Random Quotes

( the cynical, silly and sublime from sinners and saints )

There is something suspicious about music, gentlemen. I insist that she is, by her nature, equivocal. I shall not be going too far in saying at once that she is politically suspect.

--Thomas Mann (1875-1955)

It's better to have something to remember than nothing to regret.

--Frank Zappa

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

--Shunryu Suzuki

Wanting to reform the world without discovering one's true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.

--Ramana Maharshi (in Happiness and God's Grace)

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
--Mignon McLaughlin

Without deviation from the norm, 'progress' is not possible.

--Frank Zappa

Don't dream it; be it.

--Dr. Frank-N-Furter (The Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

--Helen Keller

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

--Goethe

I would only believe in a God who could dance.

And when I saw my devil, I found him serious,
thorough, profound, solemn: he was the spirit of
gravity- through him all things fall.

Not by wrath, but by laughter, do we kill. Come, let
us kill the spirit of gravity!

--Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus spoke Zarathustra)

Great spirits have always encountered violent resistance from mediocre minds.

--Albert Einstein

You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God... and where can you go from there?

--The Devil (as played by Al Pacino in the 1997 movie, The Devil's Advocate)

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

-- Tao Te Ching

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
--Alexander Graham Bell

Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.

--Albert Camus

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice.

--Meister Eckhart

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

--Victor Frankl

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

—George Bernard Shaw

People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.  —Anonymous

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
--Rumi

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all of our lives.
 --Albert Einstein

 

Our life is frittered away by detail; Simplify, simplify.

--Henry David Thoreau

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

--Mohandas K. Gandhi

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes --ah, that is where the art resides.

--Artur Schnabel

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.

--Leopole Schakowsky

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 Noel Adams

Sometimes you have to play for a long time to be able to play like yourself.

-- Miles Davis (1926-91), American jazz musician, composer

Two things we should never be angry at: what we can help, and what we cannot help. 

--Dr. Thomas Fuller (1608-61)

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

-- Francois-Auguste Rodin (when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues)

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

--Michelangelo

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
--Carlos Castaneda

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

--J. Krishnamurti

If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well. 

~Rainer Maria Rilke (on leaving psychotherapy)

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

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

--Thomas Jefferson

"Plato was a bore." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." -- Leo Tolstoy

"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy." -- Ernest Hemingway

"Hemingway was a jerk." -- Harold Robbins

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

-- Mark Twain

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

--Albert Einstein

This above all: To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3