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quotes

Monthly Quotes

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Welcome to this month’s collection of quotes.

One passes through the world knowing few, if any, of the important things about even the people with whom one has been from time to time in the closest intimacy.
[Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones]

And it is according to his faith; his faith in the power of numbers, in the stability of order, in the assurance and perfection of law; and deviation and irregularity stand revealed as results of the perfection of order and the assurance of law; or – to go to the essence and reality of which order and law are but the apparent and sensible exponents – of the presence in his providence, faithfulness, and power, of HIM who calleth all these stars out by name, and leadeth them on in order.
[Scientific American; 11 June 1847]

Clubbing is, and always was, shit … If I wanted to feel some sweaty man’s bollocks pushed into the curve of my equally sweaty back whilst being deafened by indecipherable garbagio, I’d hop on the Central Line.
[Harriet Richardson; https://substack.com/@harrietrichardson/p-166601507]

If he ejaculates semen it’s because his body is full of toxins and he has had too many sexual partners. Men are not supposed to have semen, its unclean! Vegan men with few sex partners ejaculate fresh water.
[unknown]

Capitalism is based on ridiculous notion that you can enjoy limitless growth in a closed finite system. In biology, such behaviour of cells is called cancer.
[unknown]

Don’t waste time worrying about things you can’t control. You can’t fight every battle. Choose which ones are worth fighting and let the others go.
[unknown]

The purpose of propaganda is to make one set of people forget that other sets of people are human.
[Aldous Huxley]

Polyamory might actually be friendship operating within a patriarchal framework that continues to essentialize sex and romantic relationships.
[unknown]

A computer can never be spiteful or horny; therefore a computer must never make art.
[unknown]

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
[Benjamin Franklin]

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky]

quotes

Monthly Quotes for August

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As befits this slow news season, here’s this month’s smaller than usual collection of quotes.

Dire dealings with the fiendish race
Had mark’d strange lines upon his face;
Vigil and fast had worn him grim,
His eyesight dazzled seem’d and dim …
[Walter Scott, Marmion]

Life is strange. You arrive with nothing, spend your whole life chasing everything and still leave with nothing. Make sure your soul gains more than your hands.
[unknown]

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.
[George Orwell]

There’s a funny thing in fiction, where it’s important that the motivations of the characters are clear to the reader. But in real life, the motivations that any of us have are often not even clear to ourselves!
[Reo Eveleth]

So many people from your past know a version of you that no longer exists anymore.
[Eric Partaker]

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then
I contradict myself
I am large,
I contain mult1tudes
[Walt Whitman]

“Why should we wish to ruminate on your most secret orgies?” said Dr Trelawney. “What profit for us to muse on your nights in the lupanar, your diabolical couplings with the brides of debauch, more culpable than those phantasms of the incubi that rack the dreams of young girls, or the libidinous gymnastics of the goat-god whose ice-cold sperm fathers monsters on writhing witches in coven?”
[Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones]

quotes

Quotes for July

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We have only a short list of quotes encountered this month …

I reflected, not for the first time, how mistaken it is to suppose there exists some “ordinary” world into which it is possible at will to wander. All human beings, driven as they are at different speeds by the same Furies, are at close range equally extraordinary.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]

Most “bad” people are actually good people lacking in skills to appropriately get what they legitimately need.
[Dr Chris Stevens]

Capitalism has invented something called “Cost of Living” where your very existence is an ever-inflating expense that you must overcome just to survive.
[unknown]

At all stages of life, people will gladly offer you unsolicited lists of things you “must” do, be, or have. Most of the time you can nod your head, walk away, and ignore them.
[unknown]

If you can imagine something, then someone in history has carved, drawn, painted, etched, handwritten, collaged and sewn it into pornography.
[Hannah Rose Woods]

And finally remember …
Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

quotes

June Monthly Quotes

Rather thin pickings in the way of quotes encountered this month.

In a sense, nothing in life is planned – or everything is – because in the dance every step is ultimately the corollary of the step before; the consequence of being the kind of person one chances to be.
[Anthony Powell; The Acceptance World]

Most dictionaries define happiness as “the feeling of being happy”. This has the bizarre quality of being correct while containing no useful information whatsoever.
[Dr Dean Burnett, Science Focus, May 2025]

People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason why the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.
[Dalai Lama]

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.
[Carl Jung]

You can seem like a millionaire to one person and a homeless person to the next. The ants think you are a giant, and the trees don’t even notice you. You think you have a boring life, but the next person might be striving for your lifestyle. Comparison is the thief of joy, so stay kind and keep loving life. Life is all just a big game of perspective.
[unknown]

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.
[Noam Chomsky]

Chocolate lines up planetarily with the sun. Chocolate is an octave of sun energy. In fact, it’s the energy of the centre of the sun.
[David Avacado Wolfe (b.1970)]

Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.
[James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879)]

quotes

Monthly Quotes for May

So here is this month’s collection of recently (re-)encountered quotes.

Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
[Homer, The Iliad]

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky]

Camel Ride to the Tomb … I grasped at once that’s what life was. How could the description be bettered? Juddering through the wilderness, on an uncomfortable conveyance you can’t properly control, along a rocky, unpremeditated, but indefeasible track, towards the destination crudely, yet truly, stated.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish A Room]

The real problem of humanity is we have Palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.
[EO Wilson]

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
[George Carlin]

Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. The total number of minds in the
Universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings.
[Erwin Schrödinger]

2024 Trump makes 2016 Trump sound like Pericles of Athens by comparison: his speeches have been getting simpler and more repetitive all the time as his vocabulary shrinks and the number of ideas in his head fight it out in an increasingly confined space.
[Derek Lowe; https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/pharmaceutical-tariffs-what-and-how]

The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!
[Prof. Brian Cox]

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.
[Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former US Senator]

Clothing often becomes a mask, one that reflects status, style, and social norms. When we shed that mask, even temporarily, we step into a space of raw authenticity. Going naked outdoors can shift the way we view our bodies: not as objects of judgment, but as instruments of feeling. You begin to feel more in your body than about your body. The texture of tree bark beneath your hand, the warmth of sun on your back, the coolness of a breeze brushing against you – they all serve as reminders that the body is not just a vessel, but a sensory gateway to the world.
[Rick Dorociak]

I admire those with hairstyles. I don’t have a hairstyle. I have hair. Most days, it has zero caterpillars in it. That’s as good as it gets.
[unknown]