Where is this year going to? Yet again we’ve got to my monthly collection of quotes at record speed.

When fish swim in water, though they keep swimming, there is no end to the Water. When birds fly in the sky, though they keep flying, there is no end to the sky. At the same time, fish and birds have never left the water or the sky … If a bird leaves the sky it will die at once, and if a fish leaves the water it will die at once. So we can understand that the water is life and that the sky is life. Birds are life and fish are life. It may be that life is birds and life is fish. And beyond this there may still be further progress. The existence of practice and experience, the existence of a lifetime and a life, are like this.
[Eihei Dogen (c.1200-1253), Genjo Koan]

Never fear that: if he be so resolved,
I can o’ersway him; for he loves to hear
That unicorns may be betray’d with trees,
And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
Lions with toils and men with flatterers;
But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flattered.
Let me work;
For I can give his humour the true bent,
And I will bring him to the Capitol.
[Shakespeare; Julius Caesar; Act 2, Scene 1]

Thirty years ago, this would have been totally nuts to propose. It’s still kind of nuts, but it’s like borderline insanity.
[Daniel Carney, quoted at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/windchime-experiment-dark-matter-wind-gravity-physics]

It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent – lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that.
[Tove Jansson]

The fact is all the finest white wine in the world is made in the Côte de Beaune and all of it is made from Chardonnay. Accordingly, anyone who likes white wine and says they do not like Chardonnay is, I’m afraid, an idiot.
[Charlie Boston; Understanding European Wines]

Retsina is considered to be the traditional wine of Greece. It has its origins in ancient times when the pots in which the wine was matured (“amphoras”) were sealed with pine resin. Nowadays, resin from the Aleppo pine is added to the must during fermentation to produce the distinctive resinated style. It is very much an acquired taste which, in my opinion, is not worth acquiring.
[Charlie Boston; Understanding European Wines]

Wine makes daily life easy, less hurried, with fewer tensions and more tolerance.
[Benjamin Franklin]

In victory, you deserve Champagne. In defeat you need it.
[Napoleon Bonaparte]

He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.
[Martin Luther]

There will be no more talk of antiseptics, unless and until tinned Herrings begin to frolic in their brine.
[Jean-Henri Fabre, More Hunting Wasps, 1915]

In the first UK coronavirus lockdown … one of the first commodities to be panic-bought from the supermarket shelves was toilet roll. Nobody really knows why toilet roll was so coveted. I for one could live without toilet roll, but not without pasta and wine.
[Seirian Sumner; Endless Forms, The Secret World of Wasps; she’s spent many years doing research in the jungles]

I want you to believe that the universe is a vast, random, uncaring place, in which our species … has absolutely no significance … I want you to believe that the only response is to make our own beauty & meaning and to share it while we can.
[Katie Mack, @AstroKatie; Disorientation at https://sciences.ncsu.edu/news/disorientation-a-science-poem-by-katie-mack/]

I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road.
[Anne Sexton]