Thoughtful

The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
T. S. Eliot

If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T. S. Eliot

My name is only an anagram of toilets.
T. S. Eliot

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
T. S. Eliot

The naming of cats is a difficult matter.
It isn’t just one of your holiday games.
You may think at first I’m mad as a hatter.
When I tell you a cat must have three different names.
T. S. Eliot

When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.
T. S. Eliot

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. TS Eliot

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
T. S. Eliot

At the end of the day, I would rather be excluded for those I include, than included for those I exclude.

“Unless we take care, unless we check the rapacious exploitation of Earth, unless we protect our rivers and our lakes, our oceans and our skies, we are endangering the future of our children and our children’s children.” — Margaret Mead

Poetry is the only way to write a sigh.

I have long believed that words are only a collection of letters and the combination of those letters create images. Societal control of some of those combinations are an attempt at thought control by bullies. It fails. Because I am silent it does not mean I have ceased to think for myself. ~ John E. McLennan

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top. ~ John Keats

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire. ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

When you drink a cup of coffee, ideas come in marching like an army. ~ Honore de Balzac

Conservatives are terrified by the unknown and invent comforting fictions to hide their fears. ~ John E McLennan

The nation that doesn’t read books will have to experience the whole of history.

“What counts today, the question which is looming on the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it.”― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“What matters is not to know the world but to change it.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organised, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people’s blood.”  Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness, and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age — the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night — are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. ~ Victor Hugo; part of his preface to Les Miserables.

Just because my dreams are different from yours, it doesn’t mean they are unimportant ~ Louisa M Alcott, Little Women

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. ~ Jack Kerouac

”We live in a time where horrible things are being perpetrated on us. The shame is that we have normalised them and adjusted accordingly.” ~ John Lord

”Poverty is the fault of the victim but wealth comes from virtue and both are the natural order of things.” ~ Stephen Tardrew

When venturing down the golden river of future possibilities, remember to listen for the sound of history trying to again, once more, repeat itself. ~ Don Overby

The Span Of Life
The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup. ~ Robert Frost

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one. ~ John Lennon

Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted. ~ John Lennon

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man. ~ John Lennon
~
All we are saying is give peace a chance. ~ John Lennon

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility. ~ John Lennon

We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practised in broad daylight. ~ John Lennon

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~ Voltaire.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe? ~ TS Eliot

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, ~ TS Eliot

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; ~ TS Eliot

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not. ~ Robert Kennedy

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously. ~ H. L. Mencken

I think the beautiful thing about the past is that it leads you to the present.  ~ Vidya Balan

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. ~  Abraham Lincoln

“We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person.” : – Hermann Hesse, German poet and novelist.

the blues I understand so much more
than any shade of black or white ~ j matthew waters

“The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple, and love without measure.” ~Tibetan Proverb

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. ~ Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky.

Every culture contains the seeds of its own destruction. Progress and decay coexist. History has shown that all societies eventually develop the means of their downfall ~ Steve Berry

Speak not of peoples and laws and
Kingdoms, for the whole earth is
My birthplace and all humans are
My brothers ~ Kahlil Gibran

Rise, my heart, and
Walk, with Dawn, for the night has passed,
And the fear of darkness has vanished with
Its black dreams and ghastly thoughts and
Insane travels. ~Kahlil Gibran

I am like the fisherman who threw his net into the sea hoping to find it laden with food for a day of his sustenance, but when he drew the net he found in it a heap of everlasting precious stones. ~ Kahlil Gibran

‘When you tell a lie you deny the other persons right to the truth’

‘Life may not be the party we hoped for… but while we’re here we may as well dance’ ~J. C. Stein

“The greatest tragedy in the upbringing of our children is that we teach them what to think rather than how too”

“Curmudgeon” is a one-sex word. There is no such word as “Curmudgeonette”. Pulchritude is another of those one-sex words. Or is it?

“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities” ~ Oscar Wilde

Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. ~ George Carlin

“Perceptual reality is the ground of subjective silence”

There’s always tomorrow…………… until there isn’t.

Do you know how helpless you feel when you have a cup of coffee in your hand and you start to sneeze?

I like well behaved rain. Rain that falls at night from well behaved clouds which roll up and rest close to the horizon during the sunny daylight hours.

Freedom knows no race, nor color, nor gender.
It stands naked in the light of truth.
**petra michelle**

No task is more thankless than his who is trying to go in advance of his time. Men have been burnt and hanged and disgraced and sneered at for no greater crime; in fact there is nothing that average humanity so much resents as the power to look ahead and to warn others of pitfalls into which ignorant shortsightedness is likely to tumble. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 – 1909)

When luxury becomes not the means but the end of life, humanities best weapons grow rusty, and humanity’s best intelligence is dulled and threatens to disappear. The state is no longer an impersonated administrator of justice and order, but a reservoir from which to plunder and by which to serve private ends. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 – 1909)

How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks, not in what they say. Just in what they are.~ Markus Zusak

You should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster. ~ Quentin Crisp

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.

Why all this fetishising of the land of one’s birth?
Surely your “home” is the geography of one’s heart. ~ Vanbadham

Despite the obvious reality of human history there is no shame in praying for peace. ~ J Matthew Waters

When you’re happy, you enjoy the music. But, when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics!

Earth is my favourite planet in the whole world.

The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. ~ Aristotle

Pull out the weeds, or make peace with the dandelions. ~ Frank Sonnenberg

I hate the term “ordinary people” when referring to people who are not famous. In my experience, everyone is extraordinary in some way. @davrosz

Write in your heart that every day is the best day in the year. #emerson

I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon. If I can. #Alfange

To keep young, every day read a poem, hear a choice piece of music, view a fine painting and, if possible, do a good action. #goethe

We should talk, look, listen to each other. We are too often silent.

“I permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” ~ Booker T. Washington

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ethical man knows he shouldn’t cheat on his wife, while the moral man knows that he wouldn’t.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. Plato

“What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice.” Albert Einstein

Those who only use language to throw crude rocks are vulnerable to its sharp and deadly rapier thrusts.

Language is a virus…but for some it is a weapon

You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. -John Mason

I can’t promise forever. I can’t promise tomorrow. What I can promise is now. It’s the only moment we have. But it belongs to us alone.

Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night. Author Unknown

Reality is always plural & mutable. Robert Anton Wilson

You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget with whom you wept.

Dear Past, thanks for all the lessons. Dear Future, I’m ready

What you think of me is none of my business!

Go make merry, carouse, dance the night away, revel, riot, roister, wassail, go to town, whoop it up for your birthday!

The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. –Calvin & Hobbes

The sun will set without thy assistance~Hebrew Proverb

When I’m dead I don’t want R.I.P. on my tombstone. I want B.R.B.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. ~Plato

Your life is just a collection of days.  And then it’s over.  Treasure every day.

Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you’ll never get back..

The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea. ISAK DINESEN (1885-1962)

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.

We’re all in the same game, just different levels.
Dealing with the same hell, just different devils.

As Final thoughts go, “Unicorns are real” is one of the better ones.

The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the
empire first ordered well their own states.
Wishing to order their own states, they first regulated their families.
Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons.
Wishing to cultivate their persons they first rectified their hearts.
Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in
their thoughts.
Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the
utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the
investigation of things. ~ Confucius

Not by appointment do we meet delight Or joy; they heed not our expectancy; But round some corner of the streets of life they of a sudden greet us with a smile. ~ Gerald Massey

Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain. ~ John Locke

The greatest challenge in life is discovering who you are ; The second greatest, is being happy with what you find.

Be humble, for you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.
~Serbian proverb

There is a difference between sexual and sensual. There are as many shades of gray as there are stages of undress. Art can be arousing. It should be arousing. It should inspire passion. Not just sexually, but in all things. Arousal and passion are not just the pervue of sexuality, but of life. And art is life.
Jennie Rosenbaum

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist”
George Carlin

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say “I want to see the manager.”
William S. Burroughs

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mohandas Gandhi

…in every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with it’s own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable – which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live.
We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likenesses, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity.
But all that really allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, utterly vast spaces between us. ~Marilynne Robinson

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.    George Bernard Shaw

A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man but once.
William Shakespeare

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,
and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
Oscar Wilde

“A good sermon should be like a woman’s skirt: short enough
to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.”
Ronald Knox.

Everyone thinks outside the box. Brilliance is folding the box into an origami swan. ~ Nils Geylen

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.
Henry Fielding

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
Henry Fielding

“All of us alive are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival?”
– Joan Baez

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. ..
~~ Edmund Burke

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
Mahatma Gandhi

Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. ~ Theodore Dreisel

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
Mahatma Gandhi

As you and I weave our separate ways through these pathless woods we call life.

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That’s how we’re made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. ~ Grey’s Anatomy

“`Begin at the beginning,’ the King said, gravely, `and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Correct” spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma’ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.
HL Mencken

Each moment of the year has its own beauty, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure.
Piero Ferrucci

Everyday I beat my own previous record for number of consecutive days I’ve stayed alive.

Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
– Sen Goldwater

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.
And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”
Napoleon Bonaparte

He who would keep a secret, must keep it a secret that he has a secret to keep.
Sir Humphrey Appleby

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi

I always knew looking back on the tears would make me laugh, but I never knew looking back on the laughs would make me cry.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
Oscar Wilde

I am your enemy, for
You refuse to realize that you are
The enemies of the goddesses.
Kahlil Gibran

I consider myself a human being first, and Earth is my home.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
Kahlil Gibran

“I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
Douglas Adams

I think it would be a good idea. – Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder
I wonder /why/ I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!
Richard Feynman

I would weep for the future, but I’m too busy weeping for the present.

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.
Kahlil Gibran

If you’re ever doing something and have fewer than two reasons for doing it, it is probably the wrong thing to be doing.
Alec Muffett

In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom.
It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.
Mahatma Gandhi

There are only two truly infinite things, the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe.
Albert Einstein

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr.

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”
Calvin and Hobbes

“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
Oscar Wilde

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
Mahatma Gandhi

“It is often forgotten that dictionaries are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature.”
Jorge Luis Borges

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.
It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Mahatma Gandhi

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone´s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me ? After all, I´m one of Us. I must be. I´ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No-one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We´re always one of Us. It´s Them that do the bad things.
Terry Pratchett. Jingo.

“Laws are for the guidance of wise men and the blind obedience of fools.”
(Solon, the Lawmaker of Athens, d. 559 BC)

“The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.”
Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart

Let us not be diverted by more of these sophisticated contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belaboured – contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between right and wrong.
Abraham Lincoln

Making history, it turned out, was quite easy. It was just what got written down. It was as simple as that.
Terry Pratchett

Man is what he eats.
Ludwig Feuerbach

Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself.
MANKIND. Basically, it’s made up of two separate words “mank” and “ind.”
What do these words mean? It’s a mystery and so is mankind.

Minds are of three kinds: one is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to understand the thinking of others; and a third can neither think for itself nor understand the thinking of others. The first is of the highest excellence, the second is excellent, and the third is worthless.
Nicolo Machiavelli

“My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
Pablo Picasso.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.
John Donne

No man or woman is worth your tears, and the one who is, won’t make you cry.

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
Lewis Carroll

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
André Gide

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.
Mahatma Gandhi

If one person says you’re a duck, he’s crazy. If two people say you’re a duck, it’s a conspiracy. If three people say you’re a duck, start looking for feathers on your butt.

Rather fail with honour than succeed by fraud.
Sophocles

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away…”
Philip K. Dick

“The Lord’s Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911.”
The National Review

Sitting beneath the bed wrapped in beggar’s velvet, serenading dust bunnies and idly gossiping with the cat.

So don’t you sit upon the shoreline and say you’re satisfied.
Choose to chance the rapids and dare to dance the tide.”

Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far – – –
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
Euripides

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”
Oscar Wilde

The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity
The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty

The point of nonviolence is to build a strong new floor beneath which we can no longer sink; a platform which stands a few feet above napalm, torture, exploitation, poison gas, A and H bombs, and the works. Give a man a decent place to stand. He’s been wallowing around in human blood and vomit and burnt flesh screaming how it is going to bring peace to the world
Joan Baez

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
James D. Nicoll

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.
Richard Bach

The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that’s all it needs to be.
Richard Bach

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation’s proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.
William Feather

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.”
Oscar Wilde

‘Tis with our judgements as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Alexander Pope

Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, taste, and no human ever ceases to need it. Keep your children short of pocket money — but long on hugs.
– Lazarus Long

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde

Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky. We fell them down and turn them into paper that we may record our emptiness.
~~Kahlil Gibran

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

“When I get a little money I buy books and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”
Erasmus

When you have finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Who wouldn’t be confused by a language where a pastry is a sweetmeat and a pancreas is a sweetbread?

Wisdom cometh by suffering.
Æschylus

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Richard Feynman

You can’t take it with you and if you die with a dollar in your pocket, it’s a dollar wasted.

“You know there is a problem with the education system when you realize that out of the 3 R’s, only one begins with an R.” – Dennis Miller

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
Mahatma Gandhi

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
Marilyn Ferguson

A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. -Salman Rushdie