Finding Solace in Favourite Quotes: Escaping Despair with Words of Wisdom

[Borg]

With negative power comes negative responsibility.

Brewster Rockit

 

[davenn]

Last week I bought a book named "The Physics of Anti-Gravity" It was so interesting I couldn't put it down! (credit or discredit goes to Patrick Coffin of CatholicAnswers.com)Dave

 

[FreeMitya]

"Nothing is got for nothing. The price of love increases with ageing because more of those you loved are now among the dead than among the living."

 

[phion]

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

-Hermann Hesse

 

[OmCheeto]

I draw... people smiling, dogs running, rainbows. They don't have meetings about rainbows.

... Cole

 

[MalcolmB]

A man that looks on glass,
on it may stay his eye;
or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
and then the heaven espy.

From the hymn "Teach Me My God and King"

 

[Lyrassia]

Be happy. Do math.

 

[FreeMitya]

"My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it." - Thoreau.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

"My first kiss was about 11 or 12 and it was with a Greek boy called Chris. …. who’s gay now!" – Amy Winehouse

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

History is 10 percent what actually happened, and 90 percent how you react to it.

-Jimmy Snyder

 

[Ivan Seeking]

"Nothing is got for nothing. The price of love increases with ageing because more of those you loved are now among the dead than among the living."

"The hardest part about getting old is watching all of your friends die"

- from my best lifelong friend, who is no longer with us.

 

[dydxforsn]

"Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable." - Bill Maher

 

[Kholdstare]

@dydxforsn +1

 

[dydxforsn]

Thanks, heh, it was a good one. Also, everyone should check out or remind themselves of the great Howard Zinn today: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1899.Howard_Zinn

 

[pongo38]

"The people who really annoy me are people who get really annoyed"

 

[FreeMitya]

"The hardest part about getting old is watching all of your friends die"

- from my best lifelong friend, who is no longer with us.

I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. If you're interested, that quote was from one of my heroes, Harold Bloom.

 

[phion]

"Never confuse kindness with weakness."

-Anonymous friend

 

[OmCheeto]

You know Om, it kinda sucks getting old. You end up knowing more dead people then live ones.

--------------------------------
Art was a very good friend who I first met when he was around 75.
He learned to play beach volleyball that year.
He claimed to have been a world class ping pong player in his younger years.
But even in his 70's and 80's, he was a number 1 draft pick for most volleyball teams, including the two man teams.
He had the arm span of an Albatross, which made him a natural, for both games.
He reminded me a bit of Jimmy Stewart.
His son is a couple of years younger than I am, and I run into him about once a year at work.
He works in the building across the street.
Art was around 85 when he passed away.
He would be around 100 by now, and a whole lot wrinklier, as he was very wrinkly, to end with. (Too much sun, I'd imagine)

 

[dx]

Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.

-Albert Einstein

 

[Astronuc]

"Aus Stellung und Besitz entspringende Vorrechte sind mir immer ungerecht und verderblich erschienen, ebenso ein übertriebener Personenkultus. Ich bekenne mich zum Ideal der Demokratie, trotzdem mir die Nachteile demokratischer Staatsform wohlbekannt sind. Sozialer Ausgleich und wirtschaftlicher Schutz des Individuums erschienen mir stets als wichtige Ziele der staatlichen Gemeinschaft.

Ich bin zwar I am täglichen Leben ein typischer Einspänner, aber das Bewusstsein, der unsichtbaren Gemeinschaft derjenigen anzugehören, die nach Wahrheit, Schönheit und Gerechtigkeit streben, hat das Gefühl der Vereinsamung nicht aufkommen lassen."

Translation:

"Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as does any exaggerated personality cult. I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I know well the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual have always seemed to me the important communal aims of the state.

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice keeps me from feeling isolated."

Albert Einstein, Mein Glaubensbekenntnis/ My Credo, August 1932
http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/credo.html

 

[Vorde]

"Id quod fuimus aut sumus, non cras erimus."

- Ovid

My translation: That which we were or we are is not what we will be tomorrow.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

- Ovid

My translation: That which we were or we are is not what we will be tomorrow.

My translation: Mañana is good enough for me.

 

[ImaLooser]

To err is human, to blame it on somebody else is even more human.

That's great.

 

[Lisa!]

"The word lie sits right in the middle of the word believe!"

 

[1977ub]

If I read this entire thread, perhaps I'd find this posted already:

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

 

[DiracPool]

"Wherever you go, there you are" --Anonymous

 

[DiracPool]

Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.

-Albert Einstein

Yeah, but later on he was quoted as saying that perhaps the lord is malicious when he couldn't get his field theory to work (source = "Einsteins Mistakes" by Ohanian)

 

[DiracPool]

Here's a good one...

"Before Elvis, there was nothing." --John Lennon

 

[jobyts]

"Religion is based primarily upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly as the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the place that the churches in all these centuries have made it."

― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian

 

[ChiralWaltz]

"If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics."
-Galileo Galilei

 

[DiracPool]

"If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics."
-Galileo Galilei

I like that one, good find

 

[Borek]

And it’s odd that the word atheist even exists. I don’t play golf. Is there a word for non-golf players?

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Thanks Om for pointing me in the right direction.

 

[Bacle2]

Neil deGrasse Tyson And it's odd thatthe word atheist even exists. I don't play golf . Is there a word for non-golf players?

Thanks Om for pointing me in the right direction.

Well, I think religion plays an important role in society --like it or not-- and golf does not (EDIT: Maybe I'm ruining your joke, sorry if this is so) .
I like a lot of Neil "deGrasse is not Greener" Tyson's ideas ; I liked his recent C-Span show on the prospects of space exploration.

And, in case no one else has used this one, I like:

" Nostalgia is not what it used to be" , by , I think, S.Signoret, and a (darkly) funny one that Hallmark somehow rejected for its cards:

" Life is a **** sandwich and every day you take another bite"

 

[1977ub]

Since the writings of Sartre and Camus, our comfortable assumptions about "safe" and "out" have become untenable.
- Garrison Keillor, "The New Baseball", (1971)

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1971/05/15/1971_05_15_035_TNY_CARDS_000300310

 

[AlephZero]

I don’t play golf. Is there a word for non-golf players?

No, but if the ancient greeks had been stupid enough to invent golf, there would be.