Finally, for the first time in one place: all those pithy or profound things that other people have said and that I've jotted down for one reason or another.
Please, keep in mind: the following quotations do not necessarily represent the views of myself or of anyone else other than the author.
With that being said, if something piques your interest, ask me what it's doing here. (If you've ever met me, you know I have an opinion about simply everything.)
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...But a curiosity like mine is after all the most pleasurable of vices—I beg your pardon! I meant to say: the love of truth has its reward in Heaven, and already upon earth.
—Friederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 45
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[There is a] difference between our psychological conceptions and what are called concepts in logic. In logic a concept is unalterable; but what are popularly called our "conceptions of things" alter by being used. The aim of "Science" is to attain conceptions so adequate and exact that we shall never need to change them.
—William James, Psychology, "Perception"
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It is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.
—Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, "New Pathways in Science"
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—Jorge Aigla's Four Rules of Life (with Claudio's addendum, appended by the Editor)
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All men by nature desire to know. An example of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves.
—Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I (980a22)
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The anxiety of those who are daring cannot be opposed to joy or even to the comfortable enjoyment of tranquilized bustle. It stands—outside of all such opposition—in secret alliance with the cheerfulness and gentleness of creative longing.
—Martin Heidegger, What is Metaphysics?
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If you see a fork in the road... take it.
—Yogi Berra
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My father warned me about men and booze, but he never said a word about women and cocaine.
—Tallulah Bankhead
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—Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
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I don't believe in god for the same reasons I don't believe in the Easter bunny.
—Clarence Darrow
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Another property of waves of light, and one of the most marvellous is that when some of them come from different or even from opposing sides, they produce their effect across one another without any hindrance. Whence also it comes about that a number of spectators may view different objects at the same time through the same opening, and that two persons can at the same time see one another's eyes.
—Christiaan Huygens, Treatise on Light[13]
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Once a philosopher, twice a pervert.
—Voltaire
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God is an iron.
—Spider Robinson
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Tina Louise was the only woman I ever met who in real life looked like she was in Technicolor.
—George Stein
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I am a serious actress.
—Tina Louise
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Not to be born at all is best.
—Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
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A gentleman is someone who never gives offense unintentionally.
—Eva Brann
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Over the footbridge.—In our
relations with people who are bashful about their feelings, we must be
capable of dissimulation; they feel a sudden hatred against anyone who
catches them in a tender, enthusiastic, or elevated feeling, as if he had
seen their secrets. If you want to make them feel good at such moments,
you have to make them laugh or voice some cold but witty sarcasm; then
their feeling freezes and they regain power over themselves. But I am
giving you the moral before telling the
story.
There was a
time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct
our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you: "Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?"—Immediately, you did not want to any more; and when I asked you again, you remained silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn't. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.
—Friederich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book One, 16
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When I'm backed into a
corner I come out fighting like a wildcat. Unless I've
had too much to drink; then I slide down the wall and
make passionate love on the floor.
—Blanche, The Golden Girls
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An artist is someone who never does as they're told.
—the Editor
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Enough of this.
Newton, forgive me.
—Albert Einstein
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The impossible is easy; it's the possible that's difficult.
—the Editor
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They
laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
—Carl Sagan
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In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the
awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus (quoted by Robert Kennedy, speaking on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
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If you can't do it comfortably, do it uncomfortably.
—the Editor
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Coffee—Black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love.
—Turksih proverb
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What a piece of work!
—William Shakespeare
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I really try to be a very conscientious whore...I swear, I have a lot of
clients who say, "You're a good whore!"
I remember one guy, he called me up,
and...very wealthy guy, living out
in
the hills, and I got to his house, and, um, he wanted me to strip naked,
so I did, then he gave me a massage, then he wanted to give me a sponge
bath. And then he spent about an hour talking to me about this great
experience he had at a Phil Collins concert. Then he said, "Bye!" You
know? That's what he needed, that's what he needed.
Ultimately it's always about human
contact, and ideally I would like to
be
able for everyone I meet to be like my lover, to be that open and that
flowing. Why do we put a positive value on restricting our ability to
share intimacy with people? Why is that better than being able to share
freely with more people?
Sex is good. Sex is wonderful! Sex
is...one of the best things about
being
alive, I figure. Most people's experience of this transcendence is the
orgasm, this momentary thing, and then, you let go and then...Oh! you get
yourself back together and you're all guarded again, and for a lot of
people that includes a great deal of shame, when you get your nonorgasmic
personality back. I mean when you think about the Catholic church and all
that, the priests and all the prayers and all the sunlight coming in
through the stained glass windows shining down...I mean, I don't know
about you, but I've been in church and been really moved by that.
And the reason I understand that is
because I've had orgasms. That's
what
sex is. Sex is ecstasy. I think that the planet and the...I think it's
wonderful! It's fabulous! I mean, how can you look at a sunset, or see the
stars, and not think, "Goddamn, this is a wonderful planet!" You know? I
mean, don't you do that sometimes? Don't you look at the sunset and go,
"Damn! That is fabulous! Who thought of this?" You know?
—#83 Sweet Will, 101 Rent Boys (You can also listen to his interview)
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In his
Critique of Pure Reason Kant asks, "How is a priori
synthetic knowledge possible?" Kant's answer? By means of a
faculty. But unfortunately, not in five words.
—Friederich Nietzsche
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You, Kant, always get what you
want.
—The Rolling Stones
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The sad truth is that, in our heart of hearts, we each believe that the
universe does exist for us alone; and desire—the source of all
suffering—is the conflict between this belief and constant evidence
that it is wrong.
This truth becomes tragic when we realize that, although we could know that it is true, we could never know for certain that it is false.
—the Editor
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Opening your mouth is not an exact science.
—Michael Kinsley
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Life is difficult.
—M. Scott Peck
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Fools will come to my house and ask me not to pity them, but it will be raining and I will not be home. So I will continue to pity them.
—Mr. T
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I always try to keep faith in my doubts, Sister Berthe.
—The Reverend Mother Superior
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An explanation should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
—Albert Einstein
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Words are deeds.
—E. M. Forster
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Eat me.
—Lewis Carroll
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The only time we touch one another is when we're burying
someone.
—Rodney D. W.
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Here stand my books, line upon line
They reach the roof, and row by row,
They speak of faded tasks of mine,
And things I did, but do not, know.
—Andrew Lang
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Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the
sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is
easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
—Willa Cather
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We can outsmart those dolphins. Don't forget: we invented computers, leg warmers, bendy straws, peel and eat shrimp, the glory hole, and the pudding cup.
—Homer Simpson
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Citizens of science are all citizens.
—The Editor
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Life is too
short
to spend time on maintenance and upkeep.
—The Duct Tape Council
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Want of knowledge troubles a mind in doubt:
Did our world have begetting and beginning?
And is there a limit, too, to how much stress
and strain and shaking the walls of the world can stand?
Or are they, by gift of god, forever hale,
and glide down endless tracts of time with power
to scorn the bludgeon and blow of boundless time?
—Titus Lucretius Carus, On The Nature of Things, V.1210 – 1220
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No one ever solved anything with a run-on sentence.
—Trip Larsen, King of The Hill
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Brevity is...wit.
—Reader's Digest
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You were born, and so you're free. So happy birthday.
—Laurie Anderson
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A sentence is not emotional a paragraph is.
—Gertrude Stein
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To Roger Bacon, that remarkable mind who in the middle of the
thirteenth century was almost a scientific man, the schoolmen's conception
of reasoning appeared only an obstacle to truth. He saw that experience
alone teaches anything—a proposition which to us seems easy to
understand, because a distinct conception of experience has been handed
down to us from former generations; which to him likewise seemed perfectly
clear, because its difficulties had not yet unfolded themselves. Of all
kinds of experience, the best, he thought, was interior illumination,
which teaches many things about Nature which the external senses could
never discover, such as the transubstantiaion of bread.
—Charles Sanders Peirce
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For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.
—Arthur C. Clarke
If anyone can tell me what things are allowed in a commonplace book other than quotations, please do so. In the meantime, I'll put my recipes somewhere else.