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]

Yet another selection of recently encountered bon mots.
If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
[Wittgenstein]
What is true during dreamless sleep is true no matter whether you can recall the experience and write about it or not. What is true in a whorehouse in Bangkok is true whether you visit it and take Polaroids or not. What is true for six-legged aliens on the fifth planet circling Epsilon Centauri is true whether you go there and talk to them or not. You may never know the life your toothbrush leads when you’re not around but it’s certainly real.
[Brad Warner; Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality]
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbour as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight.
[Mark Twain]
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
[Joseph Conrad]
He isn’t a household name even in his own living room.
[David Mellor]
Every scar comes with a story, a memory. Our scars make us who we are. And I’m not only talking about physical scars. We have many scars on our heart and in our mind. Some of these we proudly show off as a sort of trophy of our accomplishments. Others we prefer to keep hidden … every scar has changed the course of our life and is proof of what we’ve been through and what we’ve endured and made it through.
I wouldn’t change one scar. While there are things in my life I wish I would’ve handled differently or avoided altogether, I can never regret those decisions or experiences because they have made me who I am. And I’m OK with that.
[Stephanie Hughes at The Stolen Colon]
As the scholar Paula Arai wrote in a review of Richard Jaffe’s book on clerical marriage, “Men escape domestic duties by marrying. Women escape domestic duties by taking monastic vows!”
[Gesshin at That’s So Zen]
What some people don’t understand is that naturism is designed to heal negative body image. It’s the truest form of body acceptance.
[Steve White on Twitter]
Intuition is the universe telling you what you really want to do. The problem is that we have been taught since birth to drown out our intuition with thought before we can really even understand what those intuitions are.
[Brad Warner; There is No God and He is Always with You]
Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness.
[Lao-tzu (thanks John Monaghan)]
The Sage falls asleep
Not because he ought to
Nor even because he wants to
But because he is sleepy.
[Lao-Tsu]
At all costs, the Christian must convince the heathen and the atheist that God exists, in order to save his soul. At all costs, the atheist must convince the Christian that the belief in God is but a childish and primitive superstition, doing enormous harm to the cause of true social progress. And so they battle and storm and bang away at each other. Meanwhile, the Taoist Sage sits quietly by the stream, perhaps with a book of poems, a cup of wine, and some painting materials, enjoying the Tao to his hearts content, without ever worrying whether or not Tao exists. The Sage has no need to affirm the Tao; he is far too busy enjoying it!
[Raymond Smullyan, The Tao is Silent]
The Tao does not talk. That’s another reason I like the Tao so much; it doesn’t talk! I hate people who talk too much. When I’m in company, I like to be the one to talk; others should just respectfully listen!
Is it not marvellous that I can talk to the Tao to my heart’s content, and the Tao never contradicts me or answers back? The Tao never criticizes me for being egocentric or talking too much.
When I talk about talking to the Tao, the more sophisticated and psychoanalytically oriented reader will say that I am not really talking to the Tao, I am really talking to myself. But this is not so! Since all words come from the Tao, my talking to the Tao is not really me talking to myself but the Tao talking to itself! So, you see, the Tao talks to itself. Yet the Tao does not talk, it is silent! Is this not a remarkable paradox?
[Raymond Smullyan, The Tao is Silent]
In a rare uncalculating moment, Boris Johnson wrote last year that, if Britain finally ended its “sterile debate” over Europe by leaving the EU, it would quickly discover “that most of our problems are not caused by Brussels, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills and a culture of easy gratification and under-investment”.
[Michael White; What if Britain left the EU?; Guardian; 04/11/2014]

Another selection of amusing and/or inspiring quotes encountered in the last few weeks. In no particular order …
Successful psychopaths are going to end up in all the high end jobs, in charge of companies, making millions. The unsuccessful psychopaths are the ones that end up in jail.
[Amy Jones, Liverpool Hope University]
Hope (apathy), is the greatest evil of all. Hope is apathy because hope is doing nothing while hoping that someone else (person, god, chance) will rescue you. The Greeks understood this. Some time in the last 2,000 years, hope stopped being evil, and turned into a good thing.
[unknown]
Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.
[AA Milne]
[Politicians] talk like the priests of an oriental church, in a Coptic language based on scripture we’re too uneducated to understand.
[Armando Iannucci on the Scottish referendum; Observer; 21/09/2014]
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you’ll never, ever get it out.
[Cardinal Wolsey]
Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.
[Haruki Murakami]
A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.
[Frank Zappa]
I don’t understand why when we destroy something created by man we call it vandalism, but when we destroy something created by nature we call it progress.
[Ed Begley Jr]
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered:
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
[Aldous Huxley ]
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home — so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world … Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
[Eleanor Roosevelt]
Oh to be fish again now the nymphs are here.
[unknown]

Another selection of recently encountered quotes to make you think or smile. So to get us off on just the right note …
Beloved, we join hands here to pray for gin. An aridity defiles us. Our innards thirst for the juice of juniper. Something must be done. The drought threatens to destroy us.
[Wallace Thurman, writing in Infants of Spring]
One martini is alright, two is too many, three is not enough.
[James Thurber]
I have the deepest affection for intellectual conversations. The ability to just sit and talk. About love, about life, about anything, about everything. To sit under the moon with all the time in the world, the full-speed train that is our lives slowing to a crawl. Bound by no obligations, barred by no human limitations. To speak without regret or fear of consequence. To talk for hours and about what’s really important in life.
[unknown]
Stories never really end … even if the book likes to pretend they do. Stories always go on.
[Cornelia Funke, Inkspell]
When we love people so, we love them for what they are, not for what we wish they were.
[Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina]
Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.
[Gayle Forman, Just One Day]
By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms — elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest — will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.
[Aldous Huxley]
Telling people not to shag until they’re married is like telling them not to play tennis until they’re in the Wimbledon final.
[Girl on the Net]
Good sex is like good bridge. If you don’t have a good partner, you’d better have a good hand.
[Mae West]
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.
[Groucho Marx]
I have always imagined that Paradise will be kind of a library.
[Jorge Luis Borges]
People have to talk about something just to keep their voiceboxes in working order so they’ll have good voiceboxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say.
[Kurt Vonnegut]
Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with the mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fibre, and in some cases, backbone.
[Terry Pratchett]
People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.
[AA Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh]

Another collection of recently encountered quotes.
At Toulon there was a lot of sun and a breeze from the sea. The interior of the railway station appeared neatly arranged for the opening act of a musical comedy. Sailors with white trousers and red pom-poms in their caps wandered about pointing at Cocteau’s latest on the bookstalls, or watched the engines puffing up and down the line. Some Tonquinese infantrymen were entraining for the Buddhist temple at Frejus. Overgrown blacks from Senegal, with their waists pinched in by red cummerbunds and wearing high tarbooshes on their tiny heads, leant against the wall, finding perpetual amusement in the antics of the French. A Captain of Spahis in a scarlet tunic, baggy trousers, and a long cloak strode up and down as if he were about to sing the first number of the show.
[Anthony Powell; What’s Become of Waring]
What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
[Warren Buffett]
Given the existence of the universe, all the molecules in it have been here for billenia or something. They just keep juggling around. So you’ve got three of Shakespeare’s molecules and you’ve got two of Himmler’s or whatever it is, you know. Part of your fingernail was part of St Joseph of Aramathea’s frontal lobe or something. And you know, large parts of you were once a daffodil in Nova Scotia or something. You know, your feet used to be Winston Churchill. The same things keep getting recycled. It could be that when we pass away our psyches dissolve into lots of sort of strips of feeling. All the things that comprised us that were held together by our bodies dissolve. You know, hence the line in the song ‘When I Was Dead’, “I wasn’t me to speak of just a thousand ancient feelings”. Feelings that have been around since the beginning of human time.
[Robyn Hitchcock]
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that we are wired to seek fame, wealth and sexual variety. These things make us more likely to pass on our DNA. Had your cave-man ancestors not acquired some version of these things (a fine reputation for being a great rock sharpener; multiple animal skins), they might not have found enough mating partners to create your lineage. But here’s where the evolutionary cables have crossed: We assume that things we are attracted to will relieve our suffering and raise our happiness. My brain says, “Get famous”. It also says, “Unhappiness is lousy”. I conflate the two, getting, “Get famous and you’ll be less unhappy”. But that is Mother Nature’s cruel hoax. She doesn’t really care either way whether you are unhappy – she just wants you to want to pass on your genetic material. If you conflate intergenerational survival with well-being, that’s your problem, not nature’s. And matters are hardly helped by nature’s useful idiots in society, who propagate a popular piece of life-ruining advice: “If it feels good, do it”. Unless you share the same existential goals as protozoa, this is often flat-out wrong.
[Arthur C Brooks; “Love People, Not Pleasure”; New York Times; 20/07/2014]
The idea of one side suffering defeat while the other side triumphs is out of date. Instead we have to develop dialogue. We have to make an effort if we want a peaceful, more compassionate world. It requires education, based on patience, tolerance and forgiveness. Too often violence results from greed, so we also need contentment and self-discipline.
[Dalai Lama]
Teachers open the door; but you must enter by yourself.
[Chinese proverb]
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
[Oscar Wilde; Lady Windermere’s Fan]
Human beings to me are as much a part of nature as trees or birds, and the unclothed body expresses this belongingness directly and powerfully.
[Wynn Bullock]
I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me.
[Dylan Thomas]
(Or in my case just leave out the angel.)
No one on earth lives separated from angels and spirits.
[Emanuel Swedenborg]
And in the morning they shook their pillows violently, hoping all the dreams they lost that night would tumble out.
[Joseph Gordon-Levitt; The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 2]
But then again, if you don’t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.
[John Green, Paper Towns]