It’s fair and common to mock profound quotes, as in the “Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy” bit. But there are still a lot of quotes that provide, I think, very accurate and honest insight in the shortest span. Which ones do you find the most profound and truthful?
I’ll start:
“You always get exaggerated notions of things you don’t know anything about.” - Albert Camus
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” - Bernard Shaw
‘One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears…of laughter.’
“Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to be.” Eckhart Tolle
“Everyone is ignorant, only on different subjects.” Will Rogers
“Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about–however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way–either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.” Melville in Moby Dick.
“Wherever you go, there you are.” This might be an old Mexican saying (dicho) but I don’t know.
In honor of Eli Wallach’s death this week, “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.”
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Arthur C. Clarke
*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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 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.* – Carl Sagan
Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.
(In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.)
-Louis Pasteur
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:1-5
“If you are in a fair fight, you didn’t plan it very well.” (Can’t recall who said it)
The sage points at the moon but the idiot only sees the finger.
Bruce Lee dramatizes it in Enter the Dragon.
“Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
I used to be “with it.” But then they changed what “it” was. And now, what I’m with isn’t “it”, and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me. IT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU! – Abe Simpson
So true…so true.
“It’s not the thing we look upon, that paints our point of view,
But the heart through which we see it, that gives our world it’s hue.” Dean Jackson
“Life is just one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead.”
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
-Winston Churchill
“Moved Cafe Society --> MPSIMS.”
–some mod whose name is lost in the mists of time
“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure”
― Tacitus
“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
― Mark Twain
Heh–I was coming in to post exactly this one. It guides me both as a teacher and as a dad to little girls.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s response to a question about the most astounding fact he knows is pretty wonderful: here it is, in video form. Its marriage of science and beauty is, I think, among the better approaches to life.
Two of my favorites:
[QUOTE=George F. Will]
Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.
[/QUOTE]