Category Archives: quotes

quotes

Monthly Quotes for May

So here is this month’s collection of recently (re-)encountered quotes.

Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
[Homer, The Iliad]

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky]

Camel Ride to the Tomb … I grasped at once that’s what life was. How could the description be bettered? Juddering through the wilderness, on an uncomfortable conveyance you can’t properly control, along a rocky, unpremeditated, but indefeasible track, towards the destination crudely, yet truly, stated.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish A Room]

The real problem of humanity is we have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.
[EO Wilson]

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
[George Carlin]

Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. The total number of minds in the
Universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.
[Erwin Schrödinger]

2024 Trump makes 2016 Trump sound like Pericles of Athens by comparison: his speeches have been getting simpler and more repetitive all the time as his vocabulary shrinks and the number of ideas in his head fight it out in an increasingly confined space.
[Derek Lowe; https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharmaceutical-tariffs-what-and-how]

The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!
[Prof. Brian Cox]

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.
[Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former US Senator]

Clothing often becomes a mask, one that reflects status, style, and social norms. When we shed that mask, even temporarily, we step into a space of raw authenticity. Going naked outdoors can shift the way we view our bodies: not as objects of judgment, but as instruments of feeling. You begin to feel more in your body than about your body. The texture of tree bark beneath your hand, the warmth of sun on your back, the coolness of a breeze brushing against you – they all serve as reminders that the body is not just a vessel, but a sensory gateway to the world.
[Rick Dorociak]

I admire those with hairstyles. I don’t have a hairstyle. I have hair. Most days, it has zero caterpillars in it. That’s as good as it gets.
[unknown]

books, memes, quotes

This Month’s Poem

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A Fairy Song
William Shakespeare

Over hill, over dale,
  Through bush, through briar,
Over park, over pale,
  Through blood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moone’s sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
Farewell, thou lob of spirits; I’ll be gone:
Our queen and all her elves come here anon.

Find this poem online at Poetry Lover’s Page

quotes

Monthly Quotes for April

Here is this month’s selection of recently encountered quotes …

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
[JRR Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring]

Intricacies of social life make English habits unyielding to simplification, while understatement and irony – in which all classes of this island converse – upset the normal emphasis of reported speech.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]

There were a lot of fools at that conference – pompous fools – and pompous fools drive me up the wall. Ordinary fools are alright; you can talk to them, and try to help them out.
[Richard Feynman]

What’s the difference between prose and poetry? The most parsimonious explanation is this: a poet dictates where the lines end.
[Simon Barnes; Anthony Powell Society Newsletter; Spring 2025]

A Naturist is simply a human being without “Artificial Additives”.
[Leah Crowley]

I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunization. So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunized.
[Roald Dahl]

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

Politicians sometimes have trouble believing in the reality of things that can’t be intimidated, co-opted, or bought off. Fools, as I say.
[Derek Lowe, Science.org]

I hate small talks. I wanna talk about atoms, death, aliens, sex, magic, intellect, the meaning of life, faraway galaxies, the lies you’ve told, your flaws, your favourite scents, your childhood, what keeps you up at night, your insecurity and fears. I like people with depth, who speak with emotion, a twisted mind. I don’t want to know “what’s up”.
[unknown]

What if plants are actually farming us, giving us oxygen until we expire and turn into manure (their food) which they can consume?
[unknown]

If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat, and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
[Abraham Lincoln]

By the numbers, the tariffs are less an expression of economic theory and more a Dadaist art piece about the meaninglessness of expertise.
[Derek Thompson; The Atlantic; 03/04/2025]

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful.
[Edward R Murrow]

books, memes, quotes

This Month’s Poem

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The Hunting of the Snark (opening)
Lewis Carroll

“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
“Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.”

The crew was complete: it included a Boots –
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods –
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes –
And a Broker, to value their goods.

A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share –
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck
Though none of the sailors knew how.

Find this poem online at Poetry Foundation

quotes

Monthly Quotes

And so to this month’s selection of recently encountered quotes …

People will announce, “Question everything!” without noticing they have just uttered not a question, but a command.
[Prof. Agnes Callard]

How sad it must be – believing that scientists, scholars, historians, economists, and journalists have devoted their entire lives to deceiving you, while a reality TV star with decades of fraud and exhaustively documented lying is your only beacon of truth and honesty.
[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so it is with science. In a way it is a key to the gates of heaven, and the same key opens the gates of hell, and we do not have any instructions as to which is which gate. Shall we throw away the key and never have a way to enter the gates of heaven? Or shall we struggle with the problem of which is the best way to use the key?
[Richard Feynman]

But such people! Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures whom I won’t describe because if I did the grown-ups would probably not let you read this book – Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Orknies, Wooses, and Ettins. In fact here were all those who were on the Witch’s side and whom the Wolf had summoned at her command.
[CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe]

The universe is vast and far more complicated than we can safely imagine. If we try it can often lead to overwhelm. The urge to add a banister and some crash mats is understandable. There’s no point trying to figure out why a butterfly flapping its wing in Peru might lead to the Hell Mouth opening in Milton Keynes if we are so paralysed by it that we end up brushing our hair with a fork because we forgot the word for hairbrush and in a crisis any tine will do.
[Katy Wheatley; https://substack.com/inbox/post/158429835]

Words do have power. Words are events, they do things, change things … We can’t restructure our society without restructuring language. One reflects the other.
[Ursula K Le Guin]

I’m sorry I didn’t hear about that World event. It’s just that for most of history, people only carried the burdens of their own village, and I’m learning to do the same.
[unknown]

Advice for girls: be loud and gross and take up space. Stop saying “sorry” and start saying “don’t interrupt me”. Stop saying “Because I have a boyfriend” and start saying “because I said so”. Say “no” and say “none of your business”. Take selfies and don’t laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. Be snide and sarcastic and wear your hair the way you like it. Help out other girls and be vocal about what makes you mad. Be masculine and feminine and both and neither and be unapologetic. Don’t set aside your comfort for boys’ egos.
[Spencer McFarland]

The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity and arrogance they have. All these fools, however, find other fools who applaud them.
[Erasmus]

books, memes, quotes

This Month’s Poem

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Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelly

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed
And on the pedestal these word appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

Find this poem online at Poetry Foundation

quotes

Monthly Quotes

Here’s this month’s selection of recently encountered quotes.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Without religion, everything would be permitted.
[Napoleon Bonaparte]

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there and finding it.
[Oscar Wilde]

He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.
[Chinese Proverb]

Be careful. When a democracy is sick, fascism comes to its bedside, but it is not to inquire about its health.
[Albert Camus]

Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.
[DH Lawrence]

First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.
[Bertrand Russell]

You can view life as a comedy or a tragedy, but … Socrates thought there’s a third possibility. That is, you can refute things. You can investigate them, never settle on an answer. There’s an inquisitive mode of living, in which you’re living your life at the same time as not assuming you know how to live it.
[Prof. Agnes Callard]

I’m not answering your question, but I’m telling you how difficult a “why” question is. You have to know what it is that you’re permitted to understand and allow to be understood and know, and what it is you’re not.
[Richard Feynman]

Had it with these
dollar store philosophers
selling me
someone else’s advise
and a makeup tutorial
I want a freak flag and
a peace pipe
and a revolution I can
feel in my hips
[JK Kennedy]

If all religious knowledge and texts disappeared, new religions would eventually form, but they’d be different from what we have now.
If all scientific knowledge and texts were lost, it would come back the same, because we’d still be rediscovering the same reality.
[unknown]

No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.
[Mark Twain]