It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas.
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Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
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On the view of earth from 3.7 billion miles away: 'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home, That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [...] There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.'
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Studies indicate that the one quality all successful people have is persistence. They're willing to spend more time accomplishing a task and to perservere in the face of many difficult odds. There's a very positive relationship between people's ability to accomplish any task and the time they're willing to spend on it.
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A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he's going to get sick on it.
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The ocean is but a larger lake. At midsummer you may sometimes see a strip of glassy smoothness on it, a few rods in width and many miles long...
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If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
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No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.
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I don't know why no one ever thought to paste a label on the toilet-tissue spindle giving 1-2-3 directions for replacing the tissue on it. Then everyone in the house would know what Mama knows.
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The best introduction by far to representation of the human figure in art. The Nude is a beautifully written work of sophisticated connoisseurship that analyzes art in its own terms rather than imposing strident, politicized categories on it. It outlines the major body types, male and female, in Western art and, via a wealth of illustrations, trains the reader's eye to detect and evaluate proportion. This book reveres art
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'In Saudi Arabia, a motorist accidentally killed a monkey on a highway in the Khamis Messeit region. Later, while driving home on the same road, he found monkeys still gathered around the dead animal's body. The mourners spotted his car, jumped on it, and smashed his windows!'
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Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy you can't build on it it's only for wallowing in.
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The roster of Nobel Peace Prize winners, though it has some strange people on it from time to time, tends to feature folks who fought for social justice in a nonviolent and constructive way somehow.
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Imagine living in a cage in the dark, unable to move, day after day. The suffering of today's American farm animals is almost beyond belief. They don't have a choice, but you do, and their lives depend on it.
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I wouldn't bet the farm on it, but I'd bet the main house. I wouldn't even bet the outhouse on Mondale.
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LEONARD I've failed, Chris. I can't locate the white collective unconscious. CHRIS I wouldn't feel too bad about that. You know, western culture hasn't really carried the baton on folklore and mythology. The rise of Christianity put the kibosh on it--the gospel hits the number one best-seller list and everything else gets remaindered.
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The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.
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The Internet is like a giant jellyfish. You can't step on it. You can't go around it. You've got to get through it.
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As she came up to the arch Elizabeth saw with a start that it was written on. She went closer. She peered at the stone. There were names on it. Every grain of the surface had been carved with British names; their chiselled capitals rose from the level of her ankles to the height of the great arch itself; on every surface of every column as far as her eyes eyes could see there were names teeming, reeling, over surfaces of yards, of hundreds of yards, over furlongs of stone. She moved through the space beneath the arch where the man was sweeping. She found the other pillas identically marked, their faces obliterated on all sides by the names that were carved on them. 'Who are these, these ...?; She gestured with her hand.' 'These?' The man with the brush sounded surprised. 'The lost.' 'Men who died in battle?' 'No. The lost, the ones they did not find. The others are in cemetries.' 'These are just the ... unfound?' She looked at the vault above her head and then around in panic at the endless writing, as though the surface of the sky had been papered in footnotes. When she could speak again, she said, 'from the whole war?' The man shook his head. 'Just these fields.' He gestured with his arm. Elizabeth went and sat on the steps on the other side of the monument. Beneath her was a formal garden with some rows of white headstones, each with a tended plant or flower at its base, each cleaned and beautiful in the weak winter sunlight. 'Nobody told me.' She ran her fingers with their red-painted nails back through her thick dark hair. 'My God, nobody told me.
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When you get right down to it, the Safety Lecture is a silly idea. I mean, if the passengers really thought the plane was going to crash, they wouldn't get on it in the first place, let alone learn how to get an adequate oxygen supply on the way down. by
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As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
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The common erotic project of destroying women makes it possible for men to unite into a brotherhood; this project is the only firm and trustworthy groundwork for cooperation among males and all male bonding is based on it.
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All that Hubert needs over there is a gal to answer the phone and a pencil with an eraser on it.
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There's a great text in Galatians, Once you trip on it, entails Twenty-nine distinct damnations, One sure, if another fails:
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There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech.
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The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
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'Think as I think' said the man, 'or you are abominable. You are a toad.' And after I had thought on it, I said 'I will then, be a toad.'
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A black pall, you know, with a silver cross on it, or R.I.P.—requiescat in pace—you know. That seems to me the most beautiful expression?...
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A beggar had been sitting by the side of the road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. Spare some change? mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his baseball cap. I have nothing to give you, said the stranger. Then he added, What's that you are sitting on? Nothing, replied the beggar, Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember. Ever look inside? asked the stranger. What's the point? There's nothing in there. Have a look inside, insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw the box was filled with gold.
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There was a lot pf prejudice back then. But I don't like to dwell on it. I'm just happy that the Tuskegee Airmen are being recognized contributing to the war effort back then.
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