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Aaron Fuegi's Collected Quotations
aarondf@bu.edu
Please visit the Last Homely House, run by Aaron.
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Note on Quotes
These quotes have been collected by me over many years. I choose those
quotes which I feel express something about me. A few of these quotes are
included entirely for humor value or as a beautiful expression. Basically
all of the others, for me, have a philosophy behind them which I believe in
one way or the other. Of course, I actually follow the principles of some
far more than others.
-Enjoy, Aaron
And now for the QUOTES
Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. That house was,
as Bilbo had long ago reported, "a perfect house, whether you like food or
sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a
pleasant mixture of them all." Merely to be there was a cure for weariness,
fear and sadness.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or
story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant
mixture of them all.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, referring to The Last Homely House
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
J.R.R. Tolkien, opening line of The Hobbit
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be
celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special
magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
J.R.R. Tolkien, opening line of The Fellowship of the Ring
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to
heaven, we were all doing direct the other way--in short, the period was so
far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted
on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of
comparison only.
Charles Dickens, opening line of A Tale of Two Cities
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far,
far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens, end of A Tale of Two Cities
To err is human, to forgive divine.
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be
changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the
wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer (1934)
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share,
and no one dare disturb the Sound of Silence.
Simon & Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence
Nothing endures but change.
Heraclitus
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
Appius Claudius
I think; therefore I am.
Rene Descartes
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Chinese Proverb
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
Seneca
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Mark Twain, spoken by Huck Finn, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Inscription beneath his bust in the Hall
of Fame.
Better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven.
Milton
. . is to attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt
to see the Light without knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
Frank Herbert, Dune
People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.
Frank Herbert, Dune
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers
increase. . . . the human question is not how many can possibly survive
within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do
survive.
Frank Herbert, Dune
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
Frank Herbert, Dune, Manual of MuadDib by Princess Irulan
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that
brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass
over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye
to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will
remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune, Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
"The avalanche has started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote."
Vorlon Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5: Believers
There was only one catch and that was Catch22, which specified that a
concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate
was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All
he had to do was ask, and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and
would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and
sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he
was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had
to.
Joseph Heller, Catch22
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side
he's on.
Joseph Heller, Catch22
"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways", Yossarian continued
"There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing.
Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk
about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth
hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who
finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in
His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that
warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the
power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create
pain?"
Joseph Heller, Catch22
It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not
important.
"If it is not, what is?"
He could not endure those remembered words.
Ursula K. Le Guin, spoken by Gaverel Rocannon, Rocannon's World
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
in the real world.
Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes
genius.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Complete Sherlock Holmes, Valley of Fear
Mr. Sherlock Holmes,who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon
those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the
breakfast table.
Arthur Conan Doyle, opening line of The Hound of the Baskervilles
Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.
Robert A. Heinlein, opening line of Stranger in a Strange Land
Dr. Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and evrey
thing that happins to me from now on..
Daniel Keys, opening line of Flowers for Algernon
Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was
brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of
muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.
Jack London, opening line of The Call of the Wild
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to
know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my
parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David
Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want
to know the truth.
J.D. Salinger, opening line of The Catcher in the Rye
All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own
fashion.
Leo Tolstoy, opening line of Anna Karenina
What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do especially in
other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right
there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No
yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
. . He had by now divested himself of schoolboy attitudes. He was unburdened
by the desire to be a martyr or a hero. Any thoughts in that direction,
Belgica effectively had quashed. Heroism in the corrupt sense of the age
almost by definition, meant wanton self-sacrifice and bungling. For neither
had he any taste. He wanted rational attainment; victory, but not at any
price. No point upon the globe was worth the cost of a single life.
Roland Huntford, SCOTT and AMUNDSEN The Race to The South Pole
referring to polar explorer Roald Amundsen.
If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't
there . . . what then?
The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for
dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his
function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out
to be, what else was the meaning of Belief?
The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.
Douglas Adams, spoken by Dirk Gently, Dirk Gently: Holistic Detective
Agency
"I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly
makes living worth while?"
Death thought about it "Cats," he said eventually, "Cats are Nice."
Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
Nigel gave the lamp a cautious buff and small smoking red letters appeared
in the air.
"Hi," Nigel read aloud, "Do not put down the lamp because your custom is
important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it
will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity."
Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do
is give them a meaningful look.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
Akiro Kurosawa
Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
Plato, The Republic. Book II. 369C
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato, The Republic. Book II. 377B
Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to
another.
Plato, The Republic. Book VII. 529
Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge
which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato, The Republic. Book VII. 536
Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and
disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
Plato, The Republic. Book VIII. 558
What a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours
which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.
Plato, The Republic. Book X. 601B
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must
wait till that other is ready.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854), II, Where I Lived, and What I Lived
For
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only
great poets can read them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854), III, Reading
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are
for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay
in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where
he will.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),V, Solitude
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Henry David Thoreau, Walking(1862)
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
Henry David Thoreau
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority
to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral
inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), What Is Man?(1906)
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how
little we think of the other person.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Notebooks(1935)
It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not
to deserve them.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
(The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish
than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical
invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be
sorry.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion
that make horseraces.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), from Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar(1894)
The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no
humour in heaven.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable,
drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation.
They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How
strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has
gone dry.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education,
and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a
poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward
after death.
Albert Einstein
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
Albert Einstein
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet,(Act II, scene ii)
This above all: to thine own self be true
William Shakespeare, Hamlet,(Act I, scene iii)
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet,(Act I, scene ii)
What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty!
in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of
animals!
William Shakespeare, spoken by Hamlet, Hamlet,(Act II, scene ii)
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare, spoken by Macbeth, Macbeth,(Act V, scene v)
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not
follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are
never the same.
No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People
imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each
other by.
Franz Schubert
"Do you know what I learned from you? I learned what is possible, and now I
must hold out for what I thought we had. I want to be very close to someone
I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me. That
or nothing. I realized that what I'm looking for is not what you're looking
for. You don't want what I want."
"What do you think I want?" I asked.
"Exactly what you have. Many women you know a little and don't care very
much about. Superficial flirtations, mutual use, no chance of love. That's
my idea of hell. Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, Richard, in which
there is no love. Horrible! Leave me out of it."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish and Richard Bach, The Bridge
Across Forever
Respect for sovereignity, for privacy, for total independence. Gentle
alliances against loneliness, they were, cool rational love-affairs without
the love.
Richard Bach, Thoughts of Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
"The world's crazy, when it comes to beauty."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever
Sooner I'd try to change history than turn political, than try convincing
others to write letters or to vote or to march or to do something they
didn't already feel like doing.
Richard Bach, Thoughts of Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
"Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem
to be on anyone else's list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and
decided I'd better not marry the natives."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever
That she won the game startled me cold. The way she won, the pattern of her
thought on the chessboard, charmed me warm again and then some.
Richard Bach, Thoughts of Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we
lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that
we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is
winning.
Richard Bach, note written by Richard Bach, The Bridge Across Forever
"It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you
might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as
important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost ..."
Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever
________________________________________________
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a thousand masks, masks that I am afraid to take off and none of
them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, but don't be fooled. For
God's sake don't be fooled.
I give the impression that I am secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game;
that the waters are calm and I am in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me, please.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, ever-varying and
ever-concealing
'Neath this lies no complacence.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know.
I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear of being exposed.
That is why I frantically create a mask to hide behind;
a nonchalant, sophisticated facade,
to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation.
My only salvation. And I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love.
It is the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself,
that I am worth something.
But, I don't tell you this. I don't dare. I am afraid to.
I am afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love.
I am afraid you will think less of me, that you will laugh at me,
and that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate game,
with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
And so begins the parade of masks, and my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that is really nothing,
and nothing of what is everything,
of what is crying within me;
So when I am going through my routine do not be fooled by what I am saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.
What I would like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say, but I can't say.
I dislike hiding, Honestly!
I dislike the superficial game I am playing, the phony game.
I would really like to be genuine and spontaneous, and me,
but you have got to help me. You have got to hold out your hand,
even when that is the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes that blank stare of breathing death.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you try to understand and because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings, but
wings.
With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding,
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be the creator of the person that is me if you choose to.
Please choose to. You alone can break down the wall
behind which I tremble, you alone can remove my mask.
You alone can release me from my shadowworld of panic and uncertainty;
From my lonely person.
Do not pass me by.
Please... do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you;
a long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach me, the blinder I strike back.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that
love is stronger than walls, and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands,
but with gentle hands for a child is very sensitive.
Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet.
_________________Charles C. Finn (???)_____________________
[ Death scene of Cyrano ]
It is coming... I feel
Already shod with marble... gloved with lead...
Let the old fellow come now! He shall find me
On my feet sword in hand [ He draws his sword. ]
I can see him there he grins
He is looking at my nose that skeleton
What's that you say? Hopeless? Why, very well!
But a man does not fight merely to win!
No no better to know one fights in vain! ...
You there Who are you? A hundred against one
I know them now, my ancient enemies
[ He lunges at the empty air. ]
Falsehood! ... There! There! Prejudice Compromise
Cowardice [ Thrusting ] What's that? No! Surrender? No!
Never never! ... Ah, you too, Vanity!
I know you would overthrow me in the end
No! I fight on! I fight on! I fight on!
Edmond Rostand, spoken by Cyrano de Bergerac
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the
longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the
suffering of mankind.
Bertrand Russell, Autobiography
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Bertrand Russell
The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as
we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all
sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this
sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane
people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian
ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending
towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.
Bertrand Russell
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more
even than death....Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and
terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and
comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid.
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief
glory of man.
Bertrand Russell
If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some
men into sacrificial animals, and ... if I were asked to serve the interests
of society apart from, above and against my own I would refuse....I would
fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living
being's right to exist.
Ayn Rand
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole
existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the
process of setting man free from men.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)
The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point.
Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate
speech.
Justice Anthony Kennedy
With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first
thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.
Picard, ST:TNG, quoting a fictional judge, The Drumhead
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt (1756-1806), speech on the India Bill 18 November 1783
Respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and
prosperous world, ... and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity
be realized.
Preamble to the Libertarian Platform
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when
the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally
alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evilminded rulers. The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
wellmeaning but without understanding.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277
U.S. 479 (1928)
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
C. D. Tavares
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself.
Thomas Paine
Take Nothing but Pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but
time.
Motto of the Baltimore Grotto (caving society)
Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can choose a ready guide
In some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears
and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will chose free will.
RUSH, Free Will
Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old
friends lacked certain quirks.
Goethe
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the
few.
Stendhal
Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order
to save us.
Peter De Vries
Faith, noun. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose Bierce
Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from
the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce
Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and
do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
Thomas Jefferson
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But
for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers
don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We
are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God.
We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our
educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We
are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will
tremble to take us.
Charles Bukowski
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the
worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
Woody Allen
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of
courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world will be better for
this.
The Impossible Dream
I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all
the Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line.
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
the Indigo Girls, Closer to Fine
And now someone's on the telephone desperate in his pain
Someone's on the bathroom floor doing her cocaine
Someone's got his finger on the button in some room
No one can convince me we aren't gluttons for our doom
the Indigo Girls, Prince Of Darkness
But I can't do the talks like they talk on my tv screen
I can't do a love song not the way you song them to me
I can't do everything but I would do anything for you
Oh no I can't do anything except be in love with you
Dire Straits, Romeo & Juliet
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people
by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing
what you know is wrong.
William J.H. Boetcker
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the
Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came
for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear
arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in
government.
Thomas Jefferson
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey
if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the
harms it would cause if improperly administered.
Lyndon Johnson
The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to
throw a snowball.
Doug Larson
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
George Bernard Shaw
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other
countries because you were born in it.
George Bernard Shaw
Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for
appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never
were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may
not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903), Maxims for
Revolutionists: The Golden Rule
The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively hostile to
it.
Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.
Louise Beal
A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the
same time, insight into and understanding of many things.
Van Gogh
Laws are only words words written on paper, words that change on society's
whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges,
and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed
would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are
applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool.
John J. Miller, And Hope to Die (in Jokertown Shuffle Wild Cards IX)
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or
Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and
enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
Thomas Paine
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The
latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
Albert Einstein
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that
goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!
Albert Einstein
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
Albert Einstein
How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and
of good will.
Albert Einstein
The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds
that make it up.
Harold R. McAlindon
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman
church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant
church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
Thomas Paine
There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.
Edna St. Vincent Milay, Conversation at Midnight
Better contraceptives will control population only if people will use them.
A nuclear holocaust can be prevented only if the conditions under which
nations make war can be changed. The environment will continue to
deteriorate until pollution practices are abandoned. We need to make vast
changes in human behavior.
B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects
I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.
Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day,
to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human
being can fight; and never stop fighting.
e. e. cummings
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are
ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we
have yet gone ourselves.
E. M. Forster
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
Victor Hugo, Ninetythree, 1874
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He
lives by makebelieve.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938
Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.
Antoine de SaintExupery, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done,
compared to what he might have done.
Samuel Johnson, (in Boswell's Life, 1770)
There was once a man, Harry, called the Steppenwolf. He went on two legs,
wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was in reality a
wolf of the Steppes. He had learned a good deal of all that people of a good
intelligence can, and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned,
however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life.
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
Even in the presence of others he was completely alone.
Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in
working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything
really meaningful to say.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions
. . . hummings and clickings could be heard--the sounds attendant to the
flow of electrons, now augmenting one maze of electromagnetic crises to a
condition that was translatable from electrical qualities and quantities to
a high grade of truth.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Player Piano
Foolproof systems don't take into account the ingenuity of fools.
Gene Brown
Are cats lazy? Well, more power to them if they are. Which one of us has not
entertained the dream of doing just as he likes, when and how he likes, and
as much as he likes?
Fernand Mery
Cat: a pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings.
Oliver Herford
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can not get eight cats to pull a sled
through snow.
Jeff Valdez
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat
does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
Alfred North Whitehead
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved - loved
for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo
Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends
that they like.
Unknown
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its
own shame.
Oscar Wilde
"I was saying," continued the Rocket, "I was saying - What was I saying?"
"You were talking about yourself," replied the Roman Candle.
"Of course; I knew I was discussing some interesting subject when I was so
rudely interrupted."
Oscar Wilde, The Remarkable Rocket
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live
as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde
"Rule a kingdom as though you were cooking a small fish - don't overdo it".
Lao Tzu
"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace."
Dalai Lama
"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what
nobody has thought."
Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants."
Isaac Newton
"I share no man's opinions; I have my own."
Ivan Turgenev
"To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a
thousand head-bowings in prayer."
Saddi
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
Austin Phelps
"...that was the first thing I had to learn about her, and maybe the hardest
I've ever learned about anything--that she is her own, and what she gives me
is of her choosing, and the more precious because of it. Sometimes a
butterfly will come to sit in your open palm, but if you close your hand,
one way or the other, it--and its choice to be there--are gone."
Barbara Hambly, Spoken by John Aversin, Dragonsbane
"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."
Jeff Marder (the question, of course, is whether this is good or bad -
Aaron)
Boggies are an unattractive but annoying people whose numbers have increased
rather precipitously since the bottom fell out of the fairy-tale market.
Slow and sullen, and yet dull, they prefer to lead simple lives of pastoral
squalor. They don't like machines more complicated than a garotte, a
blackjack, or a luger, and they have always been shy of the 'big folk' or
'biggers' as they call us. As a rule they avoid us, except on rare occasions
when a hundred or so will get together to dry-gulch a lone farmer or hunter.
They seldom exceed three feet in height, but are fully capable of
overpowering creatures half their size when they get the drop on them ...
Their beginnings lie far back in the Good Ole Days when the planet was
populated with the kind of colorful creatures you have to drink a quart of
Old Overcoat to see nowadays.
Bored of the Rings, by the staff of the Harvard Lampoon
Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear
friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they
neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their
silent consent.
Bruno Jasienski (Yasensky)
We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what we don't know, afraid
of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But
every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger
Tad Williams, Spoken by Dr. Morgenes, To Green Angel Tower (part of
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn)
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's
mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe
in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do
not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many
generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,
then accept it and live up to it.
Buddha
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's
time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws
are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to
be stopped at all.
H. L. Mencken
I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my
life, the way I want to.
Jimi Hendrix
Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through
mortal friends.
S. Weir Mitchell
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still
only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as
coals, deep burning, unquenchable.
Henry Ward Beecher
Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other person will in
the end prove unprofitable for you. The bargain that yields mutual
satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated.
B. C. Forbes
The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of
another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth,
beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love
between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by
looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine
accident.
Sir Hugh Walpoe
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes
and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom
and knowledge.
Igor Stravinsky
The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without
having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.
Alan Patrick Herbert
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing
the thinking.
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes
when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes
well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Just because an animal is large, it doesn't mean he doesn't want kindness;
however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as
Roo.
Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne
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
Know people for who they are rather than for what they are.
Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book
Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
David Dunham
I am become death, shatterer of worlds.
Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967), citing from the Bhagavadgita, after
witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)
Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible
for talent is genius.
Henri-Frederic Amiel
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with
blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things
historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build
homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle
statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.
Will Durant, The History of Civilization
Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture
available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The
most terrifying thing is what people do want.
Clive Barnes
If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody
monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates
misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little
children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women
from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pits
of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my
friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.
However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic
wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get
together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment
in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a
little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if
you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget
life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink
the sale of which pours into Texas treasuries untold millions of dollars
each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our
blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the
finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this
nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.
This is my position, and as always, I refuse to be compromised on
matters of principle.
Unknown
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to
sleep after.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
"You cannot rule the world El-ahrairah, for I will not have it so. All the
world will be your enemy, Prince With a Thousand Enemies. And whenever they
catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you--digger,
listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of
tricks, and your people will never be destroyed."
Richard Adams, Watership Down
"Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough
to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy
ourselves?"
"Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better
to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before
destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish
lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its
wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too."
Isaac Asimov, The New Hugo Winners
________________________________________________
In tribute to David Gerard Cohen, rest well
Best of all he liked to sleep. Sleeping was a very important activity for
him. He liked to sleep for longish periods, great swathes of time. Merely
sleeping overnight was not taking the business seriously. He enjoyed a good
night's sleep and wouldn't miss one for the world, but found it as anything
halfway near enough. He liked to be asleep by half-past eleven in the
morning if possible, and if that should come directly after a nice leisurely
lie-in then so much the better. A little light breakfast and a quick trip to
the bathroom while fresh linen was applied to his bed is really all the
activity he liked to undertake, and he took care that it didn't janate the
sleepiness out of him and disturb his afternoon of napping. Sometimes he was
able to spend an entire week asleep, and this he regarded as a good snooze.
He had also slept through the whole of 1986 and hadn't missed it.
Douglas Adams, The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
NOTE on Quotes: I am somewhat ashamed to admit that some number of the above
quotes are from texts which I have not YET read but I am afraid there are
only so many hours in the day. This bothers me since obviously the context
of a quotation is extremely important to its meaning and one's
understanding. What bothers me even more than this fact is the number of
wonderful quotes from texts I HAVE read but just wasn't wise enough to note
down the quotation. One reads for pleasure and intellectual stimulation and
it is a sad dilemma that when one is most intrigued by a work one is paying
the least attention to individual quotations of interest.
I also have a set of, generally humorous, secondary quotations which you
might enjoy and a set of quotes from Babylon 5. You might also want to look
at lists of My Favorites or read more quotations at loQtus or the Quotations
Home Page. For a set of humorous quotes look at the Fortunes page.
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