Even More Quotations

Saturday, Sept. 25, 2004 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

"Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber."
Ugo Betti

"A simile must be as precise as a slide rule and as natural as the smell of dill. . . ." Isaac Babel

"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

"But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

"The Universe has an incredibly sadistic sense of humor. And I, for one, enjoy watching the poor fools who just don't get the joke." Lynn Marshal

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come." Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness." Dalai Lama

"The superfluous is very necessary." Voltaire

"What is a rebel? A man who says no." Albert Camus

"Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together."
George Santayana

"Sometimes we run from our fallibility by being decisive. But doubt is the natural human state, and decisiveness�more addictive than anything you might shoot into your veins�is often based on a superstitious belief in the magic of action." David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto

"Politicians who complain about the media are like sailors who complain about the sea." Enoch Powell

"He doesn't represent the heart of America. He represents another part of the anatomy but not the heart." Guitarist Carlos Santana on President Bush

"We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Aesop

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." H. G. Wells

"Modern man thinks he loses something�time�when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains�except kill it." Erich Fromm

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." Lynn Lavner

"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits." Dan Barker

"If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold onto the other end of the chain." Toni Morrison

"Time is just like any drug. Too much can kill you." http://thejanechord.diaryland.com/020920_51.html

"Too points of danger beset mankind; namely, making sin seem either too large or too small." Mary Baker Eddy

"Philosophy. . . means looking at things which one takes for granted and suddenly seeing that they are very odd indeed." Iris Murdoch

"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian."
Dennis Wholey

From a witty kitty: "Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to avoid changing it." Blaine St. James.

"They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be." William Shakespeare

"Poppycock is generally rad. It's prefab bourgie caramel corn, but it has giant meaty glossy hunks of almonds and butter pecans clinging to the popcorn (unlike say the disappointment of Cracker Jacks, with its pathetic wizened two peanuts shivering in the bottom corner of the box). . . " http://stormyclaude.diaryland.com/07dec03.html

"If male homosexuals are called 'gay,' then female homosexuals should be called 'ecstatic.'" Shelly Roberts

"What Chekhov saw in our failure to communicate was something positive and precious: the private silence in which we live, and which enables us to endure our own solitude. We live, as his characters do, beyond any tale we happen to enact." V. S. Pritchett

"I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it." William Carlos Williams

From a witty kitty: "Art that doesn't attempt the impossible is not performing its function." William Butler Yeats

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality." Albert Einstein

"Mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to extinction. Let us pray we choose correctly." Woody Allen

"I care little in the existence of a heaven or hell; self respect does not allow me to guide my acts with an eye toward heavenly salvation or hellish punishment. I pursue the good in life because it is beautiful and attracts me; and shun the bad because it is ugly and repulsive. All our acts should originate from the spring of unselfish love, whether there be a continuation after death or not." Heinrich Hein

"No one likes this life but the atheists." http://moow.diaryland.com/

"Raping, hunting, throwing stones at wildlife, buying exotic pets, picking flowers, criticizing prominent people, may at times be an attempt to make contact with, even identify with, that which is free and beautiful and so frightfully unlike us." Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself

"Why the hell do people with convertibles drive with the top down and the windows up?" http://thejanechord.diaryland.com/020706_49.html

From a witty kitty: "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." Bertrand Russell

~

These little gems were stolen from just one entry of Squirrel X's diary. I think of her, fondly, as a committee. It salves my pride if I pretend she has a network of devoted lackeys who gather quotes for her:

"It's a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand." Madeleine L'Engle

"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use." Emily Post

"Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated." George Bernard Shaw

"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular." Adlai Stevenson

"Be your word." Bill Peery

"Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of time. There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with
and love should not be one of them." Jean De La Bruyere

"The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation." Hermann Hesse

"He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die." Giacomo Leopardi

"The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life." Lucian

"Details are all that matters; God dwells there, and you never get to see Him if you don't struggle to get them right." Stephen Jay Gould

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." John Sawhill

"Moods make poor advisors." Jean-Pierre Vibert

"Trouble is part of your life. If you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough." Dinah Shore

"Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days; and they are not communicative,
being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, for they must often dream." H.P. Lovecraft

"That all things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain." Francis Bacon

"Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open." Rosa Lane

"Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and many accomplishments, owes the fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains." Virginia Farm Bureau

"Life is best lived at the edge of folly." Thomas Cook

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." Mahatma Gandhi

"The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret."
Henri-Frederic Amiel

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing." Marcus Aurelius

"Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well." John Gardner

"We think in generalities, but we live in details." Alfred North Whitehead

"When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity." John F. Kennedy

"In the battle between the river and the rock, the river will always win. Not through strength but by persistence." Confucius

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it."
Tallulah Bankhead

"No person is you friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow." Alice Walker

"All sins are attempts to fill voids." Simone Weil

"Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people." Andre Dubus

~

Ten quotations from Kahlil Gibran

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Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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