Crookedpaw's Retreat: December 2007

"Quotation Marks"

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Henry Brooks Adams, historian
(1838-1918)

A quiet conscience sleeps in thunder.
English proverb

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety.
Joseph Joubert,essayist
(1754-1824)

To know another language is to have a second soul.
Charlemagne, King of the Franks
(742-814)

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic
(1880-1956)

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman
(1561-1626)

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art
Susan Sontag,author and critic
(1933-2004)

Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
Samuel Butler, writer
(1835-1902)

If you want to work on your art, work on your life.
Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist
(1860-1904)

War would end if the dead could return.
Stanley Baldwin, statesman
(1867-1947)

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head.
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President
(1858-1919)

Words are chameleons, which reflect the colour of their environment.
Learned Hand, jurist
(1872-1961)

Be good and you will be lonesome.
Mark Twain, author and humorist
(1835-1910)

Generalisation is the rationalisation of the uneducated.
Crookedpaw, back pocket philosopher
(1960- )

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer
(106-43 BCE)

Many people think that they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices
William James

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.
Gilbert Highet, writer
(1906-1978)

Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality.
Theodor Adorno, philosopher and composer
(1903-1969)

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
Christopher Morley, writer
(1890-1957)

For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live on a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... in an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer
(1934-1996)

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
William Somerset Maugham, writer
(1874-1965)

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart.
Robert M. Sapolsky, neuroscientist and author
(1957- )

We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher
(1803-1882)

If you wouldn't write it and sign it, don't say it.
Earl Wilson, columnist
(1907-1987)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire, philosopher
(1694-1778)

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.
Joanna Macy, writer and teacher
(1929- )

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher
(1803-1882)

A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and be free.
Nikos Kazantzakis, writer
(1883-1957)

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
Anne Lamott, writer
(1954- )

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix, musician, singer, and songwriter
(1942-1970)

Life is too short to die too soon.
Crookedpaw, back pocket philosopher
(1960- )

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson, lexicographer
(1709-1784)

We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
Learned Hand, jurist
(1872-1961)

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.
Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer
(1821-1881)

Crookedpaw's Retreat

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Felice Navidad.