Life is kinda like underwear; when it's new it fits snug and is pristine. Then over time the elasticity begins to stretch and things begin to sag. And along the way holes get worn through, and every bad exp. is like a skid mark. To hell with underwear, it's overrated and just an extra layer to deal with. Ditch that silly extra fabric, and learn to keep your ass clean, life will still have it's good and shitty times. Easier to wash the marks off your psyche, than an old worn out pair of underwear.
Anything which is physically possible can always be made financially possible; money is a bugaboo of small minds. - Robert A. Heinlein
"Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something." "Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?" -Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)
"Humanity is too valuable to try to steal with a laser printer." - Seth Godin I copied this from a blog post of his where he wrote about how mass personalization is a trap.
"Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship." - Epicurus "Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children." - Kahlil Gibran "It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." - Oliver Wendell Holmes "Mingle some brief folly with your wisdom." - Horace "You know what is right. Deep down you know. The battle between your true wisdom and the counterfeit wisdom of society is what causes frustration. Refuse to compromise with what you know is right - with what is right for you." - Vernon Howard "Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life." - Immanuel Kant "The basic principle of spiritual life is that our problems become the very place to discover wisdom and love." - Jack Kornfield "It is not white hair that engenders wisdom." - Menander
He held up a book then. “I'm going to read it to you for relax.” “Does it have any sports in it?” “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.” “Sounds okay,” I said and I kind of closed my eyes. - William Goldman, The Princess Bride
A review I just saw of a budget airline: "Flied to visit people I know. Good rates, no wait. Plane did not crash. Baggage was good. Landed at airport."
"In all the human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots." -Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons
This is awfully (and perhaps curiously) close to what Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Mother Night: For what it's worth, Wikipedia tells me that Use of Weapons was published in 1990. Vonnegut's Mother Night has a copyright of 1991. It's certainly not enough to accuse anybody of plagiarism, but I suspect that Mr. Banks had read Vonnegut's book and it registered somewhere in his memory.
Did you make a typo? Serious question, you're showing Banks' book as a year older than Vonnegut's, but then saying that UoW has a quote inspired by (to split the difference) Vonnegut's newer book.
Space opera, as every reader doubtless knows, is a pejorative term often applied to a story that has an element of adventure. Over the decades, brilliant and talented new writers appear, receiving great acclaim, and each and every one of them can be expected to write at least one article stating flatly that the day of space opera is over and done, thank goodness, and that henceforth these crude tales of interplanetary nonsense will be replaced by whatever type of story that writer happens to favor — closet dramas, psychological dramas, sex dramas, etc., but by God important dramas, containing nothing but Big Thinks. Ten years later, the writer in question may or may not still be around, but the space opera can be found right where it always was, sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes. - Leigh Brackett [ @Earp's main WIP is space opera.]
Love her exhausted posture, but I love the cat too. They say that cats are one of the harder household items/denizens to paint accurately, but that one looks spot-on.
