One thing I do notice is that I quote stuff a lot more often these days than I used to. If I find two or three bits that I find in what I read I consider myself pretty lucky. Here's the list, in no uncertain order.
- “God does not want or need endless human flatteries and praises. God does, however, look for a little truth sometimes in our walk with Him. It really is quite safe to express your anger. He’s big enough to take it, and to love you just the same.” (Tom Harpur)
- “I can imagine the Old Testament God finding himself (or herself) in very much the same situation. According to one emerging view of the Creation, once God set the laws of the cosmos into motion – atomic mass, atomic weight, the bonding habits of carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur – no one could tamper with them again, not even God. So God had to create the universe just to see what would happen. Even God did not know.” (Arthur C. Clarke)
- “Religion is, rather, a human attempt to process the God experience, which breaks forth from our own depths and wells up constantly within us.” (John Shelby Spong)
- “There is nothing as eloquent as a rattlesnake’s tail.” (Native American Proverb)
- “Christ was either a liar, lunatic, or Lord.” (Thomas Aquinas)
- “…Canada is an introverted country straining like hell to behave like an extrovert…” (R. Davies)
- “As fall the dews on quenchless sands, Blood only serves to wash Ambition’s hands!” (Lord Byron)
- “There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.” (G. Santayana)
- “I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, a bath of azure light, among dark rocks, out of the stream of sound.” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
- “You can have a Lord, you can have a King, but the man to fear is the tax-collector.” (Sumerian proverb)
- “Greater is he that says Amen than he that says the blessing.” (L.Cohen)
- As wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with other figures, yet always the same wax, so the soul, being always the same, yet wears at different times, different forms.” (Ovid)
- “They’ve such a passion for Liberty that they can’t help taking liberties with her.” (Dickens on Americans)
- “Human desires are like the world of the dead – there is always room for more.” (Proverbs)
- “Doomed is the man who builds his house by injustice and enlarges it by dishonesty.” (Book of Jeremiah)
- “Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him about to the public.” (Winston S. Churchill)
- “The sides of a mountain are varied and vast, but there is only one peak.” (Brian Hines)
- “My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.” (Adlai Stevenson)
- “If the whole world followed you, would you be pleased with where you took it?” (Neale Donald Walsch)
- “Moral filth in print poisons the reader; intellectual filth can be toxic to a whole race.” (Ezra Pound)
Do I agree full with all the above? I probably did, once upon a time. If I had not agreed with them I would not have recorded them. There's a grain of truth in some of these bits, no doubt. That line from Shelley still thrills my blood and I definitely do agree with Davies concerning Canada. Maybe I'll post more quotes another time or maybe I'll post another 'blast from the past' entry one of these days.
Or I'm bound for the ether. Either way, it's the weekend and I'm putting my feet up.
BYE.
