"Iron rusts from disuse;
stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen;
even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind."

Leonardo da Vinci

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"It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word."

Andrew Jackson

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"Intelligence is characterised by a natural incomprehension of life."

Henri Bergson

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Ah, if in this world there were no such thing as cherry blossoms,
perhaps then in springtime our hearts would be at peace.

Ariwara no Narihira

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Only when I could take up the sword of judgement
along with the lotus of compassion
was I able to stay in a relationship comfortably.

Stef

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They used to spend long hours talking over coffee.
Eventually (or unfortunately), he mistook caffine overdose for love, and proposed.

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To lose one lover may be considered a misfortune,
to lose both seems like carelessness.

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"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

Ernest Hemingway

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Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

HAMLET:

I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

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Love makes the time pass. Time make the love pass.

French proverb

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I learned early and deeply the habit of emotional incontinence,
spewing one's emotions automatically without regard to their causes
or their likely effects on the people around one.

jill@qualcomm.com (Jill Lundquist)

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Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness

Stendhal

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If ignorance is bliss and patience is a virtue,
you can have a pretty good life if you're stupid and willing to wait.

Jill Knapp <jknapp@goodnet.com>

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To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Bruce Lee

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Sensuality often hastens the growth of love so much that the roots remain weak and are easily torn up.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God's best gift to man

Pliny the Elder

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No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form

Henry Ward Beecher

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Each of us understands in others only those feelings he is capable of producing himself

Andrew Gide

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To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past,
it is necessary not to feel oneself an isolated individual whose day will soon be over,
but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future

Bertrand Russell

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"We will not have freedom until we are free of the psychology dictated by our DNA."

Bill Spence

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...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.

Steven Jay Gould

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Ordinary language embodies the metaphysics of the Stone Age.

Paraphrase of Bertrand Russell

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"Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better than the metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men"

J. L. Austin
("A Plea for Excuses," Philosophical Papers, third ed., ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock [Oxford: OUP, 1979], 185).

Thanks to Prof. William Day, Le Moyne College for the correction of this quote.

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Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed
by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

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No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Epictetus, Discourses. Chap. xv.

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Mr Oddy by Hugh Walpole, contains the following bit of dialogue which I thought reminicent of Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. All you need to know is that Tommy is in the flush of youth and Mr Oddy a good deal older.

"And did she love you," Tommy asked eagerly, "as much as you loved her?"

"Nobody, my dear boy," Mr Oddy replied, " loves you as much as you love them; either they love you more or they love you less. The first of these is often boring, the second always tragic."

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See also: My Collected Quotes