Welcome to this month’s selection of quotes, recently encountered and which amused or interested me.

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
[Leonard Cohen]

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
[Viktor Frankl]

When you get up in the morning, stretch your limbs, so that the natural heat is stimulated. Then comb your hair because this removes dirt and comforts the brain. Wash your face with cold water to give your skin a good colour and to stimulate the natural heat. Clear your nose and your chest by coughing, and clean your teeth and gums with the bark of some scented tree.
[Taddeo Alderotti, On the Preservation of Health, 13th century]

We are not meant to be ruled by our Prime Minister, we are meant to be governed.
[From Going Medieval blog]

The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know that it is human business.
[Dalai Lama]

Even if the whole world is nothing but a bunch of jerks all doing jerk-type things, there is still liberation in simply not being a jerk.
[Eihei Dogen, 13th-century Japanese Soto Zen Master]

The risk for young people is minimal and very high for old people. Every seven or eight years, your risk of dying if infected doubles … statistician David Spiegelhalter explained all this clearly on The Andrew Marr Show, saying that we need to be proportionate about the risk we face. He called the [UK government] press briefings “number theatre” – underlining the need to communicate data properly and treating people with respect.
This is the opposite of what the government has done, and people are right to feel angry. Johnson, the great risk-taker, has diced with death himself. His administration is still delaying practices such as quarantining new arrivals to the UK. He is risking the union, with other parts of the UK in open derision of his sloganeering.
If we are to be run by a second-rate ad agency, with graphics from the 80s, it is no wonder we feel vulnerable. We may, therefore, take matters into our own hands. The lockdown will break from the bottom up as people need an income. The middle classes need their gardeners, cleaners, dog-walkers and nannies. Roots need doing.
[Suzanne Moore; Guardian; 11/05/2020]

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
[Julius Caesar]

All that is required to deal with this crisis is ‘common sense’, or ‘British determination’, or any other phrase that uses inverted commas as protection from critical scrutiny. Weak leaders, of all political persuasions and managerial levels, like phrases like this because they allow them to appear to offer a solution whilst failing actually to do so.
[John Bull at London Reconnections]

Women could practice pubic depilation (“we pluck and trim our doorways like good spiders; the flies come strolling in”, Aristophanes …). One way was to singe the hair with an oil lamp … Not all women did this … however, nor did all men like it (cf. Lucilius, in bulgam penetrare pilosam, “to penetrate a hairy bag” …): “a hairy cunt is fucked much better than one which is smooth; it holds in the steam and wants cock” (futuitur cunnus pilossus multo melliur quam glaber; eadem continet vaporem et eadem vellit mentulam, Pompeii graffito …). A young female specialist, picatrix, arranged pubic hair.
[John G Younger; Sex in the Ancient World from A to Z]

Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, “Listen mate, life has surface noise”.
[John Peel]

More next month …

Here be this month’s collection of recently unearthed quotes, amusing and thought-provoking …

Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fish-hooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no.
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in ancient culture was a femur that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts.
[Aleta Pearce on Twitter; 20 March 2020]

One cannot usefully legislate against an attitude or a belief, but one can legislate against criminal behaviour that might result from an attitude or a belief. Strong human rights protection in constitutions and laws [are] mechanisms to contain extremist tendencies.
[William Saunderson-Meyer; Thought Leader]

It is the duty of governments to protect their citizens from harm. It is not government’s task to protect its citizens’ sensitivities, however justifiable and acute, from peacefully expressed views, however bizarre.
[William Saunderson-Meyer; Thought Leader]

To censor thought or opinion is to limit our understanding of the world. If one cannot look critically at … historical events, the past remains frozen at an officially sanctioned moment in time. For history to credibly illuminate the present, it has to be open to continual academic revision.
[William Saunderson-Meyer; Thought Leader]

To help us all work together, remember that you have created your own reality and so has every other person you meet. Be willing to be curious about their story and to reflect on why this might be different to yours. Better still, try considering what you really know about the current situation and use this information to create several different stories.
[Prof. Patricia Riddell; The Conversation]

The whole experience of paying someone to inflict pain on you by pulling your pubic hair out by the roots is undeniably bizarre – but it’s also completely normalized and a fairly regular part of grooming for lots of women in the developed West. In plenty of cultures, pubic hair is seen as a symbol of fertility – some women in South Korea even have hair transplants on their vulvas, so celebrated is a thick and full bush.
[Lynn Enright; Vagina: A Re-Education]

Over tens of thousands of words, I have argued that we should all be much more open, much more honest, much more vocal about our vaginas and our vulvas and our genitals generally.
[Lynn Enright; Vagina: A Re-Education]

The virus doesn’t move, people move it. We stop moving, the virus stops moving, the virus dies. It’s that simple.

Sourdough starters are just Tamagotchi for early middle-age.
[Eric Lach on Twitter]

Having a great deal of expertise in one field does not prevent you from being a crackpot or menace in another. Let your studies teach you humility and an appreciation for hard-won knowledge, not intellectual vanity.
[Katie Mack on Twitter]

“The sun’s coming back again,” Moomintroll thought in great excitement. “No darkness, no loneliness any more. Once again I’ll sit in the sun on the verandah and feel my back warming …”
[Tove Jansson; Moominland Midwinter]

If Buddhism is true, it’s true because it offers us a way to take a look at a truth that existed before there was any Buddhism. If it doesn’t do that, then there is no reason to study Buddhism except, perhaps, as an academic discipline or a hobby. If Buddhism is all about believing in Buddhism, then Buddhism isn’t worth believing in.
[Brad Warner; Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen]

We can build peace through the revolution of small things, recognising the value of every human being … Yesterday, peace was our grandparents’ dream, today it is our responsibility to build it.
[Sophia Vinasco-Molina]

The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Things are kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervenes but because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact.
[George Orwell]

[The people] have abandoned the old, decent style of long, full garments for clothes which are short, tight, impractical, slashed, every part laced, strapped or buttoned up, with the sleeves of the gowns and the tippets of the hoods hanging down to absurd lengths … Women flowed with the tides of fashion in this and other things even more eagerly, wearing clothes that were so tight that they wore a fox tail hanging down inside their skirts at the back, to hide their arses.
[James Tait (ed), “Chronica Johannis de Reading et Anonymi Cantuariensis 1346-1367” in Rosemary Horrox, The Black Death; quoted in Going Medieval blog]

So time for something slightly more light-hearted than most of what’s happening currently: our monthly round-up of recently encountered quotes, some thought-provoking, others amusing.

A cover up? Certainly not! It is responsible discretion exercised in the national interest to prevent unnecessary disclosure of eminently justifiable procedures in which untimely revelation could severely impair public confidence.
[@YesSirHumphrey on Twitter]

Thrice-called banns might be a public torment, for example, for those cursed with unfortunate names. Was it this which persuaded Miss Pleasant Love to marry by licence in Nottinghamshire in 1710, Avis Urine to seek a licence in Sudbury in 1712? It is noticeable that in the index of names to the volume of Suffolk licences from which the last example was taken two of the largest entries relate to the families of Prick and Balls. It is also noticeable that they were conspicuously successful in avoiding each other in the matrimonial market.
[RB Outhwaite, “Age at Marriage in England from the Late Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century”; Transactions of the Royal Historical Society; Vol. 23 (1973), pp 55-70]

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.
[Rebecca West, 1913]

Women are people, and people are more interesting than clichés.
[Helen Lewis; Guardian; 15 January 2020]

Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.
[Malcolm X]

Never let a serious crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
[Rahm Emanuel, President Barak Obama’s Chief of Staff]

At first glance, hand washing is an act of self care. Frequent hand washing protects us individually from contracting the virus. But it is also an act of community care; we help protect others when we help protect ourselves. So too with the recommendation to stay home when sick. Although there is definitely a level of privilege in being able to take time off work, it is clearly important to take care of our communities by preventing the spread of illness.
[Gesshin Claire Greenwood on Medium]

Interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Even tiny insects survive by mutual cooperation based on innate recognition of their interconnectedness. It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.
[Dalai Lama quoted by Gesshin Claire Greenwood on Medium]

It’s only quarantine if it comes from the Quarré region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling house arrest.
[h/t Alden Tullis O’Brien on Facebook]

Splay the legs as wide as possible, and then make sure they’re fixed in position with the wing nut.
[Instructions for setting up an easel quoted by @19syllables on Twitter]

Here goes with this months colletion of interesting and/or amusing quotes …

Mathematical Glossolalia

As though time could have a hobby
we speak in eigenvalues, the harmonious
oscillations in the green flash before sunset.

to explain the circumference of illusion, good heavens,
the sailboat’s isosceles never goes slack.

[Jennifer Gresham; Scientific American; 02/2020]

Yestreen I wed a lady fair,
An ye wad believe me,
On her cunt there growes nae hair,
That’s the thing that grieves me.
It vexed me sair, it plagued me sair,
It put me in a passion,
To think that I haed wad a wife,
Whase cunt was oot o fashion.
[Robert Burns (1759-96)]

Is there one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one’s whole life? Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
[Confucius]

Naturism is … a philosophical belief in a natural, naked lifestyle, characterised by respect for oneself, for others, and for the natural environment.
…
Naturists believe that nudity is an enjoyable, natural and moral state which brings benefits to themselves and to society at large.
[From “Is Naturism the solution to low body confidence?” at https://buzz.bournemouth.ac.uk/2020/01/is-naturism-the-solution-to-low-body-confidence/]

Physiology is just functional anatomy. Biochemistry is the anatomy of biomolecules. Genetics is the anatomy of DNA. Physics is the anatomy of the universe. All science is – anatomy.
[Prof. Alice Roberts on Twitter]

We couldn’t overlook the stupidity of an entire nation democratically voting to deprive itself of all its human rights for possibly generations to come. We thought about making 17.4 million individual awards but that wouldn’t work as voting is anonymous and many of the people who voted for Brexit have since died – in some cases as a consequence of their vote already, so those ones should really get special mentions.
[Stu Pidkunz, Chairman of Darwin Awards on giving the UK a DA for Brexit]

And nightly now beneath their shade
are buggeries, rapes, and incests made.
Unto this all-sin-sheltering grove
whores of the bulk and the alcove,
great ladies, chambermaids, and drudges,
the ragpicker, and heiress trudges.
Carmen, divines, great lords, and tailors,
‘prentices, poets, pimps, and jailers,
footmen, fine fops do here arrive,
and here promiscuously they swive.
[John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, on St James’s Park, London; 1673. Quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

He [John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester] is also suspected of being the author of Sodom, almost certainly the rudest play ever written, about a debauched king who encourages his sex-crazed subjects to indulge themselves in as much sodomy as they like. Just to give you a flavour of its lewdness, the dramatis personae includes: King Bolloximian and Queen Cuntigratia; Prince Prickett, Princess Swivia and General Buggeranthus; Pockenello (a pimp, catamite and the king’s favourite), Borastus (the buggermaster-general), Pene, Tooly and Lady Officina (pimps and she-pimp of honour); Fuckadilla, Cunticula and Clitoris (maids of honour); Flux (physician-in-ordinary to the king) and Virtuoso (dildo-maker to the court).
[Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain. Sodom was published in 1684.]

The common people of London, giving way to their natural inclination, are proud, arrogant and uncivil to foreigners, especially the French, against whom, they entertain a great prejudice and cherish a profound hatred, treating such as come among them with contempt and insult. The nobility, though also proud, have not so usually the defects of the lower orders, displaying a certain degree of politeness and courtesy towards strangers; and this is still more the case with those gentlemen who have been out of the kingdom, and travelled, they having taken a lesson in politeness from the manners of other nations.
[Lorenzo Magalotti, Florentine nobleman, c1667. Quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

When it comes to addressing important people, modern practice is useful in so far as forms have not greatly changed. You should address the king as ‘Your majesty’ and a duke or an archbishop as ‘Your grace’. Speaking to lesser lords and bishops or their wives, you can simply say ‘Your lordship’ or ‘Your ladyship’, and to clergymen ‘Your reverence’. If a man is a knight or a baronet, then call him ‘Sir John’ or whatever his first name is. His wife is ‘Your ladyship’, ‘Dame Alice’ or ‘Lady Smith’. Gentlemen are referred to as ‘Mister’ or ‘Master’ (both written ‘Mr’). The term ‘Esquire’ is used after a gentleman’s name to indicate that he has a coat of arms – note that it is not used for non-armigerous gentlemen. Nor do you call a tradesman or ordinary farmer ‘Mr’ – at this time he does not have a pre-title, only his name. Wives, sisters and daughters of gentlemen are addressed as ‘Mistress’ (written ‘Mrs’ or ‘Mtress’), whether they are married or not, and letters should be directed to them as ‘Mrs Smith’, even if they are under the age of ten. I would strongly recommend that you do not address an unmarried woman in the 1660s as ‘Miss’: this is the way people refer to noblemen’s concubines.
[Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

Justice is a relative concept in all ages. If it is fairness you want from your legal system, I suggest you visit a period of history that prioritises the person over property, reality over religion, science over superstition, equity over influence and fairness over the process of the law. In finding such a time, I wish you luck.
[Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.
[Truman Capote]

Boris Johnson – speaking literal gibberish in between staring at the ceiling. It’s like watching a penguin on acid trying to catch invisible fish in its mouth.
[@Otto_English on Twitter]

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, yet wiser people so full of doubts.
[Bertrand Russell]

So, we must keep talking about sex. We must keep educating children about sex, and not just about what happens when a sperm gets its hands on an egg. We must talk about consent, pleasure, masturbation, pornography, love, relationships and our own bodies. Because the only way we will dispel shame is to drag sex out in the open and have a good long look at it. History has shown us how damaging shaming sexual practices, in all their myriad forms, can be. Let’s learn the lesson.
[Kate Lister; A Curious History of Sex]