Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humorous quotes recently encountered.
Don’t feel stupid if you don’t like what everyone else pretends to love.
[Emma Watson]
Goodness knows what may have changed since then. Worlds have turned, parallel universes have made and unmade themselves. People have been born. People have died. Stars have winked in and out of existence like the breath of God, leaving a transient mist on a universal car window where the Holy Spirit has drawn a giant knob with his finger.
[Katy Wheatley at katyboo1.wordpress.com]
In order for you to insult me I would first have to value your opinion.
[Unknown]
We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversations with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.
[Thomas Moore]
Our lionisation of size zero, our aversion to pubic hair, even an increasing trend towards vaginaplasties are all symptomatic of a desire to take the female body back to its pre-pubescent state. The full Brazilian is a look that is borrowed from pornography — can there be a more damning style endorsement?
[Helen Walsh, So older women don’t have sex?, Observer, 13 April 2014]
Sacred cows make great hamburgers.
[Robert Reisner]
In the end only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.
[Buddha’s Little Instruction Book]
What we find in a soulmate is not something wild to tame, but something wild to run with.
[Robert Brault]
When I free my body from its clothes, from all their buttons, belts, and laces, it seems to me that my soul takes a deeper, freer breath.
[benudetoday.tumblr.com]
I will always remember what it felt like to have a little mermaid swimming in my belly.
[Leone Dawson]
Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
[George Bernard Shaw]
And finally …
Don’t forget: Jesus died for your sins in advance, so make sure you get your money’s worth.
[Girl on the Net; ‏@girlonthenet]

Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humorous quotes recently encountered.
Look in the mirror and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.
Stephen Jay Gould
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton
In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged.
Bertrand Russell in a letter to the Times, 1940
Selecting your foie gras is much easier if it has already been removed from its original owner.
Elisabeth Luard, The Old World Kitchen
So, Madonna has armpits. She also has products to sell. Let’s just get this out of the way. Even if that armpit picture was timed to coincide with the release of her new advert, even if that was the case — that is besides the point. The point is, why is it, that still, in 2014, despite woman’s hour and twitter and feminist pop songs, a woman with body hair will get so much attention? Whether that attention comes in the form of a snigger on the street or axe-grinders like me writing articles about it. Why does it remain one of the unshakable truths of the universe, that if a woman makes the choice not to shave what her mama gave her, the human race, capable of designing video games, and building really tall buildings, and writing love letters, starts hyperventilating and cursing and spitting at the sight of any hair below the eyebrows of a woman. What the hell is wrong with people?
Aisha Mirza; “We should celebrate Madonna’s hairy armpit selfie”; Independent; 21 March 2014
There are quite a lot of people who don’t wear make up. Mostly they’re called men.
Aisha Mirza; “We should celebrate Madonna’s hairy armpit selfie”; Independent; 21 March 2014
Do not be afraid to speak openly and confidently about naturism. Most people, even if surprised, settle down and are surprisingly OPEN. If you are confident, and represent naturism as the healthy normal and fun activity it is, they will resonate with the same openness. If you are tentative, shy, fearful, or appear embarrassed they will not accept naturism. It’s funny, because as a farmer and horse owner, I can tell you it is the same with your livestock. If you ride your horse with fear the horse is fearful and spooky. If you ride with confidence the horse learns to trust you and is confident in response to your cues.
youngnaturistsamerica.com/naked-advertising-northeast-naturist-festival/
Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.
Edgar Allan Poe
You have to define a pigeon before you can pigeon-hole it.
Prof Alice Roberts
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is a common observation that creative people are often disrespectful of authority, unconventional and politically radical. That is because they are strategic and impertinent enough to think things out for themselves. They are independent thinkers.
Geoffrey Petty
The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendour and its beauty.
Pope John Paul II
When the batteries in my vibrator die, I take the ones from our remote and put my dead ones in the remote.
From Postsecret
Remember that testicles, earlobes, labia, and eyelids are delicate. If you’re going to yank, bite, pull, or abuse any of these body parts with a fork, proceed with caution and talk about it first.
Stoya; “10 Mind Blowing Sex Tips” at thenewinquiry.com/features/10-mind-blowing-sex-tips/

Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humorous quotes recently encountered.
The universe consists primarily of dark matter. We can’t see it, but it has an enormous gravitational force. The conscious mind — much like the visible aspect of the universe — is only a small fraction of the mental world. The dark matter of the mind, the unconscious, has the greatest psychic gravity. Disregard the dark matter of the universe and anomalies appear. Ignore the dark matter of the mind and our irrationality is inexplicable.
Joel Gold
To understand how something works, you must first understand how it got that way.
PZ Myers
So there’s the land — this real stuff we walk around on. Then there’s territory — the maps and lines we use to define the land. But then there are wars fought over where those map lines are drawn. The levels can keep building on one another, bringing people to further abstractions and disconnection from the real world. Land becomes territory; territory then becomes property that is owned. Property itself can be represented by a deed, and the deed can be mortgaged. The mortgage is itself an investment that can be bet against with a derivative, which can be secured with a credit default swap.
Douglas Rushkoff
[We wonder why the banking industry goes tits up, and the world is strewn with tribal warfare!]
We may perhaps date the beginning of modern thought from the night of January 7, 1610, when Galileo, by means of the instrument he developed [the telescope], thought he perceived new planets and new, expanded worlds.
Marjorie Nicolson
If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.
Cartoon cat, Garfield
So next time someone asks you whether you believe in evolution, the best answer you can give would be something like, “No, I don’t. I accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution, belief isn’t necessary.”
Found at Evolution Happens
Cuvée des Sires, usually a classic 70/30 blend of Aÿ Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, is a serious wine to be savoured; not, as Brun puts it ‘to be drunk from an actress’s shoe.’
Philippe Brun of Champagne house Roger Brun at imbibe.com
Dirt is matter out of place.
Mary Douglas
Everything is the way it is because it got that way.
D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form
We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut
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

Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humourous quotes recently encountered.
It has proven surprisingly difficult to work out how many sheets of A4 the average goatskin can produce.
[@ianvisits on Twitter]
Challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.
[Carlos Castaneda]
Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
[Lao Tzu]
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
[Mark Twain]
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.
[GK Chesterton]
A man’s bookcase will tell you everything you’ll ever need to know about him
[Walter Mosley, born 1952]
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
[Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)]
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
[Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)]
Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
[George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)]
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the golden road to Samarkand.
[James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915), The Golden Journey To Samarkand]
It’s because someone knows something about it that we can’t talk about physics, it’s the things that nobody knows about that we can discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can talk about international finance … so it’s the subject that nobody knows anything about that we can all talk about!
[Richard Feynman (1918-88)]
… and at the very bottom, a world of caverns whose walls are black with soot, a world of cesspools and sloughs, a world of grubs and beasts, of eyeless beings who drag animal carcasses behind them, of demoniacal monsters with bodies of birds, swine and fish, of dried-out corpses and yellow-skinned skeletons arrayed in attitudes of the living, of forges manned by dazed Cyclopses in black leather aprons, their single eyes shielded by metal-rimmed blue glass, hammering their brazen masses into dazzling shields.
[Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual]
If you’ve ever tried counting yourself to sleep, it’s unlikely you did it using the square roots of sheep. The square root of a sheep is not something that seems to make much sense. You could, in theory, perform all sorts of arithmetical operations with them: add them, subtract them, multiply them. But it is hard to see why you would want to.
[Matthew Chalmers, “Reality Bits”, New Scientist, 25/01/2014]

Another in our series of interesting, thought-provoking or humourous quotes recently encountered.
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
[Hamlet IV, v]
Self-confidence doesn’t consist of knowing for sure something will go well. It has more to do with relaxing with the certainty that you can handle uncertainty, even if that means some kind of failure.
[Mark Tyrell]
All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.
[Eckhart Tolle]
She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
[Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park]
Books en masse are more than a library, they are a statement of identity.
[Mark Miodownik, Stuff Matters]
Friendships must be built on a solid foundation of alcohol, sarcasm, inappropriateness and shenanigans.
[Source unknown]
The wise man is one who knows what he does not know.
[Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching]
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
[Sir William Osler]
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it, and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
[Marcus Aurelius]
Amidst al the shoppinge and eatinge, remembir whatte the holidayes are trewely aboute: fightinge off the wolf who hath stolen the sun.
[Chaucer Doth Tweet, ‏@LeVostreGC on Twitter]
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
[Samuel Johnson, 1759]
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
[Soren Kierkegaard]
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
[Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching]