Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[Wakefield]

The question of whether Machines Can Think... is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.

-- Dijkstra (1984) The threats to computing science

[North Star]

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." Gandhi
"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.' " Khalil Gibran

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death. - Elie Wiesel

Visitor: "That woman's arm is too long."  - Matisse: "That is not a woman, sir, it's a painting."

"To attain knowledge, add things every day.
To attain wisdom, remove things every day."
Laozi

[Florestan]

[T]otal nonsense in music is an impossibility, and even a madman cannot suppress harmonic laws.

Even a madman could not have predicted Xenakis or Boulez during Schumann´s time. - Florestan (Andrei)

[Karl Henning]

Boulez, maybe . . . he's just a hodgepodge of elements which predated him, some of them exaggerated in quite foreseeable ways 

[North Star]

Even a madman could not have predicted Xenakis or Boulez during Schumann´s time. - Florestan (Andrei)

Perhaps he was referring to himself by 'madman'. 

[Florestan]

Boulez, maybe . . . he's just a hodgepodge of elements which predated him, some of them exaggerated in quite foreseeable ways 

I was hoping for a (*chortie*)... 

[Karl Henning]

"Visitor: "That woman's arm is too long."  - Matisse: "That is not a woman, sir, it's a painting."

Nice!  Borrowing this.

[Karl Henning]

I was hoping for a (*chortie*)... 

Hah!  "Dear Lord, grant that I may never take myself too seriously . . . ."

[Florestan]

Perhaps he was referring to himself by 'madman'. 

I´d take that madman´s music over that of many a sane people´s, any day and night .     

[North Star]

"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."  ― Plato
"Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."  ― Rumi
"There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it." ― Man Ray
"After all is said and done, more is said than done." ― Aesop

[Karl Henning]

Hah!  Does that really date back to Æsop?  Love it even more!

[Ken B]

"There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it." ― Man Ray

I knew a guy who was convinced that previous generations knew nothing of "modern sex". 

Be thankful Boulez did not become a sexologist. "All past ways of having sex must be destroyed!" Or "He screws worse than Honegger!"

[Ten thumbs]

The same, yet not the same . . .

Letitia Landon

[North Star]

Edith Wharton on Henry James's asking for directions. From A Backward Glance, 1934 (autobiography)

Another year we had been motoring in the west country, and on the way
back were to spend a night at Malvern. As we approached (at the close of
a dark rainy afternoon) I saw James growing restless, and was not
surprised to hear him say: "My dear, I once spent a summer at Malvern,
and know it very well; and as it is rather difficult to find the way to
the hotel, it might be well if Edward were to change places with me, and
let me sit beside Cook." My husband of course acceded (though with doubt
in his heart), and James having taken his place, we awaited the result.
Malvern, if I am not mistaken, is encircled by a sort of upper
boulevard, of the kind called in Italy a strada di circonvallazione, and
for an hour we circulated about above the outspread city, while James
vainly tried to remember which particular street led down most directly
to our hotel. At each corner (literally) he stopped the motor, and we
heard a muttering, first confident and then anguished. "This–this, my
dear Cook, yes...this certainly is the right corner. But no; stay! A
moment longer, please–in this light it's so difficult...appearances are
so misleading...It may be...yes! I think it IS the next turn...'a little
farther lend thy guiding hand'...that is, drive on; but slowly, please,
my dear Cook; VERY slowly!" And at the next corner the same agitated
monologue would be repeated; till at length Cook, the mildest of men,
interrupted gently: "I guess any turn'll get us down into the town, Mr.
James, and after that I can ask–" and late, hungry and exhausted we
arrived at length at our destination, James still convinced that the
next turn would have been the right one, if only we had been more
patient.

The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening,
when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. We must
have been driven by a strange chauffeur–perhaps Cook was on a holiday;
at any rate, having fallen into the lazy habit of trusting to him to
know the way, I found myself at a loss to direct his substitute to the
King's Road. While I was hesitating, and peering out into the darkness,
James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze
at us. "wait a moment, my dear–I'll ask him where we are"; and leaning
out he signalled to the spectator.

"My good man, if you'll be good enough to come here, please; a little
nearer–so," and as the old man came up: "My friend, to put it to you in
two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from SLOUGH; that is
to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently PASSED THROUGH
Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye,
which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us,
we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in
relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads
to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the
railway station."

I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence,
and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to
have James go on: "In short" (his invariable prelude to a fresh series
of explanatory ramifications), "in short, my good man, what I want to
put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have
reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway
station (which, in that case, by the way, would probably not have been
on our left hand, but on our right), where are we now in relation to..."

"Oh, please," I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit
through another parenthesis, "do ask him where the King's Road is."

"Ah–? The King's Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of
fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position,
the King's Road exactly IS?"

"Ye're in it," said the aged face at the window.

[Florestan]

The ostensible supporters of the Constitution, like the ostensible supporters of most other governments, are made up of three classes, viz.: 1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes — a large class, no doubt — each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving, and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a "free man," a "sovereign"; that this is "a free government"; "a government of equal rights," "the best government on earth," [1] and such like absurdities. 3. A class who have some appreciation of the evils of government, but either do not see how to get rid of them, or do not choose to so far sacrifice their private interests as to give themselves seriously and earnestly to the work of making a change.

Lysander Spooner

[North Star]

François de La Rochefoucauld

"What we term virtues are often but a mass of various actions and diverse interests, which fortune or our own industry manage to arrange; and it is not always from valour or from chastity that men are brave, and women chaste."

"Passion often renders the most clever man a fool, and even sometimes renders the most foolish man clever."

"We should not be upset that others hide the truth from us, when we hide it so often from ourselves."

"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."

"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily."

"One is never so happy or so unhappy as one fancies."

"To succeed in the world we do everything we can to appear successful already."

"The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune."

"It is more disgraceful to distrust than to be deceived by our friends."

"Only great men have great faults."

"Most people judge men only by success or by fortune."

"It is easier to know man in general than to know one man."

"We should often be ashamed of our very best actions if the world only saw the motives which caused them."

"Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding."


"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition." - Alexander Smith


Robert Louis Stevenson

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty to be happy. By being happy we see anonymous benefits upon the world. "

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."

"In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy."

"There is but one art, to omit."

"A healthy adult male bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience." John Updike

[Ken B]

"Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding."

Who would dispute that!

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"He begged and he stole, and he cut throats, and starved at that, by the powers!" Robert Louis Stevenson

Probably one of my favorite quotes from Treasure island.

[Jo498]

Blind Pew? or about whom is the quotation?

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Silver talking about Pew, if I remember correctly. Silver, in general, is a treasure chest of awesome lines.