W.S. Gilbert Quotes
The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment.
The pressure to being a comedian is being funny, but I've given that up, so there is no pressure whatsoever.
I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the 'monkey mind' -- the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl.
The price we pay for our irresponsible explanatory urge is that we often spoil our most pleasant experiences by making good sense of them.
There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't.
The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality.
I believe your own accent is inimitable, though I shall practice it in my bath.
If I could cause world peace by taking someone out to lunch, I'd go, 'Well, war isn't that terrible.'
Three billion bases of DNA sequence can be put on a single compact disc and one will be able to pull a CD out of one's pocket and say, 'Here is a human being; it's me!'
The community as a whole doesn't listen patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints. Although the great lesson of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints.
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
Early on, it's good to develop the ability to write. Learning to write is a useful exercise, even if what you're writing about is not that relevant.
The human's place in the universe will be set in the scheme of evolution, the product of our biological inheritance.
Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.
We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.
We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type.
Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.
Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.
From the standpoint of any sane person, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a question of law, but of criminal law, not to mention criminal lunacy.
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.
The House of Peers, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well.
The best we can do then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally - no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.
There is no such thing as Success....That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.
Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.
What happens and what you encounter, what you collide with - it's so exciting and revealing about how much more interesting and tricky the universe is than we think in our daily lives.
Is ditchwater dull? Naturalists with microscopes have told me that it teems with quiet fun.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.
Daniel Levitin has more insights per page than any other neuroscientist I know. The organized Mind is smart, important, and, as always, exquisitely written.
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face - that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem.
My Bubbie lived to 104, which is probably a little too old to consider a ripe old age, because she had already started to turn. I still say she died young.
Sometimes,well,all the time,I can't think of what to say because I'm so dumb and stuff,and then maybe I think of it like five days later.
