I am easily impressed by clever verbiage.

I really like clever comments and am thrilled beyond measure when I can come up with them myself. Apart from my biting phrase in a theater review, "He reminded one of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, except that the Pillsbury Dough Boy has a personality," I really can't ever remember them afterwards. So I have to save the ones that other people come up with.

Don’t make something unless it is both necessary and useful. But if it is both necessary and useful, don’t hesitate to make it beautiful. -- Shaker design philosophy

People often look askance at me when I tell them I'm knitting something for someone I hardly know, or that I don't want any money for a cake I actually spent 2 entire days making, or how long it takes to cross stitch, well, ANYTHING! I always say I just like doing it, but this guy says it with bigger words and fancier grammar ;) -- Anne Whitesell

In craft, means and ends become intertwined so that the process itself by which the crafted object is made is experienced as an end: the process itself is beautiful, like a dance. An excellent craftsman, at work on a pot or a cabinet, engages in a beautiful process that eventuates in a beautiful and useful object. -- Crispin Sartwell, Six Names of Beauty

The gospel of Jesus is not religion or irreligion, morality or immorality, moralism or relativism, conservatism or liberalism. Nor is it something halfway along a spectrum between two poles--it is something else altogether. -- Tim Keller, The Prodigal God

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo Galilei

'There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately — to put a stop to the quietness. ... All the thoughts, all the preoccupations in my head — round and round, continually, What's it for? What's it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost that it isn't there. Ah, but it is; it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night — not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep — the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits ... It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like the outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows — a crystal quiet, a growing, expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying ... For one's alone in the crystal, and there's no support from the outside, there is nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or stand on ... There is nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiast about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressively lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And, oh, inexpressively terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize you and engulf you, you'd die; all the regular, habitual daily part of you would die .... one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously in some strange, unheard of manner.' -- Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay
A teenager now costs, on average, £9,000 a year to run. People must really like them. You could keep a horse for that and they're lovely. -- David Mitchell
Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself. -- Jean-Francois Revel
quote from a cross-stitch sampler: "If friends were flowers, I'd pick you" ...and then you'd wilt and die on my dining-room table. -- Annie Whitesell
Let the Wealthy & Great,
Roll in Splendor & State,
I envy them not I declare it:
I eat my own Lamb,
My Chickens and Ham,
I shear my own Fleece & I wear it
I have Lawns, I have Bow'rs
I have Fruits, I have Flow'rs,
The Lark is my morning Alarmer:
So jolly Boys now,
Here's God speed the Plough.
Long Life & Success to the Farmer. -- lines from a drinking song from Sussex
There is more to life than increasing its speed. -- Mohandas Gandhi
Creativity, when not used, turns to depression. -- Henri Reiman
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. -- Henry David Thoreau
If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die.  However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything. -- Blaise Pascal
To believe in a God means to see that the facts of this world are not the end of the matter. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Big maturing experiences, as grandiose as they may seem at the time, always diminish down to a small kernel in the corner of your character and personality... not without value, but only a tiny part of a bigger whole. -- me
A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in... and how many want out. -- Tony Blair, on America
Some people are like Slinkies... they are not really good for anything. But they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.
As Hester Prynne seemed to see some trace of her own sin in every bosom, by the glare of the Scarlet Letter burning on her own; so Sylvia, living in the shadow of a household grief, found herself detecting various phases of her own experience in others. She had joined that sad sisterhood called disappointed women; a larger class than many deem it to be, though there are few of us who have not seen members of it. Unhappy wives; mistaken or forsaken lovers; meek souls, who make life a long penance for the sins of others; gifted creatures kindled into fitful brilliancy by some inward fire that consumes but cannot warm. These are the women who fly to convents, write bitter books, sing songs full of heartbreak, act splendidly the passion they have lost or never won. Who smile, and try to lead brave uncomplaining lives, but whose tragic eyes betray them, whose voices, however sweet or gay, contain an undertone of hopelessness, whose faces sometimes startle one with an expression which haunts the observer long after it is gone. -- Moods, Louisa May Alcott
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this -- you haven’t.
For every action movie, there is an equal and opposite reaction movie. -- Lisa Landers
Make no small plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die. -- Daniel H. Burnham
I'm sick of following my dreams... I'm just gonna ask where they're going and hook up with them later. -- Mitch Hedberg
God put me on earth to accomplish certain things. Right now, I’m so far behind, I’ll never die. -- Bill Watterson, "Calvin and Hobbes"
Save the Whales - trade them for valuable prizes
If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable; think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad. -- C.S. Lewis
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. -- Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Life shinks or expands in proportion to one's courage -- Anais Nin
Oatmeal is delicious! It's a vehicle for brown sugar! -- Wing Chun, on televisionwithoutpity.com
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stuart Mill
Accepting no substitutes for what we really want leads to simplicity of life. -- Brennan Manning
I think all Christians would agree with me if I said that thought Christianity seems at the first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Everyone there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. --CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Destiny dressed you this morning, chum and now fear is trying to pull off your pants. If you give up, if you give in, then fear is just going to be standing there laughing at your dangling unmentionables. -- The Tick, Episode 1 -- (for more Tick brilliance, go here.)

Not alone. Lone. Alone is an unfortunate predicament; lone is an aesthetic choice. -- Batmanuel

So much of the journey forward involves a letting go of all that once brought us life. We turn away from the familiar abiding places of the heart, the false selves we have lived out, the strengths we have used to make a place for ourselves and all our false loves, and we venture forth in our hearts to trace the steps of the One who said, "Follow me." In a way, it means that we stop pretending: that life is better than it is, that we are happier than we are, that the false selves we present to the world are really us. --The Sacred Romance, Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, p. 149
Shows get cancelled all the time. The world still goes around, and pancakes are still flat, and maple syrup is still tasty. -- Tom Hanks
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. -- John Buchan
Men! You can't live with them, you can't sell them for body parts.
Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a strangle hold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. Take a look at yourself spending almost every waking moment of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their company, desire their love, dread their ridicule, long for their applause, meekly submit to the guilt they lay upon you; you are terrified to go against the fashion in the way you dress or speak or act or even think. And observe how even when you control them you depend on them and are enslaved by them. People have become so much a part of your being that you cannot even imagine living a life that is unaffected or uncontrolled by them. -- Anthony DiMello, The Way to Love (New York: Doubleday, 1991), page 64
…[I’ve written] before about people who believe that skepticism is not only an obligation - which it is - but a modus vivendi, the only possible option for a Thinking Person. The end result of this philosophy is intellectual paralysis. The sufferers are unable to see some things for what they really are. Shown an elephant, their first instinct is to say that it might be the skin of an elephant stuffed with rabbits; just because it’s been an elephant before doesn’t mean it’s one now, and you have to look at who wants you to think its an elephant. When the elephant starts trampling people, and you want to round up villagers to drive the elephant away, the Virtuous Defeatists make fun of those who have accepted that this is, indeed, an elephant. But what of the dead people killed by the elephant today? Well, if it was an "elephant," they’ll say, using mocking quotes, what drove it to stamp on the villagers? Who cares? It’s killing the villagers! Well, so you say - but look, here’s some evidence of poachers who killed elephants in Africa for their tusks. This is all just a war for ivory.

These people believe that skeptical minds will bring about Change - broadly defined in Utopian terms - but this sort of reflexive disbelief is usually a recipe for inaction. -- James Lileks, The Daily Bleat, 11/8/01

The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do.
Nominated for quote of the year is the statement made by Texas Republican Member of The House of Representatives, Dick Armey, who was asked: "If you had been in President Clinton's place, would you have resigned?"
He responded: "If I were in the President's place I would not have gotten a chance to resign... I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying 'How do I reload this damned thing?'
...here we are in the 21st century, and the only thing that seems to characterize it so far is a need to rehash the last one ... Marketing nostalgia isn't anything new. But it just adds to the overall feeling that I'm swimming through an aqueduct of remakes and cover songs. A February article in USA Today on the subject of idea burnout suggested that this is a result of the information overload we experience thanks to the plethora of 24-hour media outlets. It's hard to come up with something new when you're constantly surrounded with the familiar, or finding out about someone else's new idea before you come up with your own. -- Ben Taylor, Nashville Scene, 4-18-02
"...What on earth d'you think I'm here for, I should like to know?"
To be a pattern and example to all aunts, thought Mrs. Miniver; to be a delight to boys and a comfort to their parents; and to show that at least one daughter in every generation ought to remain unmarried, raise the profession of auntship to a fine art, and make a point of having a house within the five-mile limit.... -- Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
No matter how deep our darkness, [God] is deeper still. -- Corrie ten Boom
Leadership--noble, valiant, seductive--is the missing presence, the great ghost, in our current oversaturated frenzy of political/legal/media noise. The public hunger for it is as palpable as it is impotent... -- Owen Gleiberman
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats. -- Albert Schweitzer
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. -- President John Adams
I suspect people have always thought that the time they live in is uniquely special in some way. I've got a feeling that if you went back to the Middle Ages, you'd find people thinking, 'God, it's all getting out of hand. Goodness me, it's all going to hell in a hand-basket! Things are changing so fast!' Even in the 14th century, you had people writing complaints about how 'you can't tell the difference between men and women anymore' because of the way they dress. -- Terry Jones
My girlfriend came up to me the other day and introduced me to one of her male friends, and at first I didn't mind, since I'm not the jealous type. I just wish she hadn't started calling him 'Sweetie' and living with him and having his kids and marrying him and stuff. It's really starting to make me wonder if she wants a future with me or not. -- Derek Maness
Righteous people have no sense of humor. -- Bertolt Brecht
A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad, mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance. -- Jean "Iris" Murdoch
It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence of one or more kittens. -- Cynthia E. Varnado
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. -- Richard David Bach
An ounce of behavior is worth a pound of words.
Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don't even know if you owe. -- Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. -- Mark Twain
Goodbyes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say goodbye to; this hurts, you feel; this must not happen again. -- Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris
The word that leaves your mouth leaves your control. -- Somali folk saying
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time. -- Edith Wharton
It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts. -- Gustave Flaubert
My rough patch has grown into a field. -- Melinda Mumme
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die. -- Mel Brooks
There is luxury in self-reproach ... When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us. -- Oscar Wilde
If you are losing your leisure, look out.  You may be losing your soul. -- Logan Pearsall Smith
"Supporters point to Governor Bush's education record in Texas, where school test scores have actually risen. But did they really rise, or did they just hit bottom so hard that they bounced?"

"So how do I pick a president? Much the same way I choose a driver to the airport. Which one will cost me the least and not get me killed?"

"What do we know about Gore? Well, he opposed the Vietnam war, but served over there anyway so as not to jeopardize his father's re-election bid for the Senate. And there, in a nutshell, is a shining example of Al Gore's heroic willingness to die for his complete lack of core beliefs."

"George W. Bush doesn't stand for anything other than wanting to be president. It just kills me when Bush says he's not a Washington insider. He always has that same tone of voice as Calista Flockhart when she tells Steve Kmetko that she just has a fast metabolism."

"The truth is that come November 7, we'll have a choice between twin sons of different ideological mothers. Both were raised in powerful political families. Both received Ivy League educations. Both served in non-combat capacities during the Vietnam War. And both possess the finely honed edge of a butter knife in a mental hospital cafeteria." -- Dennis Miller

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. -- Douglas Adams
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?' -- Douglas Adams
Man [has] always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reason. -- Douglas Adams
The opposite of bravery is not cowardice but conformity. -- Robert Anthony
There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We just take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn, and they create new and curious combinations. We keep turning making new patterns, but they are the same old pieces of glass that have been in use throughout all the years. -- Mark Twain
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words. -- Atlanta Journal
Sarcasm is the safe alternative to expressing anger. -- Richard North Patterson
I'm furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept quiet or it ruins the whole racket. -- Anita Loos
Hmmm... You've never had to squish your own bugs before, have you? -- Susan Houston
Mobile phones are the only subject on which men boast about who's got the smallest. -- Neil Kinnock, British politician
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman. -- Margaret Thatcher
I think, therefore I'm single. -- Lizz Winstead
Don't leave anyone at home to answer the phone who can't hear, spell, or write! -- Gloria Green
Pooh wondered if being a faithful Knight meant that you just went on being faithful without being told things. --The House At Pooh Corner
You're only young once, but you can be immature forever. -- Anthony Perkins, Mahogany
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons; for you are crunchy and good with ketchup. -- from a bumper sticker...
Drama is reality with the boring parts cut out.
What you do to get somewhere becomes who you are once you arrive. --Thomas Scoville, Silicon Follies
I wish the stage were as high and narrow as a tightrope so that only the most highly trained would dare to venture out upon it. -- Goethe
Do you know what would have happened if it had been Three Wise Women instead of Three Wise Men?

They would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, and brought practical gifts.

...life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which... -- E. M. Forster, Howard's End
The trouble with trying to go out with people when you get older is that everything becomes so loaded. When you are partnerless in your thirties, the mild bore of not being in a relationship--no sex, not having anyone to hang out with on Sundays, going home from parties on your own all the time--gets infused with the paranoid notion that the reason you are not in a relationship is your age, you have had your last ever relationship...and it is all your fault for being too wild and willful to settle down in the first bloom of youth.

You completely forget the fact that when you were twenty-two and you didn't have a boyfriend or meet anyone you remotely fancied for twenty-three months you just thought it was a bit of a drag. The whole thing builds up out of all proportion, so finding a relationship seems a dazzling, almost insurmountable goal, and when you do start going out with someone it cannot possibly live up to expectations. -- Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones' Diary

"The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible." -- G. K. Chesterton
There is pleasure in the pathless woods
There is rapture on the lonely shore
There is society where none intrudes
By the deep sea, and music in its roar
I love not man the less, but nature more.
The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the unattractive.
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh, thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet. "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet. "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh. "that that's why he never understands anything." -- The House At Pooh Corner
"And how are you?" said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"Not very how," Eeyore said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time." -- Winnie-the-Pooh
There is no virtue in being kind to people. Either you feel it or you don't. If you don't feel it, then you're doing it to get something - it doesn't matter what - and that negates it as a virtuous act.
"Obsessive-compulsives are so wearing, but they do such lovely work!" -- Susan Houston
"Did you make that song up?"
"Well, I sort of made it up," said Pooh. "It isn't Brain," he went on humbly, "because You Know Why, Rabbit; but it comes to me sometimes."
"Ah!" said Rabbit, who never let things come to him, but always went and fetched them. -- The House At Pooh Corner
"I think you're the opposite of a paranoid. I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you."
la terribilitá - In Renaissance Italy, this connoted the ambiguous feelings roused by mighty forces beyond the normal human scale. Say, Y2K.
Charlton Heston credited his longevity in Hollywood to the fact that : "I always show up on time, and I know my words, and I don't bump into things and I'm never sick."
The true hope of modern society is not expressed when one stockbroker sits on a platform looking at a row of dancing school children. The true hope will only begin when one child sits on a platform looking at a row of dancing stockbrokers. -- G.K. Chesterton
He's like a big S'more - crusty on the outside, soft, sweet & mushy on the inside. -- Caroline Newcomb
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder...unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary to give the beholder a black eye. -- Miss Piggy
"Many happy returns of the day," called out Pooh, forgetting that he had said it already.
"Thank you, Pooh, I'm having them," said Eeyore gloomily.
"I've brought you a little present," said Pooh excitedly.
"I've had it," said Eeyore. -- Winnie-the-Pooh


Date Last Modified: 10/19/09