Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

People behave and act in accordance with the expectations others have of them


Life is about choices, and you have the ability to choose. You always have had this ability.
I suggest that not only do you have the ability, you have the responsibility to make
choices for yourself. It is your life, and you are in the driver's seat, if you choose to be


You're creative, intuitive, and powerful inside — you're a creative genius.
But you've got to allow yourself to get off the old track


We move towards what we repeatedly focus on, whether it's good for us or not


You must create a vivid mental picture of the end results you want. Once you imprint that vision
in your mind, you will become very creative to find information that you can use to help achieve it


Don't be too concerned with how you're going to be what you want to be in the future;
you'll learn how to create and invent the process along the way


When your uppermost values are consistent with permanent principles, natural laws, perhaps even
eternal values, then all around you can change — you can even lose most of what you have — and you'll
remain strong and centered. Now, the losses might bother you for a time, but they won't beat you


Lou Tice
US secular magus (Pacific Institute)
(Cognitive Psychology & Social Learning)
(Died this day 2012)



I want you to get to the point in maturity where you do this unselfishly, where you
give with no ulterior motive at all, where you are primarily interested in helping people
around you because that's the greatest sense of reward that you can find. You make it
happen simply because it's the right thing to do, not to impress anyone, not because you
want something from it. Your intent is unselfish. You're motivated by love and justice

[Tamrin]

[Tamrin]

Wednesday’s Quotes:

I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of
my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent


Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases,
for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion


The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered
its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with


I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous
than the excess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the first causes death


I have felt in my very blood, ever since I was born, a most unconquerable
hatred towards the whole tribe of fools, and it arises from the fact that
I feel myself a blockhead whenever I am in their company


We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised
for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part


In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man


Bro. Giacomo Casanova
Venetian soldier, spy, diplomat, writer, adventurer
(Born this day 1725)



Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does,
it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy

[Tamrin]

“Just living is not enough," said the butterfly,
"one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower”


Travelling expands the mind rarely


He found whole figures which represented a written word;
but he never could manage to represent just the word he wanted —
that word was 'eternity', and the Snow Queen had said,
"If you can discover that figure, you shall be your own master, and
I will make you a present of the whole world and a pair of new skates."
But he could not find it out


To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy


No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because,
in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office


In the days of Moses and the prophets such a man would have been counted among
the wise men of the land; in the Middle Ages he would have been burned at the stake


Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up


Hans Christian Andersen
Danish author of 150 fairy tales
(Born this day 1805)



Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale

[Tamrin]

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it


If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow


The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work


There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman.
One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman


If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity


Perfection is such a nuisance that I often regret having cured myself of using tobacco


If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud


Émile Zola
French novelist (Nana, J'Accuse)
(Born this day 1840)



J'accuse
(“I accuse”)

[Tamrin]

Creativity is that marvellous capacity to grasp mutually
distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition


The role of the painter . . . is to project that which sees itself in him


Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention
of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation


I succeeded in simply attending at the birth of all my works


All good ideas arrive by chance


The task of the right eye is to peer into the telescope, while the left eye peers into the microscope


The splendour of the stars is not reserved for those who have tickets


Max Ernst
German painter, sculptor, graphic artist and poet
(Born this day 1891)



The virtue of pride, which was once the beauty of mankind,
has given place to that fount of ugliness, Christian humility

[Tamrin]

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping


When a society has doubts about its future, it tends to produce spokes-
men whose main appeal is to the emotions, who argue from intuitions,
and whose claim to be truth-bearers rests solely on intense personal feeling


How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives?
To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption?
Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself


We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it


I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach
to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive,
and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed
and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming
fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair"


The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish
is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely
considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate


I hope I never need to believe in God. It would be an awful confession of failure


Kenneth Tynan
British author and theatre critic
(Born this day 1927)



A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre
of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening

[Tamrin]

Modern liberalism suffers unresolved contradictions. It exalts individualism
and freedom and, on its radical wing, condemns social orders as oppressive.
On the other hand, it expects governments to provide materially for all, a feat
manageable only by an expansion of authority and a swollen bureaucracy
In other words, liberalism defines government as tyrant father but demands
it behave as nurturant mother. Feminism has inherited these contradictions


The mystique of the femme fatale cannot be perfectly translated into male terms


Everything is so damn Mary Poppins and sanitized


The moral ambivalence of the great mother goddesses has been conven-
iently forgotten by those American feminists who have resurrected them


The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults.
Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history


Don’t look for sexual enlightenment from academe,
which spews out mountains of books but never looks at life directly


Masculine identity is embattled and fragile


Camille Paglia
American author, scholar and critic (Sexual Personæ
(Born this day 1947)



The only antidote to the magic of images is the magic of words

[Tamrin]

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own
traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning


As for the historical inspirations I drew on in writing The Snow Queen, I suppose I would call them more
cross-cultural inspirations, though they frequently involve past societies as well as present day ones


And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium,
in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large


But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recog-
nition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives


In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death


Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything
it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it


The contradictions are what make human behaviour so
maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time


Joan D. Vinge
American science fiction author (The Snow Queen)
(Born this day 1948)



For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever

[Tamrin]

Whatever you think, think the opposite


If you always make the right decision, the safe decision,
the one most people make, you will be the same as everyone else


Be unfashionable. Take risks


Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to
preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up having more


Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it


Be your own worst critic. When things go wrong it's tempting to shift the blame. Don't.
Accept responsibility. People will appreciate it, and you will find out what you're capable of


Great people have great egos; maybe that's what makes them great


Paul Arden
American author and inspirational speaker
(Died this day 2008)



Do it, then fix it as you go