Oh the “words are wind” part is not new. That dates to antiquity. Just the ‘he wrote’ addition seems to be original. Though I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t added that bit before.
Funny, but… inspiring?
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. – Thomas Jefferson
Take stuff from work, and goof off on the company time. I wrote this at work: they’re paying me to write about stuff I steal from them. Life is good.
King Missile, Take Stuff From Work.
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
-CS Lewis
I’m not a Christian, but I love this one.
“My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.” - Bluto
“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 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 and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for 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 he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.” - T. Roosevelt
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” - G.K. Chesterton
Nothing venture, nothing win
Blood is thick, but water’s thin.
In for a penny, in for a pound
It’s Love that makes the world go round!
W.S. Gilbert
I had skin like leather and the diamond hard look of a cobra.
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
-John Donne, poet (1573-1631)
Some from Neil Gaiman, from his Sandman series of graphic novels:
– The price of getting what you want is not wanting it any longer.
– Things always seem better after a good breakfast.
– Life ends, and that’s what gives it value.
– You cannot truly change “what is” until you accept “what is.”
– The future can be learned for a price, but the story of the past is free. (I always think of this one in conjunction with Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.)
Lies!
“This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. “Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days.” Well, we had a big rain. I don’t know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothin’. They’re your days. Choke 'em!”
“It’s very hard to stop doing things you’re used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.”
2 of my favorite quotes ever.
“How much of what you have done today has been carried out in the way you learned it, maybe years ago, without a thought of possible improvement?”
W. Edwards Deming
If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.–Edward Hopper
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.–Immanuel Kant
It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.–Pierre August Renoir
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.–Albert Schweitzer
"Say to yourself in the early morning:
I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men.
All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.
But I, because I have seen that the nature of good is right, and of ill the wrong,
and that the nature of the man himself who does wrong is akin to my own
(not of the same blood and seed, but partaking with me in mind, that is in a portion of divinity),
I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong,
nor can I be angry with my kinsmen or hate him;
for we have come into the world to work together,
like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth.
To work against one another therefore is to oppose Nature,
and to be vexed with one another or to turn away from him is to tend to antagonism." -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
A trifle long, but one of my favourite quotes. One of my other favorites,
“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
I’m pretty sure its"
“–the price of getting what you want is getting what you once wanted”.
Actually, I start every day by saying this:
May all be happy
May all be without dis-ease
May all creatures find well-being
None should be in misery of any sort
-unknown
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett
What bugs me about this one is that the part given is only a small segment of a greater whole. Donne’s Meditation XVII is a Christian religious essay. This small segment always ignores that.
XVII. MEDITATION.
PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
**No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. **Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and to promote their common welfare - all else is lost.
Barack Obama