RelentlesslyOptimistic

"Some forms of success are indistinguishable from panic" — Edgar Degas

Best quote ever! From bookofjoe. Image source (annoying flash movie).

"Beware of seriousness: it is a form of stupidity" — Alexander Waugh

 

 

From a letter of Alexander Waugh to his 6-year-old son, which appears toward the end of his new book.

From bookofjoe

Bush: "2 1/2 years seems like an eternity, but in the march of history it's not all that long."

....but it's three years until the inauguration, not 2 1/2.

Quote: A good life

Sugar Creek Farm posted this quote "from the introduction to The Newman's Own Organics Guide to a Good Life by Nell Newman." She's also been posting pics of her cute new puppy.

"Perfection isn't the goal. A good life is. And a good life has a lot to do with who you are in the world, with your intent as much as with the end result."

Mark Twain: lessons learned

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain

Via Caterina.net

Hunter S. Thompson, 1939(ish) - 2005

Thompson always claimed that he didn't tell all the truth he knew, but his ability to describe the truths he saw so clearly through his drug-addled eyes will be missed in these days when truth is too rare, and the BS he always called is just part of the spin.

Like all cynics, HST believed in a better world. Some might say that such a cynical force of nature shouldn't be memorialized on an optimistic blog. But seeing as clearly as possible, and speaking as truthfully as possible, is essential to prevent optimism from turning into fantasy. We're the poorer now.

"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable" [source]

"We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws" [source]

"Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long" [source]

Famous Dope Fiend Trading Card via Gonzo.org

Update: The best eulogies: Rox Populi, Majikthise, The Rude Pundit, Jesus' Genneral. Go, read!

Play Is Too Important To Not Take Seriously By Engaging In It Whenever Possible

idiolect.org.uk: quotes Archives.

Amen to that
It's when we do this foolish, time-consuming, romantic, quixotic, childlike thing called play that we are most practical, most useful, and most firmly grounded in reality, because the world itself is the most unlikely of places, and it works in the oddest of ways, and we won't make any sense of it by doing what everybody else has done before us. It's when we fool about with the stuff the world is made of that we make the most valuable discoveries, we create the most lasting beauty, we discover the most profound truths. The youngest children can do it, and the greatest artists, the greatest scientists do it all the time. Everything else is proofreading.

 

Philip Pullman in the Guardian about the basics of teaching writing

Certainty

"As I stood before the gates I realized that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place."
-Rabbi Sheila Peltz, on her visit to Auschwitz

From:  Bohemian Mama - Making the World Safe for Dissent.

Only Connect

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect... -E.M. Forster, Howards End

William James

"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride."
--William James

Via William Gibson