Daily Quotes

[Tamrin]

1 of 2:

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude


Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed.
Eh bien, tant pis. Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile,
then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile, and learn from her mistakes


This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook — try new recipes,
learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!


Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it


You must have discipline to have fun


In my generation, except for a few people who'd gone into banking or nursing or some-
hing like that, middle-class women didn't have careers. You were to marry and have
children and be a nice mother. You didn't go out and do anything. I found that I got restless


Life itself is the proper binge


Julia Child
American chef, author, and television personality
(Centenary of birth)



Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced
by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verb-
alize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from
forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional a the expense of careful,
'scientific' thought. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was

[Tamrin]

2 of 2:

The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook


Animals that we eat are raised for food in the most economical way possible, and the serious
food producers do it in the most humane way possible. I think anyone who is a carnivore
needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages


You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love


Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all


Everything in moderation... including moderation


We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively


Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter
conviction, as the French do, and you'll have a marvellous time!


Julia Child
(Centenary of birth)



It took architects years to get established, to show that they weren't just artisans, and that's
what I hope will happen with gastronomy. For some reason people don't consider cooking
a serious business, but it's like any discipline, and it's a passionate and fascinating one

[Smithee]

Smithee's pick of the day.

Aug 15, 2012 6:42:25 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation

Stanley Milgram
(Born this day 1933)

[Tamrin]

Quotes for the Day:

It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to
speak well, nor the judgment to hold their tongues


One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories


Lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller


As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the
foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before


The most exquisite pleasure is giving pleasure to others


Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings


To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools


Jean de La Bruyère
French essayist and moralist
(Born this day 1645)



Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think

[Tamrin]

Gather the flowers, but spare the buds


Love's whole world on us doth wheel


She with her eyes my heart does bind, she with her voice might captivate my mind


The world in all doth but two nations bear — The good, the bad; and these mixed everywhere


How should I avoid to be her slave, whose subtle art
invisibly can wreath my fetters of the very air I breath?


Art indeed is long, but life is short


While thus he threw his Elbow round, depopulating all the Ground, and, with his whistling Sythe,
does cut each stroke between the Earth and Root, the edged Stele by careless chance did into
his own Ankle glance; and there among the Grass fell down, by his own Sythe, the Mower mown


Andrew Marvell
English metaphysical poet
(Died this day 1678)



Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called
a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to
be used in speaking about the differences of human opinion about divine matters

[Tamrin]

1 of 2:

The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort;
we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness


In Aristotle the mind, regarded as the principle of life, divides into nutrition, sensation, and faculty
of thought, corresponding to the inner most important stages in the succession of vital phenomena


In the animal world, on the other hand, the process of evolution is characterised by
the progressive discrimination of the animal and vegetative functions, and a conse-
quent differentiation of these two great provinces into their separate departments


The animal kingdom exhibits a series of mental developments which may be
regarded as antecedents to the mental development of man, for the mental life
of animals shows itself to be throughout, in its elements and in the general laws
governing the combination of the elements, the same as the mental life of man


From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis
that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large


Hence, even in the domain of natural science the aid of the experimental method becomes
indispensable whenever the problem set is the analysis of transient and impermanent
phenomena, and not merely the observation of persistent and relatively constant objects


Hence, wherever we meet with vital phenomena that present the two aspects, physical and psychical
there naturally arises a question as to the relations in which these aspects stand to each other


Wilhelm Wundt
German psychologist, physiologist and philosopher
(Born this day 1832)



Experimental psychology itself has, it is true, now and again
suffered relapse into a metaphysical treatment of its problems

[Tamrin]

2 of 2:

The old metaphysical prejudice that man 'always thinks' has not yet entirely disappeared.
I am myself inclined to hold that man really thinks very little and very seldom


We speak of virtue, honour, reason; but our thought does
not translate any one of these concepts into a substance


Physiology and psychology cover, between them, the field of vital phenomena;
they deal with the facts of life at large, and in particular with the facts of human life


Physiological psychology is, therefore, first of all psychology


Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces,
without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness


Physiological psychology, on the other hand, is competent to investigate the relat-
ions that hold between the processes of the physical and those of the mental life


Many psychologists ... thought by turning their attention to their own consciousness
to be able to explain what happened when we were thnking. Or they sought to attain
the same end by asking another person a question, by means of which certain processes
of thought would be excited, and then by questioning the person about the introspect-
ion he had made. It is obvious ... that nothing can be discovered in such experiments


Wilhelm Wundt
(Born this day 1832)



The materialistic point of view in psychology can claim,
at best, only the value of an heuristic hypothesis

[Tamrin]

Knowledge leads to unity, but Ignorance to diversity
So long as God seems to be outside and far away, there is ignorance.
But when God is realised within, that is true knowledge


Common men talk bagfuls of religion but do not practise even a grain of it.
The wise man speaks little, even though his whole life is religion expressed in action


Great men have the nature of a child. They are always a child before Him; so they are free from
pride. All their strength is of God and not their own. It belongs to Him and comes from Him


And always keep your power of discrimination awake. God alone is real, that is to say, eternal;
everything else is unreal, because it will pass away. As you discriminate in this manner, let your
mind give up its attachment to the fleeting objects of this world. … Attend to all your duties but
keep your mind fixed on God. Wife, son, father, mother — live with all of them and serve them,
as if they were your very own. But know in your heart of hearts that they are not your own


You must regard other views as so many paths leading to God. You should not feel that your path
is the only right path and that other paths are wrong. You mustn't bear malice toward others


It is true that God is even in the tiger, but we must not go and face the animal. So it is true that
God dwells even in the most wicked, but it is not meet that we should associate with the wicked


Brahman and Œakti are identical. If you accept the one, you must accept the other


Ramakrishna
Bengali saint, guru of Swami Vivekananda
(Died this day 1886)



I am everybody's disciple. All are the children of God. All are His servants

[Tamrin]

Well, Sergeant, specifically of course we can know nothing —
unqualified — but like the rest of us, I've fenced my life with
a scaffolding of more or less speculative hypotheses


The fools don't realize that their possessions,
in time, come to possess them


I change my abode every day, my job every two days
and my language every three days, and still remain always
unsatisfied. I hate being in front. I hate being in back
and I don't like responsibility, and I don't obey orders


Reason calls the grave a gateway of peace: and instinct shuns it


Dear Wavell, I am reading your book, and liking it very much.
My first vanity, when I got it, was to look myself up in the index!


Don't believe more than 1/8 of any yarn you hear of me:
or 1/16 if it is printed. I never do


As for fame-after death, it's a thing to spit at; the only minds worth
winning are the warms ones about us. If we miss those we are failures


T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
British soldier and author (Seven Pillars of Wisdom)
(Born this day 1888)



All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the
dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act
their dream with open eyes, to make it possible

[Tamrin]

Even the pot-bellied abbot, who in the evening sits on his veranda with a paternal air, enjoying his
coffee and picking the holes in his teeth, has in his innermost soul the makings of a Torquemada


Human effort may manage at its best to transform a starving proletariat into a well-
fed bourgeoisie; but then a worse proletariat emerges from the bowels of society


Perhaps one day, when socialism is the State religion, there will be niches in the temples, with a little lamp
in front, and inside, images of the Fathers of the Revolution: Proudhon complete with glasses, Bacunin
looking like a bear under his Russian pelts, Karl Marx leaning on his staff – symbolic of the shepherd of souls


Superior forms of thought have a fatal tendency of later becoming revealed law:
and all philosophy ends, in its last stages, by becoming religion


The Englishman falls on the ideas and customs of other nations like a lump of granite in the
water: and there he stays, a weighty encumbrance, with his Bible, his sports and his prejudices,
his etiquette and selfishness – completely unaccommodating to those among whom he lives.
That is why he remains, in the countries where he has lived for centuries, a foreigner


A strange people, for whom it is out of the question that anyone can be moral without
reading the Bible, and strong without playing cricket, and a gentleman without being English!
And it is this that makes them so detested. They never fuse, they never lose their Englishness


In the meantime England enjoys the prestige of "the great victory of Afghanistan" for a
short while – certain of having to begin it once more in ten or fifteen years, because they
can neither conquer and annex a vast kingdom, as large as France, nor allow the existence
of a few million hostile fanatics at their side. Their policy, therefore, is to weaken them
periodically with a devastating invasion: such violence is required of a great Empire


José Maria Eça de Queiroz
Portuguese author, critic and diplomat
(Died this day 1900)



I came to the conclusion – as one invariably does in philosophy –
that I was up against a primary cause and therefore an insoluble one