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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny."
- Isaac Asimov

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good."
- W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues

"If you think you understand, it isn't God. "
- Saint Augustine of Hippo

"There's more evil in the charts than in an Al Qaida suggestion box, isnt there? Really?"
- Bill Bailey

"Thinking is so important!"
- Baldrick, Head

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."
- William Blake, Auguries Of Innocence

"I've never been a fake and I'm never phoney / I've got more flavour than a packet of macaroni"
- Bomb The Bass, Bug Powder Dust

"Congratulations we did the play and you were the most important person to make it possible! From my part Thank you!"
- António Borges Cruz, in a text message to me.

"People often say that an actor 'plays' a character well, but that's an amateurish notion. Developing a characterization is not merely a matter of putting on makeup and a costume and stuffing Kleenex in your mouth. That's what actors used to do, and then called it a characterization. In acting everything comes out of what you are, or some aspect of who you are."
- Marlon Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me

"So that's how I learned the lesson
That everyone's alone
And your eyes must do some raining
If you're ever gonna grow
When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself
It's best to compose a poem
An honest verse of longing
Or a simple song of hope

That's why I'm singing, baby, don't worry
Cause now I've got you back
And every time you feel like crying
I'm gonna try to make you laugh
And if I can't, if it just hurts too bad
Then we'll wait for it to pass
And I will keep you company
Through those days so long and black

We'll keep working on the problem
We know we'll never solve
Of love's uneven remainders
Our lives are fractions of a whole
But if the world could remain within a frame
Like a painting on a wall
Then I think we'd see the beauty then
And stand staring in awe

At our still lives posed
Like a bowl of oranges
Like a story told
By the fault lines and the soil"
- Bright Eyes, Bowl of Oranges

"I just hope he stays away from the Bat-Segway. That would just be really lame."
- broberfett, TrekBBS, on the many variations in Batman's transport.

"Any preconceptions that I have can be completely erased once I've watched what two actors will do. [...] [In directing and acting what's important is] what's underneath it. You can't play the words, because there's nothing to play. You've got to play somethign else. There's something else that motivates us to speak, that motivates us to do things, to make decisions. To act."
- Avery Brooks, DS9 Companion, "Body Parts".

"Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world."
- G. K. Chesterton, Heretics/Orthodoxy

Michael, Michael: Michael of the Morning,
Michael of the Army of the Lord,
Stiffen thou the hand upon the still sword, Michael,
Folded and shut upon the sheathed sword, Michael,
Under the fullness of the white robes falling,
Gird us with the secret of the sword.

When the world cracked because of a sneer in heaven,
Leaving out for all time a scar upon the sky,
Thou didst rise up against the Horror in the highest,
Dragging down the highest that looked down on the Most High:
Rending from the seventh heaven the hell of exaltation
Down the seven heavens till the dark seas burn:
Thou that in thunder threwest down the Dragon
Knowest in what silence the Serpent can return.

Down through the universe the vast night falling
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the Morning!)
Far down the universe the deep calms calling
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the Sword!)
Bid us not forget in the baths of all forgetfulness,
In the sigh long drawn from the frenzy and the fretfulness
In the huge holy sempiternal silence
In the beginning was the Word.

When from the deeps of dying God astounded
Angels and devils who do all but die
Seeing Him fallen where thou couldst not follow,
Seeing Him mounted where thou couldst not fly,
Hand on the hilt, thou hast halted all thy legions
Waiting the Tetelestai and the acclaim,
Swords that salute Him dead and everlasting
God beyond God and greater than His Name.

Round us and over us the cold thoughts creeping
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the battle-cry!)
Round us and under us the thronged world sleeping
(Michael, Michael: Michael of the Charge!)
Guard us the Word; the trysting and the trusting
Edge upon the honour and the blade unrusting
Fine as the hair and tauter than the harpstring
Ready as when it rang upon the targe.

He that giveth peace unto us; not as the world giveth:
He that giveth law unto us; not as the scribes:
Shall he be softened for the softening of the cities
Patient in usury; delicate in bribes?
They that come to quiet us, saying the sword is broken,
Break man with famine, fetter them with gold,
Sell them as sheep; and He shall know the selling
For He was more than murdered. He was sold.

Michael, Michael: Michael of the Mustering,
Michael of the marching on the mountains of the Lord,
Marshal the world and purge of rot and riot
Rule through the world till all the world be quiet:
Only establish when the world is broken
What is unbroken is the word.
- G.K. Chesterton, "To St. Michael in Time of Peace"

"A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there."
- Charles Darwin

"...het leven en het geloof zijn geen supermarkt waar je uit plukt wat je leuk vind."
- Chaplain van Dijk.

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all that loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"
- Albert Einstein

"Iedereen die katholiek is, is zeer hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet goed bij zijn hoofd. Laten we wel wezen. Maar iemand die niet-katholiek is, is in ieder geval niet goed bij zijn hoofd. Het katholicisme geeft nog een klein sprankje hoop. Het enige en hoogst haalbare wat een mens in zijn leven mag verwachten.
- Herman Finkers, Na de Pauze

"There is a popular view that the human mind is this fantastic thing that most of us are just barely using – 5 or 10 percent of its capacity. If we could only unleash the whole human mind and all its powers, we’d be supermen. Now my notion is that for an ordinary person to get along in society in a conventional way requires about 110 percent of the capacity of the human mind, causing breakdowns and troubles of various sorts. Basically, the human mind is not most like a god or most like a computer. It’s most like the mind of a chimpanzee and most of what’s there isn’t designed for living in high society but for getting along in the jungle or out in the fields."
- Edward Fredkin

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part."
- Morgan Freeman as William Somerset, Seven.

"The aim of the library is a simple one, to unite writing with its reading... yes, a simple stream, but a wide one when trying to cross. The library must satisfy the curiosity of the curious, offer to stuff students with facts, provide a place for the lonely, where they may enjoy the companionship and warmth of the word. It is supposed to supply handbooks for the handy, novels for the insomniacs, scholarship for the scholarly, and make available works of literature, written for no one in particular, to those individuals they will eventually haunt so successfully, these readers, in self-defense, will bring them finally to life.
"More important than any of these traditional things, I think, is the environment of books the library puts visitors in, and the opportunity for discovery that open stacks make possible."
- William H. Gass, "A Defense of the Book", from A Temple of Texts.

"If you want the rainbow, you've gotta put up with the rain - do you know which philosopher said that? Dolly Parton. And people say she's just a big pair of tits."
Ricky Gervais as David Brent in The Office.

"Whereas you could talk to and confide and hope and trust in a lover, that lover might still leave or betray you. A great song, by contrast, would talk to you - and its truths would never betray you. At 3 a.m., outside of the greatest and most sinful sex, there was nothing that could mean as much as a pop song that told you secrets about your own fucked-up and yearning heart."
- Mikal Gilmore, Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock 'n' Roll.

"The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after." "Liar."
- Anthony Stewart Head and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Giles and Buffy, Lie To Me.

"At the mountain of God, Horeb, Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter. Then the LORD said to him,“Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD; the LORD will be passing by.” A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountainsand crushing rocks before the LORD—but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake—but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was fire—but the LORD was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave."
- The Holy Bible, 1 Kings, 19:9a, 11-13a,

"Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world. But I can tell you this; as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard."
- John Le Carré, end credits of The Constant Gardener.

"That's not true! I'm alive! I'll always be alive! It's Marritza who's dead! Marritza; who was only good for cowering under his bunk and weeping like a woman. Every night, covering his ears so he wouldn't have to hear the Bajorans screaming for mercy while we killed them... covering my ears... so I wouldn't have to hear those terrible screams! You don't know what it's like to be a coward. To stand by and let such horrors take place, and do nothing. No; Marritza's dead. He deserves to be dead."
- Aamin Marritza, Duet.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
- Groucho Marx

"I'm a veritable smorgasbord of mental disorders."
- mencc1701, in a reply to a post of mine.

Mission Control: "Discovery, Houston with a question."
Eileen Collins: "And we hope we have an answer. Go ahead."
Mission Control: "All right, Eileen, how do you feel about a beautiful clear night with a breeze down the runway in the high desert of California?"
- NASA Mission Control & Discovery Commander Eileen Collins

"If I die, survive me with such sheer force
that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold,
from south to south lift your indelible eyes,
from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.
I don't want your laughter or your steps to waver,
I don't want my heritage of joy to die.
Don't call up my person. I am absent.
Live in my absence as if in a house.
Absence is a house so vast
that inside you will pass through its walls
and hang pictures on the air
Absence is a house so transparent
that I, lifeless, will see you, living,
and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.""
- Pablo Neruda, If I Die

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil"
- Psalms 23:4

"Rent a flat above a shop,
Cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
Pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right
'cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you call your Dad he could stop it all.
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view,
And dance and drink and screw
Because there's nothing else to do."
- Pulp, Common People.

"A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr. Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins."
- Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

"Painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing. He who has learned what is commonly considered that whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just as much towards being that which we ought to respect as a great painter, as a man who has learnt how to express himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being a great poet. The language is, indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one case than in the other, and possesses more power in delighting the sense, while it speaks to the intellect; but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than language, and all those excellences which are peculiar to the painter as such, are merely what rhythm, melody, precision, and force are in the words of the orator and the poet, necessary to their greatness, but not the tests of their greatness. It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective greatness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally determined."
- Joseph Ruskin, A Definition of Greatness in Art from Modern Painters

"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
- Carl Sagan, Reflections on a Mote of Dust.

"People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God, It never was between you and them anyway."
- Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta

"I don't anthropomorphise spacecraft. They don't like it."
- Unknown NASA employee

"[T]here are no generalities for us, no anonymous and interchangeable people. We live by loving what's special, unique in each person. Everyone matters."
- Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

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