Quickies
Fair warning:
Some of these were picked up from signatures all over the internet. I haven't checked their accuracy or anything.
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. - Henry David Thoreau.
Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us Alan Quartermain, King Soloman's Mines
One of the greatest pains to humanity is the pain of a new idea. It is so ‘upsetting'—you do not know at once which of your old ideas it will or will not turn out. --Bagehot
When Philip of Macedon presented his son, who afterwards became Alexander the Great, to Aristotle as a pupil, he said, "See that you make yourself useless to my son.
If you trust in yourself and believe in your dreams and follow your star, you'll still get beaten by people who spend -their- time working hard and learning thing and weren't so lazy. --Terry Pratchett, in The Wee Free Men.
“Believing in the Hogfather is important. It trains our imaginations on the little lies so we can believe the big lies like justice [and] truth.” --Terry Pratchett, in The Hogfather
The current national accounting system treats the earth as a business in liquidation. -- ecoconomist Herman Daly tb cnf'd
Dig a well before you are thirsty. - ancient Chinese proverb
A dancing cricket avatar my husband made for me.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato
Definition of hyperspace given by Hajime Yatate, the studio that produced Cowboy Bebop. They said that hyperspace is the space between the frames on movie film. The space is 270 times smaller than the frame itself, so that traveling through the space between the frames takes 1/270th as long as in real space, and thus one can get quickly from one planet to the other.
When Babylon 5 creator J Michael Straczynski was asked how fast the ships went, he replied that they moved at "the speed of plot."
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Things should be made as simple as possible -- but no simpler.
- A. Einstein
Do not be too quick to criticize intermediate designs. You might be one.
- RM Thomas, VE3TOU
But all this is beyond the children, and beyond me too for that matter, even now in ripe experience; for I never did know what women mean, and never shall except when they tell me, if that be in their power.
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
It was more of woe than wonder, being such days of violence, that mother knew herself a widow, and her children fatherless. Of children there were only three, none of us fit to be useful yet, only to comfort mother, by making her to work for us.
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
For although I am now in a place of some authority, I have observed that no one ever listens to me, when I attempt to lay down the law; but all are waiting with open ears until I do enforce it.
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
He who reads a history cares not much for the wisdom or folly of the writer (knowing well that the former is far less than his own, and the latter vastly greater), but hurries to know what the people did, and how they got on about it.
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
Nevertheless, I must needs go out, being young and very stupid, and feared of being afraid; a fear which a wise man has long cast by, having learned of the manifold dangers which ever and ever encompass us. And beside this folly and wildness of youth, perchance there was something, I know not what, of the joy we have in uncertainty.
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
'Now let us bandy words no more,' said mother, very sweetly; 'nothing is easier than sharp words, except to wish them unspoken.'
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
But whatever lives or dies, business must be attended to; and the principal business of good Christians is, beyond all controversy, to fight with one another.
- Lorna Doone by RD Blackmoore, 1889
Feeling a need to convince others that you're right is something that comes from religion; I'm simply content to know that I *am* right, even if others don't know it.
- Ponter Boddit in RJ Sawyer's Humans
The unfortunate thing in life is that we stumble over the truth, and then, get up and go on as if nothing had ever happened.
- Winston Churchill
The reason we fall is so we can get up again.
- Batman Returns
If your dream doesn't work, find a better dream.
- SharkBoy and LavaGirl, quote not exact
Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.
- St. Francis of Assisi
War is the continuation of diplomacy by other means.
- von Clausewitz
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
- Derek Curtis Bok
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Debating is looking for ways to convince. Dialogue is listening to understand.
"You can't outrun Death forever. But you can make the Bastard work for it." (Andromeda Opening Quote)