Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Quotes & Sayings

Just a collection of quotes.

Listen to your heart or your heart might stop talking to you.




Happiness can be attained either when existence accords with our desires, or when our desires are in harmony with existence. True, the second alternative is difficult; but the first is impossible.
Sangharakshita (A Survey of Buddhism)

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind....William James

The universe (which others call the Library) - Jorge Luis Borges http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html

We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need. ~ Epicurus

To know you have enough is to be rich. ~ Tao Te Ching

The feminine is more powerful than the masculine, the soft is more powerful than the hard, the water is more powerful than the rock. -Osho

 Constant dripping wears away the stone (or water wears away the stone by constant dripping not by smashing it)

Chinese Version:  
Dripping water pierces a stone; a saw made of rope cuts through wood.
?(shui)?(di)?(shí)?(chuan),?(shéng)?(jù)?(mù)?(duàn)?


In music you are taught to play correctly, but sometimes the incorrect is correct - From Israeli movie "The Secrets".

As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned less a man (Seneca  quoted by Thomas à Kempis, Imitation, Book I, c. 20. perhaps advocating the monastic life or a vow of silence). 

“We grow too soon old and too late smart” Dutch Proverb
( Old too soon, smart too late ... via Mike Tyson).

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly. Paul Valery

A good traveller doesn't know his destination; the best ... his origin

The mind of each man is a savage garden : Anne Rice - The Vampire Chronicles

How can one know the color of spring unless one visits the garden? (Farewell my Concubine)

Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew. Ivan Turgenev

"Genius demonstrates its autonomy not by ignoring all rules, but by deriving the rules from itself." (Kneller, Jane (2003). Guyer, Paul. ed. Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement: Critical Essays. Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 0742514196)

Paul Valéry, "Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable." (Notre destin et les lettres, 1937)  - Bonini's paradox 

Herbert Stein's Law: ''If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.''

"political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" : George Orwell

"The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it lies, too; and this lie creeps from its mouth: `I, the state, am the people.'... Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth. "
by:
Source:
from "Thus Spake Zarathustra"

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. Marx (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

Tolstoy - "The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

"A man puts plans in place and fate displaces them." - Russian saying.

“Once the limits of the possible have been overturned, it is difficult to bring them back,” Clausewitz

'Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child' - Cicero

There is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us, by our own efforts, is prepared to turn round and help those less fortunate. Margaret Thatcher
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_4_snd-big-society.html

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”   Evelyn Beatrice Hall (writing about Voltaire), incorrectly attributed to Voltaire, and less frequently, Jefferson, the attribution gets mixed up over time because Miss Beatrice Hall wrote a biography on Voltaire.

"Not the strongest, nor the smartest - those most responsive to change survive." --Charles Darwin

"More life may trickle out of men through thought than through a gaping wound." --Thomas Hardy

"Being impatient to win ensures a loss" - Louis XIV 

"When the hyena is the judge, the goat has no rights" African proverb

"Depending on your social height,
The law will see your crime as black—or else as white"   Jean de La Fontaine, 1621-1695 http://danieldendy.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/the-animals-stricken-with-plague-la.html

“He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.” King Lear, Act 3, Scene 6, Page 2.

“Watch your thoughts for they become words.
Watch your words for they become actions.
Watch your actions for they become habits.
Watch your habits for they become your character.
And watch your character for it becomes your destiny.
What we think, we become." Margaret Thatcher channeling her father channeling the Buddha

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. - C. S. Lewis

"There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face." (DUNCAN - Macbeth)
(There’s no way to read a man’s mind by looking at his face. I trusted Cawdor completely).

"Excuse me can you tell me where there is a vending machine where I can get some water?" "Here's some more water Mr X".

"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change." (Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard, (Tancredi the nephew character)

Everyone knows that an eager young bride can accomplish in 7 months what it takes an older bride to accomplish in 9 - heinlein

The second baby takes 9 months, but the first one can come anytime.

"a cat may look at a king" proverb

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Cemeteries are full of people who had the right of way (unattributed)

“You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” - Ayn Rand.

"Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artists" Attributed to Pablo Picasso but no credible source for this

"Art is what you can get away with" Andy Warhol?
 
"It is dangerous to be right on matters where the government is wrong" - Voltaire
(the original quote in French has no word which translates directly or indirectly to “government.” A better translation of Voltaire’s statement: It is dangerous to be right on matters where accredited men are wrong.")

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