OK, so we’ve got to the last round-up of iinteresting and/or amusing quotes for this year. So here goes …

Firewood, after becoming ash, does not again become firewood. Similarly, human beings, after death, do not live again.
[Eihei Dogen]

When an animal is being particularly busy underneath a few leaves, thinking very deeply about things, giving himself up to very serious reflection, he does not want to be disturbed.
[AA Milne]

Preparation and precaution were, however, the natural flowers of Mr Mudge’s mind, and in proportion as these things declined in one quarter they inevitably bloomed elsewhere. He could always, at the worst, have on Tuesday the project of their taking the Swanage boat on Thursday, and on Thursday that of their ordering minced kidneys on Saturday. He had, moreover, a constant gift of inexorable inquiry as to where and what they should have gone and have done if they had not been exactly as they were.
[Henry James, In the Cage]

Science is not a system of beliefs. According to the philosopher Karl Popper, science is the search for truth, not the search for certainty. It is an iterative process of posing a question, designing a controlled experiment to test the question, and making interpretations based on experimental outcomes.
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-do-we-know-what-we-know/]

Last sleep in day of holiday
White linen sheets
In an all white room
Two stir slowly
As winter day breaks
Fingers trace along lines
Till hands open unto curves
Skin awakens before eyes
Warmth beckons our movement
As instinct guides
On a January morn
[KiraLili; Slow January Morn]

eyes slurred dews cherry
kisses and masturbations
a high school story
[Rajat Kanti Chakrabarty; A High School Story]

late at night
a shepherd
woke his wife
 
I saw … heard
angels sing
in the sky!
 
it’s the wine
she mumbled
or UFOs!
[Paul Callus, A Light-Hearted Christmas]

What if Dogen was, like, right about all that “there are millions of eyes everywhere” stuff? What if, like, the universe is the Ultimate Surveillance State?
[Brad Warner]

To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldn’t be any different.
[Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine]

All that was required of them (ie. the brain-washed masses) was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.
[George Orwell]

That’s all for now. Have a good Christmas and New Year and we’ll see you with more quotes in January.