Favorite Quotes

[jsluder]

"Adopt the pace of Nature: her secret is patience." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The good of the greatest number applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction." -- Pres. Theodore Roosevelt

"It is nothing to die; it is frightening not to live." -- Jean Valjean in Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

"... for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction; and time is its measure." -- from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard

"I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve." -- Montesquieu, Pensees Diverses 1899

"Absence diminishes small loves, and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire." -- La Rouchefoucald

"The wind blows hard among the pines
toward the beginning
of an endless past.
Listen: you've heard everything."
-- Shinkichi Takahashi

"... the time has been,
That, when the brains were out,
the man would die ..."
-- Macbeth, Act III, Scene IV, by William Shakespeare

"A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it."
-- Rosaline in Love's Labor's Lost, Act V, Scene II, by William Shakespeare

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lst."
-- from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

"... (his cat he calls her, but she owns him not) ..."
-- from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

[Mike Henry]

Beer is proof that God exists and that He loves us.
-Benjamin Franklin

[EricWingler]

Chance favors the prepared mind. -- Louis Pasteur

[LisaD]

"... but why is the rum gone?"

- Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Carribean

[Fitzgerald]

From a personal hero of mine:

"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
________________

Also, an interpretation from Hunter S. Thompson's (http://supak.com/gonzo.htm) quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

His quote:

"The TV Business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs."

**********

My variant (Insert your current occupation)

"Concept development and experimentation is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

[I.D.10-t]

Some moments passed, during which the thick vapour came from his mouth
in quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face.
"How now," he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, "this
smoking no longer soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if
thy charm be gone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not
pleasuring--aye, and ignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to
windward, and with such nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale,
my final jets were the strongest and fullest of trouble. What
business have I with this pipe? This thing that is meant for
sereneness, to send up mild white vapours among mild white hairs, not
among torn iron-grey locks like mine. I'll smoke no more--"

~Ahab

"In a way, we're a kind of Peace Corps."
Maj. A. Lincoln German,
Training Director of the Green Beret Special Warfare School
Ft. Bragg, N.C.


"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

[Congratulations]

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold."

Opening line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

[Innocent Bystander]

Beer is proof that God exists and that he loves us.
-Benjamin Franklin

"And Malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to man." - Housman

[SteveShaw]

Beer is proof that God exists and that he loves us.
-Benjamin Franklin

"And Malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to man." - Housman

Now we really are getting to the heart of the matter.

[susnfx]

"You look ravishing tonight, my dear, except for that cockroach on your knockers."

--Leander Starr to Catalina Ximenez in Genius by Patrick Dennis

Susan

[kkrell]

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

I have a T-shirt with a picture of the Cheshire cat, and "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad". The cat's grin glows in the dark.

The above is another of my favourite quotes. Also:

“Cheshire Puss,” [Alice] began . . . “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

[Congratulations]

"There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet."

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

"They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
....They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
....They charmed it with smiles and soap."

Lewis Carrol, The Hunting of the Snark

"There is a willow grows ascant the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do "dead men's fingers" call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile they bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress
Or like a creature native and endued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death."

Queen Gertrude telling Laertes of Ophelia's death, from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

That last one is easily the most beautiful set of words penned in the English language.

[Walden]

• It is well that war is so terrible— otherwise we should grow too fond of it.
• We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them.
  
  --Robert E. Lee

[jim stone]

When business and medical care are run by government,
business and medicare are run like government--me

By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.

No one saves us but ourselves.
No one can and no one may.
We alone must tread the path.
Buddha's only show the way.

The buddha-first saw this written on
the side of a night school for adults
in Simla.

[Doug_Tipple]

When business and medical care are run by government,
business and medicare are run like government--me

By ourselves is evil done,
By ourselves we pain endure,
By ourselves we cease from wrong,
By ourselves become we pure.

No one saves us but ourselves.
No one can and no one may.
We alone must tread the path.
Buddha's only show the way.

The buddha-first saw this written on

in Simla.

Jim, I see that the geodesic dome where you are staying outside of Taos is making you kindle your Buddhist roots.

My quote is from my spiritual buddy, Henry David Thoreau: "Time is just a stream that I go fishing in." Henry was once imprisoned for not paying the poll tax. His friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, came to visit him in jail. Ralph said, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" Feeling that every thinking person should share his views, Henry said to Ralph, "What are you doing out there?"

I have been feeling bad that I have not joined in the peaceful demonstations around the world this week for peace. I don't know, I just don't seem to be a person for demonstrations. Yet, during the Vietnam War, as now, I still feel the sadness and shame of a government that doesn't represent the best interests of this great nation.