Random Quotes, Fables, Tall Tales and Proverbs…keep posting.

[pontalba]

I love deadlines. I love the wooshing noise they make as they go by. Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt.

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. Robert A. Heinlein

 

[Sparhawk]

The Dog

The truth I do not stretch or
shove
When I state that the dog is full
of love.
I've also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.

-Ogden Nash

The Fly

God in his wisdom made the fly
And then forgot to tell us why.

-Ogden Nash

 

[Summerflyte]

While the state exists there can be no freedom.
When there is freedom there will be no state.

The State and Revolution
by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Job endured everything – until his friends came to comfort him,
then he grew impatient.

Journal
by Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

[Hedwig]

LOL @The Fly!

"I have seen the sea when it is stormy and wild; when it is quiet and serene; when it is dark and moody. And in all its moods, I see myself." - Martin Buxbaum

 

[Summerflyte]

The Seagull and the Kite A seagull having bolted down too large a fish, burst its deep gullet-bag and lay down on the shore to die. A Kite saw him and exclaimed: "You richly deserve your fate; for a bird of the air has no business to seek its food from the sea."
"EVERY MAN SHOULD BE CONTENT TO MIND HIS OWN BUSINESS" Aesop's Fables

 

[Hedwig]

And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.
(Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

 

[Summerflyte]

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Anthem for a Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen

 

[pontalba]

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

 

[Hedwig]

“The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

[Summerflyte]

I strove with none; for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

Finis
by Walter Savage Landor

 

[Hedwig]

The earth laughs in flowers.
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

 

[Occlith]

Hercules and the Carter
A carter was driving a wagon along a country lane, when the wheels sank down deep into a rut. The rustic driver, stupefied and aghast, stood looking at the wagon, and did nothing but utter loud cries to Hercules to come and help him.
Hercules, it is said, appeared and thus addressed him: “Put your shoulders to the wheels, my man. Goad on your bullocks, and never more pray to me for help, until you have done your best to help yourself, or depend upon it you will henceforth pray in vain.”
- Aesop


Hercules and the Carter
A Carter was driving a wagon loaded with a merchant’s goods, when the wheels stuck in a rut. Thereupon he began to pray to Hercules, without other exertion.
“Indolent fellow!” said Hercules; “you ask me to help you, but will not help yourself.”
So the Carter helped himself to so many of the most valuable goods that the horses easily ran away with the remainder.
- Ambrose Bierce

 

[Summerflyte]

The poet gives us his essence,
but prose takes the mold of the body and mind entire.

The Captain’s Death Bed
by Virginia Woolf

 

[Meadow337]

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure." -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

I think some one was confusing intolerance with moral certainty. I find that intolerance is the mark of inferiority. Moral certainty requires a lot more thought than most are willing to give it.

 

[Gita V.Reddy]

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?

From Andrea del Sarto, Robert Browning,

 

[pontalba]

I think some one was confusing intolerance with moral certainty. I find that intolerance is the mark of inferiority. Moral certainty requires a lot more thought than most are willing to give it.

From what I've seen on this forum, your posts reflect that philosophy. I'm still with Mencken.

 

[Meadow337]

there is nothing wrong with being sure of one's carefully considered opionion. I find too few people give sufficient ratiocination to what they believe and why, nor are many capable of defending it in a reasonable fashion.

 

[pontalba]

I think it most likely most people don't give thought to what the source of their reasoning is to begin with, or much care, as far as that goes.

 

[Meadow337]

I have a new favourite quote :

"Premenstrual Syndrome: Just before their periods women behave the way men do all the time"

- Robert Heinlein "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls"

 

[Meadow337]

"Violence never settles anything." Genghis Khan