the-pioneering-life-of-mary-wortley-montagu/]

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My good lords, I must bring to your attention a grave issue that requires our utmost concern. You see, my fellow land-owning gentry, it seems that the invention of mechanized industry, the rise of “capitalism”, and the impact of the recent plague have brought upon us a wave of moral degradation and irredeemable sloth – specifically, nobody wants to be a serf anymore …
Not only do our current serfs refuse to labor, but the serfs we ejected from our fiefdoms when we feared the plague would harm our profits now don’t want to come back and replace the workers we kept who then subsequently died of the plague. Did they not know that we banished them with the expectation they’d come crawling back at our earliest convenience? What has the world come to when the whims of noblemen no longer control the lives of the masses?
[Andrew Singleton at https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/nobody-wants-to-be-a-serf-anymore]

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Welcome to this month’s collection of quotes gleaned from my delvings into obscure knowledge.

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We are self-centred and selfish, but we need to be wisely selfish, not foolishly so. If we neglect others, we too lose. We have to support others. We can educate people to understand that the best way to fulfil their own interest is to be concerned about the welfare of others.
[Dalai Lama]

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There are no ends in administration. Only loose ends. Administration is eternal.
[https://twitter.com/YesSirHumphrey/status/1394387572533743621?s=09]

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England’s response to this public health crisis has been characterised by a lack of transparency – or, even worse, a deliberate suppression of material that is at odds with the Government’s narrative.
[Editorial in British Medical Journal; https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/05/28/the-uks-response-to-new-variants-a-story-of-obfuscation-and-chaos/]

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Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie.
[Rory Stewart, former Tory MP and minister]

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Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
[Terry Pratchett]

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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
[William James, American philosopher]

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Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
[Joseph Campbell]

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Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
[George Bernard Shaw]

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Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
George Burns, American comedian]

Who also said …

Sex after 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope. Even putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.

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The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.
[Mark Twain]

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The Bible is the charter of women’s serfdom, and, as a consequence, of man’s degradation. It, like all superstitious God-books, is the outcome of ignorance ruled by selfishness.
[Lady Florence Dixie, 1855-1905]

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Religion says this is the law of God; I say it is that of man. Superstition declares it to be a divine ordinance; I maintain it is a barbaric one. Superstition and barbaric law go hand in hand. It is the former which creates the latter.
[Lady Florence Dixie, 1855-1905]

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