Quotes

In no particular order…

One is easily fooled by that which one loves. -Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

We are living in a storm where a hundred contradictory elements collide; debris form the past, scraps of the present, seeds of the future, swirling, combining, separating under the imperious wind of destiny.- Adolphe Retté, La Plume. March 1 1898

“Die gerade Linie ist ein wahres Werkzeug des Teufels” -Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Ist mîn leben mir getroumet oder ist ez wâr? -Walther von der Vogelweide

He was sounding her, semi-consciously, to see if she could understand him; to learn if she were only an animal the colour of flowers, or had a soul in her to keep her sweet.- Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Weir of Hermiston”

Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood. -Buckminster Fuller

If you pile up money for your heirs, they will surely waste it; if you collect books for them, they will likely not read a word. It is better to pile up virtue unobtrusively- such a legacy will last a long, long time. -Hakuin

The truth is, it’s far easier to make a bomb than to educate 400 million people – Arundhati Roy, speaking on India’s development of nuclear weapons.

“…that pox-ridden little pocketbook of pointless pontifications” – Geoffrey Pullum on Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style”

Lass dich aber warnen, du Wissbegieriger, vor dem Dickicht der Meinungen und vor dem Streit um Worte. – Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Greatness is not where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it- but sail we must, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life itself is a quotation. – Jorge Luis Borges

In life, he suffered from a sense of unreality, as do many Englishmen.-Jorges Luis Borges, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything.- Mark Twain

Having come from the light and from the gods, here I am in exile, separated from them. -Fragment of Turfa’an M7

Our cause is a secret within a secret, a secret that only another secret can explain; it is a secret about a secret that is veiled by a secret. -Ja a’far as-Sadiq, sixth Imam

Lament, if necessary, but do not dwell too long on your bad moments lest they rise to rule your emotions forever. -Attila the Hun.

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. -Winston Churchill

All thought paralyzes action. -Jean Cocteau

And Time, a maniac scattering dust, and Life, a fury slinging flame. – Tennyson

He who binds himself to a joy, does the winged life destroy;
but he who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise. -William Blake

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul. – Henry van Dyke

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. – Sir Peter Ustinov

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously. – Sir Peter Ustinov

It is the triumph of reason to get on with those that have none. -Voltaire

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them. -Albert Einstein

The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. – William Gibson

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. – Chaucer

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.
-Gwendolyn Brooks

Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.
-The Duchess, Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

On this hapless earth
There’s small sincerity of mirth,
And laughter oft is but an art
To drown the outcry of the heart.
-Hartley Coleridge, Address to certain Gold-fishes.

Es gibt nichts Stilleres, als eine geladene Kanone. – Heinrich Heine

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -Darwin

You don’t go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you have
-Donald Rumsfeld

Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
-Will Durant

Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.- Mike Tyson