Favorite quotes

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IlliniDave
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by IlliniDave »

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few” -Shunryu Suzuki

That's not intended as a backhanded stab at the many learned folks here, it speaks to cultivating mindfulness.

"Don't try to change Doofus, let Doofus change you." -Neil Peart.

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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by jacob »

Leopold wrote: One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.
Tolstoy wrote: The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.
Sinclair wrote: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
Confucius wrote: If I raise one corner for someone and he cannot come back with the other three, I do not go on.
(It's actually kinda tragic, for me anyway, that these are my favorites rather than something more uplifting like "the glass if half full" or "hope springs eternal" or whatever.)

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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

“Just clean it for a year.” - Wise Old Countrywoman Realtor
“From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”- Dr. Seuss

chenda
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by chenda »

Afterwards I want nothing but peace.

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Alphaville
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Alphaville »

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

paretotime
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by paretotime »

“Move as much as possible, exercise just enough.” —Jade Teta

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” —Pablo Picasso

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Alphaville
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Alphaville »

another choice one:

“hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man”

:lol:

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Egg
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Egg »

Tricky, but here's a (long) quote I like from Bertrand Russell:
For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, that the world was not made for us, and that, however beautiful may be the things we crave, Fate may nevertheless forbid them. It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of submission to Power is not only just and right: it is the very gate of wisdom.
Also CS Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals
Also, many poems, which are sort of like learned long-form quotes. Again, hard to pick a favourite, but this would feature high up: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging

ertyu
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by ertyu »

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Forgot by whom.

Seconding the mom and dad poem, v. topical :lol: By I think the same author

Out of work
divorced
usually pissed
He aimed low in life
And missed

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

“Man did not weave the web of life – he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

Campitor
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Campitor »

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.” ~ Seneca

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." ~ Milton Friedman

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. ~ Thomas Sowell

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." ~ Marie Curie

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, 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 errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end 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 neither know victory nor defeat." ~ Teddy Roosevelt

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Alphaville
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Alphaville »

ertyu wrote:
Tue Jun 23, 2020 4:39 pm
Seconding the mom and dad poem, v. topical :lol: By I think the same author

Out of work
divorced
usually pissed
He aimed low in life
And missed
hahahaha! i think that’s a different guy. mine is philip larkin. i normally hate larkin (there’s a poem where he whines about rye bread, lmao) but in “this be the verse” he achieved maximum existential gallows humor.

oh, here is some samuel beckett:

“you’re on earth—there’s no cure for that.” :lol:

ertyu
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by ertyu »

having started on the classics: "life is hell, and hell is other people."

Frita
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Frita »

“Dare to think. Courage to learn.” Kant

“But you don't see no hearses with luggage racks.” Don Henley

plantingtheseed
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by plantingtheseed »

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Last edited by plantingtheseed on Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

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jennypenny
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by jennypenny »

"Be Gretchen." -- Gretchen Rubin, Twelve Personal Commandments

"I exist as I am, that is enough." -- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“There is no one alive who is youer than you!”-- Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

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Alphaville
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Alphaville »

those remind me of nietzsche’s “become what you are.”

nietzsche is fucking great, and a goldmine for quotes, but also often so misunderstood/misquoted.

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jennypenny
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by jennypenny »

Same with Whitman. I connect with him more than any other writer. He was criticized for kissing up to Emerson and being a bit of a huckster, but I find his writing much more evocative than Emerson's. If Emerson's writing was the soul of the transcendentalist movement, Whitman's was its flesh.

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
When I give, I give myself.
In the faces of men and women, I see God.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
I know I am august, I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be
understood

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Lemur
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Lemur »

“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.”
― Charlie Munger

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Alphaville
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Re: Favorite quotes

Post by Alphaville »

jennypenny wrote:
Fri Jun 26, 2020 2:51 pm
Same with Whitman. I connect with him more than any other writer. He was criticized for kissing up to Emerson and being a bit of a huckster, but I find his writing much more evocative than Emerson's. If Emerson's writing was the soul of the transcendentalist movement, Whitman's was its flesh.
yeah. nobody is perfect, but whitman is amazing. i used to carry with me a fat paperback of leaves of grass in my traveling days. that was waaay before kindles and ipads so one had to choose correctly or get stuck. :lol: whitman was infinite.

i got to emerson actually from nietzsche, who worshipped him. i still reread self-reliance every now and then.

-

ps- i didn’t know you were a liverpool fan hahaha!

(im a klopp fan, so, superhappy for this.)

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