This quotes file exists so I have somewhere to put the quotes that collect around me on scraps of paper, and so that I can quickly refer friends to certain passages from books. See also If I Had My Life To Live Over, and Our Deepest Fear.
Ecstasy
Ecstasy is a buoyant state of joy. One of the finest ways to maintain a state of joyousness is to examine the dark side of your being, that instinctual nature that most human beings repress in civilized life. Within your instinctual nature are the seeds of ecstasy. We tend to live in our minds, in our emotions, occasionally in spirit, and almost never in our instinctual depths. We are born as wild as mountain lions but live most of our lives like sheep, forgetting and denying whole parts of ourselves. Sit on the earth with your back against a tree, and get in touch with your roots, which move deep into middle earth; this will restore your joyousness and balance. Each day, listen to your body-mind and heart. What are they telling you about a given situation? Ecstasy is like a windhorse waiting to be ridden -- the last wild ride before your passage into enlightenment. Take courage and live your passion in ecstasy.
-- The Power Deck: Ecstasy, Lynn V. Andrews
Attention Shoppers: Cursed is the ground because of you.
-- from a student film I saw in college
"Are you a God?" they asked the Buddha.
"No," he replied.
"Are you an angel, then?"
"No."
"A saint?"
"No"
"Then what are you?"
Replied the Buddha, "I am awake."
"I just wasn't myself today," Gupta commented. "I wasn't any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul."
-- Monk Gloats Over Yoga Championship, from The Onion
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered
small business signs to alert the reader that an "S" is
coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT
EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY
ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in
mind when creating hand-lettered small business signs
is that you should put quotation marks around random
words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or
even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
yeasah has been idle for 2.9 decades
-- m, in a test phase
You had to be taught to demand heavy doses of refined sugar in your diet and other non-food products and stimulants: soft drinks, coffee, and alcohol. You had to be sold the idea of filling your lungs with smoke. You had to have your curiosity and creativity pounded out of you by your parents and teachers. You have to be conned into buying the junk that clutters your life -- decreasing your happiness and your pocketbook. You have to be trained to be physically lazy.
You're all right. You can live on the earth just fine, you
were made for it. You're welcome there. It's all that stuff
that's been laid on you -- at some corporation's profit --
that's making you miserable and causing you to lose track of
the rhythm of the earth. You can get it back. But only
when you remember where you lost it.
-- Nicholas Johnson, Test Pattern For Living
Shun love, wise maid, lest love turn into hate;
When joys leap high, what long dark fall must wait!
Gaze over some fair pool, your eyes will miss
That weed deep down - mean love acts just like this.
Soft lure, base wile, sour trap - list arts more grim,
Each fits this vile name: 'love'; they sink that swim.
When Eros' evil dart aims true, folk reel;
Once made, that open sore what balm will heal?
Play ball with love, alas, love wins that game;
Pipe, love will call your tune, your wild note tame.
Free, love will bind your feet; pray, then, poor fool,
Whom fire, when felt, must burn - take heed, keep cool.
Mark well this gate: pass here, love asks full toll...
You'd risk your body? Love will have your soul.
-- Moyra Blyth
The strong man holds in a living blend strongly marked opposites. Not
ordinarily do men achieve this balance of opposites. The idealists are
not usually realistic, and the realists are not usually idealistic. The
militant are not generally known to be passive, nor the passive to be
militant. Seldom are the humble self-assertive, or the self- assertive
humble. But life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in
fruitful harmony.
-- Martin Luther King - A Testament of Hope
I guess even salt's gotta eat.
-- me to yeasah at 4 a.m.
I used to have that...all my friends would come over,
put in the ICQ cartridge, and wait for the Internet
to be invented...it got kinda boring after a while though.
-- Dean Carrano, on the Atari 2600 version of ICQ
The old sandman, my brown slope, but his bright spine, yeah
-- Bob Marley as heard by Jamie and me, African Herbsman (aka African Herman)
Please exit the customer database, it has been repaired.
-- Mike Neville, in a dream I had
From a conversation at Harry's, a seafood restaurant in Westboro that has
a cute logo with a happy clam on it:
Me: Look, a pumpkin with the Harry's Clam on it!
Jamie: A pumpkin with a hairy slime on it?!
There was only six Democrats in all of Hinsdale County and you, you son
of a bitch, you ate five of them.
-- Colorado judge, 1874, sentencing Alfred E. Packer for cannibalism.
It's on my desk, right by the feet of the big robot.
-- mute
Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone
into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and
excitement, a little nagging dread. It is the ancient fear of the
Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.
What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience
not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of
our essential loneliness; for nobody can discover the world for anybody
else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it
becomes a common bond, and we cease to be alone.
-- Wendell Berry, The One Inch Journey
"Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't
you?"
"Understand what?"
"Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
"Where?" said Pooh.
"Anywhere," said Christopher Robin.
-- AA Milne, The House At Pooh Corner
This looks familiar, vaguely familiar
Almost unreal, yet it's too soon to feel yet
Close to my soul, and yet so far away,
I'm going to go back there someday.
Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls.
Is that a song there, and do I belong there?
I've never been there, but I know the way.
I'm going to go back there someday.
Come and go with me, it's more fun to share!
We'll both be completely at home in midair.
We're flyin', not walking, on featherless wings,
We can hold on to love like invisible strings.
There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met.
Part heaven, part space -- or have I found my place?
You can just visit, but I plan to stay.
I'm going to go back there someday.
-- Gonzo the Great, "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday"
Il faut etre tres patient, repondit le renard. Tu t'assoiras d'abord un peu loin de moi, comme ca, dans l'herbe. Je te regarderai du coin de l'oeil et tu ne diras rien. Le language est source de malentendus. Mais, chaque jour, tu pourras t'asseoir un peu plus pres...
[One must be very patient, answered the fox. You will sit some distance from me, like that, in the grass. I'll look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you won't say a word. Language only causes misunderstandings. But each day, you can sit a little bit closer...]
Voici mon secret. Il est tres simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
[Here is my secret. It is very simple: one cannot truly see except with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.]
-- Le Renard, Le Petit Prince, par Antoine de Saint Exupery
-- The fox, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupery
Don't say a word! You don't have to. Much like children learn
their native tongue, it's best to listen first! So don't force
yourself to speak. After listening to Spanish for a while, it will
gradually start coming out of you!
-- William C. Harvey, M.S. in Spanish for Gringos
One could apply this wisdom to many other areas of life.
There are two dipthongs in 'eolian'.
-- my brother Scott
I plead alignment to the flakes
of the untitled snakes of a merry cow
and to the republicans for which they scam -
one nacho, underpants,
with licorice and jugs of wine for owls.
-- Matt Groenig
Last time I went out with you, I died!
-- Josh Pritchard
The Intrapreneur's Ten Commandments
1. Come to work each day willing to be fired.
2. Circumvent any orders aimed at stopping your dream.
3. Do any job needed to make your project work, regardless of your job
description.
4. Find people to help you.
5. Follow your intuition about the people you choose, and work only with
the best.
6. Work underground as long as you can - publicity triggers the
corporate immune mechanism (or better known as the BPU - Business
Preventative Unit).
7. Never bet on a race unless you are running in it.
8. Remember it is easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
9. Be true to your goals, but be realistic about the ways to achieve
them.
10. Honor thy sponsors.
-- Gifford Pinchot III
Thanks to Rob Sugerman for having this by his desk.
I think they have a problem with their system.
-- a man's opinion about systematic bigotry.
Everyone should carefully observe which way their heart draws them, and
then choose that way with all their strength.
-- supposedly a Hasidic saying
My girls are about to leave the room. They're having a baby in August.
-- Madeleine Gilmore, referring to me and Kerry in the first sentence and
two other people in the second sentence.
Or, if he takes what ever dull job he's stuck with -- and they are all,
sooner or later, dull -- and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look
for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their
own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he's likely to
discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of
an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change
him too. And not only the job and him, but others too because
the Quality tends to fan out like waves. The Quality job he didn't think
anyone was going to see is seen, and the person who sees it feels
a little better because of it and is likely to pass that feeling on to
others, and in that way the Quality tends to keep on going. My personal
feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be
done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that's all.
-- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
-- Anatole France
I like to make running water walk.
-- Sam [Taliaferro] Rayburn (1882-1961) On Conversation.
From Valton J. Young, The Speaker's Agent, 1956
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Jan: What are we going to do?!
Dennis: Nothing.
-- Jan and Dennis Reynolds
It is unclear why you have waited three and a half years to make us aware
that this claim was not processed.
-- Claims Director's letter to a doctor's office (probably actually
written by Holly Hausrath)
i'm a luser baby, so why don't you LART me
-- jer
...people who are lay people and maybe not...*pause*...other
physicians.
-- physician considering possibility of the existence of non-MD humans
I remember running over the hills just at dawn one summer morning and, pausing to rest in the woods, saw, through an arch of trees, the sun rise over river, hill, and wide green meadows as I never saw it before.
Something born of the lovely hour, a happy mood, and the unfolding
aspiration of a child's soul seemed to bring me very near to God...
-- unknown. I found it on a pink card, typed probably by my dad, among my baby stuff.
Here are some things Mr. Sheen recommends, but they're okay anyway...
-- Jonathan Andrew Sheen, on his web page
[To the poet,] everything is commonplace, and everything is
extraordinary.
-- Bill Moyers
1. NEVER TAKE ANYONE'S WORD FOR ANYTHING
2. THE ONLY SINCERITY IS PERSPICUITY
3. TO DESTROY IS ALWAYS THE FIRST STEP IN CREATION
4. NEVER BE AFRAID
5. SEX IS EVERYTHING
-- e.e. cummings (yes he did use all caps)
On June 17, 1744, the commissioners from Maryland and Virginia negotiated
a treaty with the Indians of the Six Nations of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The Indians were invited to send boys to William and Mary College. The
next day they declined the offer as follows:
"We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those
colleges, and that the Maintenance of your young men, while with you,
would be very expensive to you. We are convinced that you mean to do us
Good by your Proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise
must know that different Nations have different Conceptions of things and
you will therefore not take it amiss if our Ideas of this kind of
Education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some Experience
in it. Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the
Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your
Sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad Runners, ignorant
of every means of living in the woods... neither fit for Hunters,
Warriors, nor Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing.
We are, however, not the less oblig'd by your kind offer, tho' we decline
accepting it; and to show our grateful Sense of it, if the Gentlement of
Virginia will send us a Dozen of their sons, we will take care of their
Education, instruct them in all we know, and make Men of them."
[leaf's note: this quote has a lot to do with why I don't eat much meat, though I see a lot more violence in meat production than merely the killing of animals, particularly economic arrogance. that's just what I see, what guides my decisions... you do whatever's right for you.]
If we judge ourselves, if we reject ourselves for who we are and what we do, we are simply committing an act of violence against ourselves. This is an act of violence we can avoid. If we would simply look, and consider the ways in which we are violent, then we could stop. Our own acts of violence are ones we have the power to control and end. There are no shoulds in this. I do what I do for me, not for them. The idea is not to change behavior because it is wrong. My work is simply to pay attention. To do something different because I "should" is to miss the point. To be present is the point. When I am present with my eyes and heart open, what do I want to do? Do I really want to eath the flesh of another creature? Of course I like to eat "meat." I have grown up in a society that eats "meat." I have been conditioned not to think about what it was, who it was, that it lived, breathed, slept, ate, had babies, was afraid, sought to live... I can't think about that, it's dinner. So of course I like it. Of course I want it. Of course I would miss eating it if I were to stop eating creatures. That's why it is not helpful to stop as a should.
Perhaps a more helpful approach would be to go right on eating as I always have and pay very close attention. Perhaps if I didn't stop the thoughts about this meat, if I were really present to the texture of it, the smell of it, the feel of it under my knife and fork and in my mouth, I would simply choose not to eat it. Because the real point is not what I am doing to it, the point is what I am doing to me. ... William Penn converted to Quakerism as a grown man. In those days, the fashion was for a gentleman to wear a sword, and after a while Penn began to feel uncomfortable about being a Quaker, a member of a completely non-violent religion, and at the same time wearing a sword, an instrument of violence. He went to a friend who had assisted in his conversion. What should he do about his sword? he asked. The answer was this: "WEAR IT AS LONG AS YOU CAN."
Yes. With eyes and heart wide open to what we are doing. ... continue to eat meat, buy leather, go hunting, wear fur, until you no longer want to because to do so hurts your heart. When it hurts your heart more to have whatever the "product" is than it hurts you to do without it, you'll choose not to have it. And it will be a clean choice, a truly harmless, non-violent choice.
-- Cheri Huber, "One Less Act of Violence," pages 5-6. Included at the end of That Which You Are Seeking Is Causing You To Seek, 1990.
If two people who have been strangers, as all of us are, suddenly let the
wall between them break down, and feel close, feel one, this moment of
oneness is one of the most exhilarating, most exciting experiences in
life. It is all the more wonderful and miraculous for persons who have
been shut off, isolated, without love. The miracle of sudden intimacy is
often facilitated if it is combined with, or initiated by, sexual
attraction and consummation. However, this type of love is by its very
nature not lasting. The two persons become well acquainted, their
intimacy loses more and more its miraculous character, until their
antagonism, their disappointments, their mutual boredom kill whatever is
left of the initial excitement. Yet, in the beginning, they do not know
all this: in fact, they take the intensity of the infatuation, this being
"crazy" about each other, for proof of the intensity of their love, while
it may only prove the degree of their preceding loneliness.
-- Erich Fromm, "Is Love An Art?", p. 4 of The Art of Loving,
1956.
When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.
If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How
often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the
wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid
wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us -- or having found them
dry. Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to
others, I am beginning to discover. And for me the core, the inner
spring, can best be refound through solitude.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
In the spring of 1976 [Mitchell Feigenbaum] entered a mode of existence more intense than any he had lived through. He would concentrate as if in a trance, programming furiously, scribbling with his pencil, programming again. He could not call C division for help, because that would mean signing off the computer to use the telephone, and reconnection was chancy. He could not stop for more than five minutes' thought, because the computer would automatically disconnect his line. Every so often the computer would go down anyway, leaving him shaking with adrenalin. He worked for two months without pause. His functional day was twenty-two hours. He would try to go to sleep in a kind of buzz, and awaken two hours later with his thoughts exactly where he had left them. His diet was strictly coffee. (Even when healthy and at peace, Feigenbaum subsisted exclusively on the reddest possible meat, coffee, and red wine. His friends speculated that he must be getting his vitamins from cigarettes.) ...In the end, a doctor called it off. He prescribed a modest regimen of Valium and an enforced vacation. But by then Feigenbaum had created a universal theory."
"Later, Feigenbaum lived in a bare space, a bed in one room, a computer in
another, and, in the third, three black electronic towers for playing his
solidly Germanic record collection.... Piles of papers and books lined the
walls. He talked rapidly, his long hair, gray now mixed with brown,
sweeping back from his forehead."
-- James Gleick, Chaos, pp. 179-180 and 184.
We do not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and
winding streams with tangled growth as "wild". Only to the white man was
nature a "wilderness" and only to him was the land infested with "wild"
animals and "savage" people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and
we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the
hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon
us and the families we lived was it "wild" for us. When the very animals
of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was that for us the
"Wild West" began.
-- Chief Luther Standing Bear
24. ...And when the throng pressed [the Master] with its woes, beseeching him to heal for it and learn for it and feed it nonstop from his understanding and to entertain it with his wonders, he smiled upon the multitude and said pleasantly unto them, "I quit."
25. For a moment the multitude was stricken dumb with astonishment.
26. And he said unto them, "If a man told God that he wanted most of all to help the suffering world, no matter the price to himself, and God answered and told him what he must do, should the man do as he is told?"
27. "Of course, Master!" cried the many. "It should be pleasure for him to suffer the tortures of hell itself, should God ask it!"
28. "No matter what those tortures, nor how difficult the task?"
29. "Honor to be hanged, glory to be nailed to a tree and burned, if so be it that God has asked," said they.
30. "And what would you do," the Master said unto the multitude, "if God spoke directly to your face and said, 'I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.' What would you do then?"
31. And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard
upon the hillsides, across the valleys where they stood.
-- Richard Bach, Illusions, pp. 20-23
Bruno: Jeremy, if I've always had difficulty realizing that others are not me, and thus can only relate to people I've defined as part of myself, might it conclude that that's why I'm so judgemental?
Jeremy: To try to find universality only propagates discrimination and judgement. There are always "others" who don't fit your definition.
Bruno: So to fiercely define my uniqueness, my self-worth, I'm as well allowing others their individuality and acceptance?
Jeremy: Hm. You are beginning to grow-up Bruno.
-- C. Baldwin, Bruno: These Troubled Soles, p. 69 B
Don't be so unthinkingly civil all the time. When the system is grinding you down, unplug the grinding wheel.
-- Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge-- And Why We Must, p. xv
RCNC is at $0.00 -- Insert quarter to continue.
-- shodan
Sheila Broflovski: Just remember what the MPAA says: Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words!
-- South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Mark Twain said, "Those of you who are inclined to worry have the widest selection in history." Why complain? Try to do something about it - you know, it's [been] goin' on nine months now, since I decided that I was gonna declare that I am a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Oh yes, I'm going to run.
Shopped around for a party... Well, I looked at the Republicans. Decided talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator. You know, the light goes on, the light goes off, it's not gonna do anything that isn't built into it. But I'm not gonna talk to a conservative any more than I talk to my damn refrigerator.
Working for the Democratic party, now, that's kind of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
So I created my own party: it's called the Sloth and Indolence Party. I'm running as an anarchist candidate in the best sense of that word. I've studied the presidency carefully. I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all: if he gets up at night to go to the bathroom, somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue.
I guarantee that if I am elected, I will take over the White House, hang out, shoot pool, scratch my ass, and not do a damn thing.
Which is to say: if you want something done, don't come to me
do it for you, you gotta get together and figure out how to do
it yourselves. Is that a deal?
-- Utah Phillips
I think people can go in and make their own quotes.
- Carol S., reading my quotes links
Ooh, disclaimers: These are in no particular order. If I've typed or attributed a quote incorrectly, please email me, or squint a whole lot so you can't tell, or get outside, take a deep breath of fresh air and forget all about it. No, I don't know what an Intrapreneur is, but I like the rules. I haven't necessarily read the books I'm quoting from, sometimes I've just seen the quote somewhere. I haven't necessarily *not* read them, either.
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This page last revised Sun Apr 2 14:54:25 EDT 2006 by leaf