Each month during 2025 we’re offering two tiny changes which may help improve your life. This month …
And so, once again,we come to this month’s collection of recently encountereed quotes.
If you want to know who rules over you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.
[George Orwell]
Not everyone can stand the strain of gazing down too long into the personal crater, with its scene of Hieronymus Bosch activities taking place in the depths.
[Anthony Powell]
The rise of this blusterous man bewilders the educated among us, conjoins opposing politicians, agonizes our international allies, threatens minorities, spits on the disabled, and touches the hearts of those who just don’t know any better. Let’s stop propounding how mad this all is, and instead, do something.
[Liselotte Hübner, Germany, 1929]
Thou with strange adultery
Doest in each breast a brothel keep;
Awake, all men do lust for thee,
And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
[Abraham Cowley; The Innocent III]
Now all my days are trances
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams –
In what ethereal dances
By what eternal streams.
[Edgar Allan Poe; To One in Paradise]
A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition.
[Rudyard Kipling]
Just two naked apes who have decided to keep each other company for the (geologically speaking) blink of an eye on a tiny spinning planet on the outer arm of a nondescript galaxy in a vast, and basically pointless, universe. Now that we’ve identified that, we may as well just enjoy ourselves.
[https://substack.com/home/post/p-175517959]
It’s better to look at someone you can’t sleep with, than to sleep with someone you can’t even look at.
[Chinese proverb]
No Buddhist, No Christian, No Hindu, No Muslim …
Deeply spiritual people have no religion.
They belong to no temple, mosque, or church.
Their only religion is the goodness of the heart.
[unknown]
An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.
[Niels Bohr, Physicist (1885-1962)]
My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
and sweet’s the air with curly smoke
from all my burning bridges.
[Dorothy Parker]
A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotional1y.
[Eleanor Roosevelt]
Systems fail when people with ability don’t have authority and people with authority don’t have ability.
[Amit Kalantri]
Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
Classical & Ancient World
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2024.
On The Ning Nang Nong
Spike Milligan
On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There’s a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can’t catch ’em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!
Find this poem online at All Poetry
This year our Ten Things column each month is alternating between composers and artists a century at a time from pre-1500 to 20th century. As always, there’s no guarantee you will have heard of them all!
Ten Artists Born in 19th Century
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.
Robert G Ingersoll
As well as everything else, each month I offer you something to think about and get the brain working. This month …
Night-time is the natural state of the universe; daytime is only caused by a nearby, radiating ball of flame.
Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. As always, they’re designed to be difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers – so have a bit of fun.
Classical & Ancient World
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
Our look at some of the significant happenings 100 years ago this month.
2. In London, John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures with a greyscale image.
3. Born. Gore Vidal, writer and public intellectual, in West Point, New York (d.2012)
5. The Locarno Conference began in Locarno, Switzerland between several European powers to negotiate a security pact.
13. Born. Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England (d.2013)
13. The Locarno conference ended with several agreements in place. German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann gave a closing speech in which he said the conference spelled a new era in European relationships, while French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand said it marked the beginning of a new epoch of cooperation and friendship.
16. Born. Angela Lansbury, actress and singer, in Regent’s Park, London (d.2022)
23. Born. Johnny Carson, American comedian and television host (d.2005)
24. Born. Luciano Berio, Italian composer (d.2003)
29. Born. Robert Hardy, actor, in Cheltenham, England (d.2017)