Another selection of amusing or thought-provoking quotes recently encountered. For some reason we seem to have quite a few heavyweights this time. In no particular order …
Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid. Doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
[Joseph Campbell]
Language is the armoury of the human mind; and at once contains the trophies of its past, and the weapons of its future conquests.
[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]
If our minds are ruled by destructive emotions, by self-centredness, with little regard for others, we won’t be happy. As social animals we need to work together. With friends around us, we feel secure, happy and our minds are calm. We’re physically well too. When we’re filled with anger, fear and frustration, our minds are upset and our health declines. Therefore, the ultimate source of happiness is warmheartedness.
[Dalai Lama]
When you talk you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen you may learn something new.
[Dalai Lama]
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
[Eleanor Roosevelt]
So what advice should one give to a young person? By all means, go to college. In fact, approach college in the spirit of craftsmanship, going deep into liberal arts and sciences. In the summers, learn a manual trade. You’re likely to be less damaged, and quite possibly better paid, as an independent tradesman than as a cubicle-dwelling tender of information systems. To heed such advice would require a certain contrarian streak, as it entails rejecting a life course mapped out by others as obligatory and inevitable.
[Matthew B Crawford in his essay “Shop Class as Soulcraft”]
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
[Marcel Proust]
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
[WB Yeats]
The kind of pleasure and understanding that I get from studying natural history has long vanished from most contemporary teaching institutions that have become part of intensive care units, which are supposed to save the residual intellectual machinery of medical students. The teeming mass of hope and pain, technical virtuosity, and depersonalization called a “health center” delivers packets of what is termed “medical care”. The capacity to look remains, but the capacity to see has all but vanished. Teachers and students forget that the ability to palpate is not the same as the ability to feel.
[Prof. William B Bean]
The less you worry about what people think, the less complicated life becomes.
[unknown]
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision
[Bertrand Russell]
The Foole doth thinke he is wise, but the wiseman knowes himselfe to be a Foole.
[Shakespeare; As You Like It]
Granny grasped her broomstick purposefully. “Million-to-one chances,” she said, “crop up nine times out of ten.”
[Terry Pratchett; Equal Rites]
There goes more to matrimony than four bare legs in bed.
[Ben Jonson]
And finally …
Tip for the Day: Treat every problem as your dog would. If you can’t eat it or fuck it, piss on it and walk away.
[unknown]

Another selection of recently encountered amusing or thought-provoking quotes. In no particular order …
I’m not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.
[AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh]
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
[Oscar Wilde]
Unlike riding a camel, driving a car places a woman in danger of being raped.
[source unknown]
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
[Herman Wouk]
It is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person. In a way, the traditional notion of God is outdated. One can be spiritual bur not religious. It is not necessary to go to church and give money — for many, nature can be a church. Some of the best people in history did not believe in God, while some of the worst deeds were done in His name.
[Pope Francis]
The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.
[Marilyn Monroe]
[Soil is] literally and — it seems — metaphorically, beneath us. To judge by its absence from the media, most journalists consider it unworthy of consideration. But all human life depends on it. We knew this long ago, but somehow it has been forgotten. As a Sanskrit text written in about 1500BC noted: “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.”
…
Landowners around the world are now engaged in an orgy of soil destruction so intense that, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world on average has just 60 more years of growing crops. Even in Britain, which is spared the tropical downpours that so quickly strip exposed soil from the land, Farmers Weekly reports, we have “only 100 harvests left”.
…
This is what topples civilisations. War and pestilence might kill large numbers of people, but in most cases the population recovers. But lose the soil and everything goes with it.
[George Monbiot at www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/treating-soil-like-dirt-fatal-mistake-human-life]
Los Angeles, where abuses by the super-rich are clearly evident all over the city … is a desert town. Why are there lush green golf courses all over it? The rich steal water from the poor and ultimately ruin the future for everyone including themselves and their heirs.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen blog]
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
[Matthew 7:12 (AV)]
To be beautiful means to like yourself, you don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.
[Thich Nhat Hanh]
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
[Dalai Lama]
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
[WC Fields]

Another selection of recently encountered quotes.
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
[Cicero]
[John Aubrey’s] thoughts and reactions are often so like ours that it comes as a shock to find that most people he knew could and did speak Latin, read by candlelight and had to dash outside to check the time on a sundial. He recognised the spread of London’s first coffee shops as a key democratic advance, an early equivalent of the internet, giving previously unimaginable access to everyone who wanted to make contact and keep in touch with a strange, fast-changing, often unsettling new era. ‘Before they opened, men only knew how to be acquainted with their own relations or societies. They were afraid, and stared at all who were not of their own communities.’
[Hilary Spurling, Spectator, 14/03/2015; reviewing Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey: My Own Life]
We never know the quality of someone else’s life though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgement.
[Tami Hoag, Dark Horse]
I do not want to deconstruct the pleasure of wine by trying to work out whether the aromas smell of bananas or apricots. If you analyse too much, you end up destroying the pleasure.
[Lionel Poilane, famous French baker]
They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.
[F Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise]
In general, we look for a new law by the following process: First we guess it; then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right; then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is — if it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong.
[Richard Feynman]
Most people that I talk to [in Japan] don’t identify as Buddhist, even if they’ve grown up in a house with a butsudan altar, and go to Buddhist funerals with their family. Religious activity is something you can participate in without even believing in it, without having to change some core part of yourself. Religious activity is in many ways “just” a social role.
[Gesshin Greenwood @ That’s So Zen]
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.
[AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh]
If all Printers were determin’d not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed.
[Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)]
Those of us who know not the secret of properly regulating our own existence on this tumultuous sea of foolish troubles which we call life are constantly in a state of misery while vainly trying to appear happy and contented. We stagger in the attempt to keep our moral equilibrium, and see forerunners of the tempest in every cloud that floats on the horizon. Yet there is joy and beauty in the rolls of the billows as they sweep outward toward eternity. Why not enter into their spirit or, like Liehtse, ride upon the hurricane itself?
[Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea]
“Why do you look so sad?”
“Because you speak to me in words and I look at you with feelings.”
[Leo Tolstoy]
Walk Nude, and people won’t need to undress you with their eyes.
You are never as broken as you think you are. Sure, you may have a couple of scars and a couple of bad memories, but then again all great heroes do.
But I must leave you with a couple of my favourite quotes from Terry Pratchett …
And what is this?
“It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart.”
The cat, a feral ginger tom, flicked a serrated ear and curled up in a tighter ball. Anything that could survive in Ankh-Morpork’s alleys, with their abandoned swamp dragons, dog packs and furriers’ agents, was not about to open even one eye for a bunch of floating nightdresses.
[Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time]
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
[Terry Pratchett]
More anon.

Another selection of recently encountered quotes.
To be ruled is to be kept an eye on, inspected, spied on, regulated, indoctrinated, sermonised, listed and checked-off, estimated, appraised, censured, ordered about, by creatures without knowledge and without virtues. To be ruled is, at every operation, transaction, movement, to be noted, registered, counted, priced, admonished, prevented, reformed, redressed, corrected.
[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.
[Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance]
I think I’ve discovered the secret of life — you just hang around until you get used to it.
[Charles M Schulz]
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
[William Shakespeare, The Tempest]
5% of the people think; 10% of the people think they think; and the other 85% would rather die than think.
[TA Edison]
Compare with that other often quoted statistic: 5% of people can think and do; 5% of people cannot think; the other 90% can think but don’t bother.
I have no idea what day it is and I’m eating cold parsnips for breakfast. The Christmas brain wipe is complete, fresh mind ready for 2015.
[Girl on the Net ‏@girlonthenet on Twitter]
I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it?
[Joan Baez]
Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it.
[Katharine Hepburn]
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
[Edgar Allan Poe]
A truly great library has something in it to offend everyone.
[Unknown]
In our dreams we may all be anarchists, but in our actions, for the vast majority of the time, we’re the most rigid of conformists.
[Will Self; Foreword to Bradley L Garrett, Subterranean London]
This perfect democracy fabricates its own inconceivable enemy, terrorism. It wants, actually, to be judged by its enemies rather than by its results. The history of terrorism is written by the State and it is thus instructive. The spectating populations must certainly never know everything about terrorism, but they must always know enough to convince them that, compared with terrorism, everything else seems rather acceptable, in any case more rational and democratic!
[Debord, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1984); quoted by Will Self; Foreword to Bradley L Garrett, Subterranean London]
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
[Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1887)]
The game is up for Zone 1; soon it will exist only as a nucleus of tourist hell, the city will become defined by its sprawl and the heart of it will be like Centre Parcs, but with less wholesome family bike rides and more pay-per-hour Gumtree day brothels.
[Anonymous comment on central London]

Another selection of recently encountered bon mots.
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
[John Stuart Mill, On Liberty]
We cannot expect to be protected against things which offend us but do us no actual harm.
[John Stuart Mill]
I CHOOSE
To live by choice, not by chance,
To be motivated, not manipulated,
To be useful, not used,
To make changes, not excuses,
To excel, not compete.
I choose self-esteem, not self-pity,
I choose to listen to my inner voice,
not to the random opinions of others.
[American Indian]
I have been really rather horrified by the fact … that people have begun to think that perhaps succeeding in politics is a matter of putting your hand into the taxpayers’ pockets and redistributing wealth. It is not. Succeeding in polities is, as I said when I started, enlarging-up liberty, enlarging-up the people, giving the incentives to success, giving the framework for that success and the task of Government strictly limited.
[Margaret Thatcher]
Mr Ives’ style is sadly familiar here … at any rate in households where the baby or the cat has access to the piano.
[Percy Goetschius, on the music of Charles Ives, in the journal Music & Letters]
Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous.
[Calvin & Hobbes at www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2014/11/20/
Without deviation progress is not possible.
[Frank Zappa]
I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
[Stephen Hawking]
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings.
[Ursula Le Guin]
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it.
[Bruce Lee]
I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.
[Oscar Wilde]
I’m not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.
[AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh]
Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.
[Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time]