Category Archives: quotes

amusements, current affairs, quotes, sexuality

Quotes of the Week

Here’s this week’s selection …

Balian of Ibelin: [to the people of Jerusalem] It has fallen to us, to defend Jerusalem, and we have made our preparations as well as they can be made. None of us took this city from Muslims. No Muslim of the great army now coming against us was born when this city was lost. We fight over an offence we did not give, against those who were not alive to be offended. What is Jerusalem? Your holy places lie over the Jewish temple that the Romans pulled down. The Muslim places of worship lie over yours. Which is more holy?
[pause]
Balian of Ibelin: The wall? The Mosque? The Sepulchre? Who has claim? No one has claim.
[raises his voice]
Balian of Ibelin: All have claim!
Bishop, Patriarch of Jerusalem: That is blasphemy!
Almaric: [to the Patriarch] Be quiet.
Balian of Ibelin: We defend this city, not to protect these stones, but the people living within these walls.
[From the film Kingdom of Heaven; 2005]

When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
[Robert Bolt]

It’s not about orgasm. Pay attention to your partner. Enjoy the sex you’re having.
[Emily Nagoski; ]

What is it with pathology journals and autoerotic deaths? Every other issue seems to have a case report of some heedless, autoasphyxiated corpse with ill-fitting briefs and a black bar across his eyes. Occasionally, they seem to be in there for sheer color, as in the case of the young Australian who perished from “inhalation of a zucchini.” This one raises more questions than it answers. Was he trying to intensify his climax by vegetally choking himself, or was it a case of overexuberant mock fellatio? (We do learn that the zucchini was from his wife’s garden, admittedly a nice touch.)
[Mary Roach, Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Sex and Science]

Michael called the purported rhesus pheromones “copulins,” a word I cannot write without picturing a race of small, randy beings taken aboard the starship Enterprise.
[Mary Roach, Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Sex and Science]

The bottom line is that men’s armpit secretions are unlikely to serve as an attractant to any species other than the research psychologist.
[Mary Roach, Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Sex and Science]

arts, books, current affairs, music, natural history, nudism, quotes, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

I’ve been reading quite a bit over Christmas, so this week there’s a good selection of quotes; something for almost everyone here …

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
[Paul Harvey]

If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.
[The Economist; unknown author and date]

You can’t prove that there isn’t a magic teapot floating around on the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightning out of its boobs but, it seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?
[Kurt Hummel]

A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is in the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements but not with as much strength, though it is deficient only in power of maintaining equilibrium.
[Leonardo da Vinci, The Flight of Birds, 1505]

Newton saw an apple fall and deduced Gravitation. You and I might have seen millions of apples fall and only deduced pig-feeding.
[Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher; Letter to the Times, 12 January 1920]

All dog-lovers must be interested in Lieutenant-Commander Elwell-Sutton’s account of his white whippet which insists on singing to the accompaniment of his (or, may I hope, his young son’s?) accordion – presumably one of those gigantic new instruments, invented, I think, in Italy, which make noises as loud as those made by cinema organs, and rather like them. This dog’s taste is low; but a musical ear is a musical ear.
[Sir John Squire; letter to the Times, 11 January 1936]

They [18th and early 19th century Quakers] became a bourgeois coterie of bankers, brewers and cocoa-grocers.
[Mr Ben Vincent, letter to the Times, 13 March 1974]

[The correct] forking technique is called the Continental method. It’s the method used in Europe as well as anywhere else that the British have killed the locals.
[Scott Adams]

Alice: Would you please tell me which way I ought to walk from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where –
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.
Alice: – so long as I get somewhere.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.
[Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]

books, quotes

The Lure of the Limerick

Lying abed last night I got to thinking about limericks; something I have not visited for quite some while. And of course I didn’t need to revisit WS Baring-Gould’s The Lure of the Limerick to be reminded that as an art form the limerick is both clever and bawdy – as well as being a peculiarly English art form, much older than it’s supposed inventor Edward Lear – viz:

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space which is quite economical
Though the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

The limerick’s an art for complex
Whose contents run chiefly to sex.
It’s famous for virgins
And masculine urgin’s
And vulgar erotic effects.

The thoughts of the rabbit on sex
Are seldom, if ever, complex
For a rabbit in need
Is a rabbit in deed
And does as a rabbit expects.

There once was a queer of Khartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room
And they argued all night
As to who had the right
To do what, and with which, and to whom.

And it’s all downhill from there!

Must buy a new copy of Baring-Gould; my cheap 1971 paperback has literally fallen apart.

amusements, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Here’s this week’s selection.

It is quite likely that one day all the food in the world will be Chinese. And so will all the people.
[Giles Coren]

Lesson one: you just have to try something on. You really do – to experience the intense charge between a woman and her clothes.
[Lisa Armstrong]

What really tells you what you should be when you grow up is what you can’t NOT do.
[Emily Nagoski]

I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.
[Arthur Hays Sulzberger]

I’m not promiscuous. I just really like women.
[Julian Assange]

And I leave you with euphemism of the week:

“worrying fiscal dynamics” = we’re spending too much

Happy Christmas everyone!

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, music, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

When I post these quotes it shouldn’t be assumed that they are new to me. Very often they are quotes I have know (even if only vaguely) for some while, but which I have stumbled across during the week and wished to (re) record. For instance the first two of this week’s selection have been useful on many occasions over the years.

Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony […] You can’t expect to wield supreme power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! […] I mean, if I went around saying I was an Emperor because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, people would put me away!
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]

Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together.
[Psalms 2:1-2; Handel, Messiah]

If we could gather all the electric eels from all around the world, we would be able to light up an unimaginably large Christmas tree.
[Kazuhiko Minawa, Enoshima Aquarium, Japan; see

You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die, or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live now.
[Joan Baez]

amusements, quotes, science

Defining the Normal

From the Feedback column of New Scientist, 4 December 2011 …

Composing witty error messages has long been one of the ways […] in which geeks try to show their human side. We’re not so sure what species of side is exhibited by the geeks responsible for the nLab, a website devoted to “collaborative work on Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy” in the context of “category theory”, which is … er … a set of mathematical tools for describing general abstract structures in mathematics and relations between them. And the general abstract relations between those relations, and so on up …

It is perhaps inevitable that the holding page they have prepared for times when the nLab site isn’t working […] announces that it is […]

“currently experiencing some difficulties due to local fluctuations in reality. The Lab Elves are working hard to patch reality. In the meantime, edits on the nLab have been temporarily disabled since the fundamentals of mathematics may vary during these spasmodic variations. Normal service will be restored once we are sure what ‘normal’ is.”

beliefs, medical, personal, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

Just three this week …

It is good to rub and polish your mind against that of others.
[Michel de Montaigne]

Our life depends on others so much that at the root of our existence is a fundamental need for love. That is why it is good to cultivate an authentic sense of responsibility and concern for the welfare of others.
[Dalai Lama]

I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I’m out of control and at times I’m hard to handle, but if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.
[Marliyn Monroe]

books, music, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

1 Comment

Sorry, not too many posts recently as I’ve been too preoccupied with other things. But here’s this week’s selection of quotes …

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
[Andre Maurois]

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
[Thomas Jefferson]

This is what you shall do: Be loyal to what you love, Be true to the Earth, and Fight your enemies with passion and laughter.
[Edward Abbey]

If you were addressing humankind, and all its groups were listening, what advice would you give?
The best advice I think was given by Douglas Adams: DON’T PANIC.
[Arthur C Clarke]

And finally a somewhat longer than usual offering:

Reasons briefly set down by th’author, to perswade every one to learne to sing.
First, it is a knowledge safely taught and quickly learned, where there is a good Master, and an apt Scholler.
2 The exercise of singing is delightfull to Nature, & good to preserve the health of Man.
3 It doth strengthen all parts of the brest, & doth open the pipes.
4 It is a singular good remedie for a stutting and stamering in the speech.
5 It is the best means to procure a perfect pronounciation, & to make a good Orator.
6 It is the onely way to know where Nature hath bestowed the benefit of a good voyce : which guift is so rare, as there is not one among a thousand, that hath it.
7 There is not any Musicke of Instruments whatsoever, comparable to that which is made of the voyces of Men, where the voyces are good, and the same well sorted and ordered.
8 The better the voyce is, the meeter it is to honour and serve God there-with : and the voyce of man is chiefely to bee imployed to that ende.
“Omnis Spiritus Laudes Dominum”
Since Singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing.
[William Byrd c1543-1623; Psalms, Sonets, and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie (1588) ]

beliefs, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

This week’s rather scrawny crop …

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign – that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
[Jonathan Swift]

The more we learn about irrational beliefs, the clearer it becomes that they are perfectly normal
[Editorial, New Scientist, 13/11/2010]

You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.
[Arlo Guthrie]

You are not what you were born, but what you have it in yourself to be.
[From the film Kingdom of Heaven (2005)]