Thoughts for the day
Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you’re heading.
Philosopher Lao Tzu, quoted in The Guardian
Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.
Marc Chagall, quoted on Bustle.com
The best things in life are free. The second-best things are very, very expensive.
Coco Chanel, quoted in the Financial Times
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
George Santayana, quoted in The Wall Street Journal
If God wanted us to vote, He would have given us candidates.
Jay Leno, quoted in the Observer-Dispatch (Utica, New York)
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in The New York Times
Money doesn’t talk, it swears.
Bob Dylan, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
Tom Stoppard, quoted on The Browser
Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, quoted on Forbes.com
Fame is only the sum total of all the misunderstandings that can gather around a new name.
Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in The Guardian
TV drama is like the picture on the Quality Street tin, but with less quality and nothing of the street.Ken Loach, ibid
It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.P.G. Wodehouse, in The Man Upstairs, quoted in The Times
Speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. Death is number two? This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you’d rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.’’Jerry Seinfeld, quoted on Intelligence Squared
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau, quoted in The Tablet
A soul that is unbound is as mad as one with cemented borders.
Philosopher Gillian Rose, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle
Events which cannot be prevented must be directed.
Count Metternich, quoted in The Guardian
Anger is the prelude to courage.
Eric Hoffer, quoted on Forbes.com
If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.
Ted Turner, quoted on Aeon.com
Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner, and tout pardonner makes dull copy.
Journalist Nicholas Tomalin, quoted in the New Statesman
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill, quoted in The Jerusalem Post
Life’s disappointments are harder to take if you don’t know any swear words.
Cartoonist Bill Watterson, quoted in The Wall Street Journal
I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting you really believe what you just said.
William F. Buckley Jr, quoted on Medium.com
Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
Martin Amis in The New York Times
“We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we are young. The young sow wild oats; the old grow sage” (Winston Churchill
Nuance is the first casualty of politics and, too often, decency is the second.
Alex Massie, on Slate.com
The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world.
Naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, quoted in the journal Nature
Most critics are educated beyond their intelligence.
Critic Kenneth Tynan, quoted in the Pasadena Star-News
Aim at simplicity, and hope for truth
Philosopher Nelson Goodman, quoted on The Browser
A baby is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Ronald Knox’s definition, quoted in The Times
Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he think he was doing at the time?
Billy Connolly, quoted in The Daily Telegraph
Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person that you always should have been.
David Bowie, quoted in The Guardian
Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.
Woody Allen, quoted in The Daily Telegraph
Montaigne
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to
me.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will. Book I, ch. 20
Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so.
How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us
There are no angels and no devils. Montaigne
pStability is a mirage, nothing more than “languid motion”, because everything is in constant motion. Human behaviour istypical of nature, constantly changing.
Go out of the world as you entered it. The same passage that you made from womb to life, without feeling or fright, make again from life to death. Your death is part of the order of the universe, the life of the world
Fear of death is the cause of all our vices
e I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?” Book II, ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them… Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will. Book I, ch. 20
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Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted in The Sunday Times
John Stuart Mill famously said that if just one man in the world thinks differently from all the rest, there’s still no excuse for silencing him.
I would rather be terrified occasionally than supervised continually.
Make envy your enemy.
Artist Marilyn Minter, quoted in NYMag.com
It is the summit of idleness to deplore actuality.
Martin Amis, quoted in The Atlantic
It takes a sharp tongue to speak bluntly (Actor Robert Eddison, quoted in The Times)
To describe happiness is to diminish it.
Stendhal, quoted on Forbes.com
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson, quoted on The Browser
Face up to death. Thereafter anything is possible. Albert Camus, quoted in The Guardian
Commitment is an act, not a word.
Jean-Paul Sartre, quoted in the New York Daily News
An old error is always more popular than a new truth.
German proverb, quoted on Forbes
They who are of the opinion that money will do everything may very well be suspected to do everything for money. English statesman George Savile, quoted in The Boston Globe
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Arthur C. Clarke, quoted on BBC.com
In every calm and reasonable person, there is a hidden second person scared witless about death.
Philip Roth, quoted in The New York Times
It is part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt.
Tacitus, quoted in The Times
One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.
Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher, quoted on Forbes.com
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is. Francis Bacon, quoted in The Guardian
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell, quoted in The Independent