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I saw somebody peeing in Jermyn Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply somebody peeing in Jermyn Street?
--Alan Bennett
Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
--Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989
Some people see the glass as half full.
Some people see the glass as half empty.
I see the glass as too damned big.
--George Carlin
Come, come, whoever you are;
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of learning...
It does not matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
A thousand times. Come, come, yet again come.
--Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
"If I walked around calling myself an Emperor because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!"
--Monty Python, Holy Grail
Mother is the name of God on the lips and hearts of all children.
--Brandon Lee as Eric Draven "The Crow"
If we are what we eat, how come we're not eating people who are smarter and better looking than ourselves?
Just like Mom used to make, only toxic.
--Paul Banda
As long as that weird guy with strange white and red hair and clothes isn't near the punch bowl, I'm okay. I often times wonder where people got the concept for Tang, and then I think of all those inmates who are forced to watch daytime soaps. Two totally unrelated events, which explains the taste and reason for Tang in the first place.
--Paul Banda
The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
--Empedocles
Love God and do what you will.
--St. Augustine
Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
--Leonard Cohen
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
--Dogen
The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
--Robert M. Pirsig
Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them ...there is nothing.
--Sartre
The raindrops patter on the basho leaf, but these are not tears of grief; this is only the anguish of him who is listening to them.
--Zen saying
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky.
--Ojibwa saying
Go-- not knowing where. Bring-- not knowing what. The path is long, the way unknown.
--Russian fairy tale
The map is not the territory.
--Alfred Korzbyski
If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water.
--Bulgarian proverb
One cannot step twice into the same river.
--Herakleitos
Every exit is an entry somewhere else.
--Tom Stoppard
Another time I saw a child coming toward me holding a lighted torch in his hand. "Where have you brought the light from?" I asked him. He immediately blew it out, and said to me, "O Hasan, tell me where it is gone, and I will tell you whence I fetched it."
--Hasan Basri
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
--Bertolt Brecht
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.
--Franz Kafka
To set up what you like against what you dislike-- this is the disease of the mind.
--Seng-T'san
How shall I grasp it? Do not grasp it. That which remains when there is no more grasping is the Self.
--Panchandasi
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
--Alfred North Whitehead
Somebody showed it to me and I found it by myself.
--Lew Welch
Why tell animals living in the water to drink?
--West African proverb
In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us.
--Peter Matthiessen
That stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind
--Ikkyu
Water which is too pure has no fish.
--Ts'ai Ken T'an
The one who is good at shooting does not hit the center of the target.
--Zen saying
A monk asked Yun-Men, "What are the teachings of a lifetime?"
Yun-Men said to him, "An appropriate statement."
--Zen mondo
When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.
--Lin-chi
I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.
--Diogenes
Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.
--Goethe
One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak.
--G.K. Chesterton
Our Father which art in heaven
Stay there
And we will stay on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty.
--Jacques Prévert
God is so omnipresent... God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw.
--John Donne
God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.
--Paul Valéry
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.
--John Cage
Learn the rules well, and then forget them.
--Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) to his students
Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in so doing you must let go of your subjective preoccupation with yourself... Your poetry arises by itself when you and the object have become one.
--Basho
I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts within.
--Eudora Welty
When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
--Samuel Johnson
Four and fifty years
I've hung the sky with stars.
Now I leap through--
What shattering!
--Dogen (on his deathbed)
One world at a time.
--Thoreau, when asked about the hereafter
Get up and do something useful, the work is part of the koan!
--Hakuin
Each medium does things the others can't, and one medium isn't replaceable by another. What you can do in comics you can't do in movies. What you can do on the stage you can't do in a novel. It's not the content one should look at. It's the intensity and the vividness with which the form of a medium disseminates the experience of the medium itself.
--Samuel R. Delaney, defending comic books (as quoted in The Sandman Companion)
We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.
--Neil Gaiman
When stepping into the stream of consciousness, don't slip on the rocks.
--The Buddha
The most merciful thing in the world...is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
--H.P. Lovecraft
All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone;
We must speak of other matters:
You can be me when I'm gone.
--Neil Gaiman
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
--Steve Martin
Whenever I'm asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say ransom notes.
--H.N. Swanson, literary agent
No man is an island, entire unto itself. Every man is a part of the main. Every man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
--John Donne
Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
--Pericles of Athens
"Evil must be fought."
--Rorshach / Alan Moore (Watchmen)
Do you know what a battlefield smells like? If so, you have my sympathy; if not, you still won't, because I have no intention of dwelling on it except to say that people don't smell so good on the inside.
--Vlad Taltos / Steven Brust (Dragon)
Be alert: The world needs more lerts.
I collected my thoughts. Someday I hoped to have all of them.
--Vlad Taltos / Steven Brust (Orca)
We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement.
--Miles Vorkosigan / Lois Bujold (Komarr)
"The corn is never declared innocent in the court of chickens."
~Matt Groenig
In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
--John Perry Barlow
"If you have a vision, follow it, even if it kills you. At least you will die on your feet, reaching for something and not be living like most men, on their knees, with their heads bowed."
--(darn, I lost the attribution)
i am every fucking thing and just a little more
i sold my soul but don't you dare call me a whore
and, when i suck you off not a drop not a drop will go to waste
it's really not so bad you know once you get past the taste
~ nin
"If someone ever catches you talking to yourself, the best thing to do is point at a chair and say 'He started it!'. That way they won't think you're crazy."
--Craig Stacey
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
-- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"Sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it."
--Garrison Keillor
"You're not friends. You'll never be friends.
You'll be in love till it kills you both.
You'll fight, and you'll shag,
and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver,
but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains,
children. It's blood. Blood screaming inside you
to work its will. I may be Love's bitch,
but at least I'm man enough to admit it."
--Spike / Joss Whedon (Buffy: The Vampire Slayer)
"Things just happen. What the hell."
- Terry Pratchett
"The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head."
- Terry Pratchett
"He who is certain he knows
the ending of things when he is
only beginning them is either
extremely wise or extremely
foolish; no matter which is true,
he is certainly an unhappy man,
for he has put a knife in the heart
of wonder."
-- Qanuc proverb / Tad Williams (The Dragonbone Chair)
"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
~ anonymous astronomer's epitaph ~
Somewhere inside me is a romantic fool trying to get out, he thought, I can hear him screaming.
--Elizabeth A. Lynn
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
--Friedrich Nietzche
"Anyone perfect must be lying, anything easy has its cost,
anyone plain can be lovely, anyone loved can be lost."
~Barenaked Ladies
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden
because of their simplicity and familiarity.
- Wittgenstein