Ran across this while looking for something else:
“You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.”
~Jan Glidewell
Tag: quotes Page 1 of 6
“With my depression, there aren’t so many things that give me joy, and I should be able to celebrate the shit out of the things that do. If I hate just about everything in the world, let me love what I do love hard and unrestrainedly. And even when we’re teenagers, and allegedly immature enough to get away with enthusiasm, we start getting pressured to act cool, so we temper that enthusiasm so goddamn early. I’m done with it. No great art ever was made by dampening your love of anything. No great life was lived by pretending you didn’t give a shit.”
—![[personal profile]](https://www.autographedcat.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/user.png){kind=small}
maevele, in a post here
(h/t to firecat for bringing it to my attention)
“Human beings took our animal need for palatable food … and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species … and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools … and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language … and turned it into King Lear.
None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction … that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.
And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.
Why should we see this as sinful? What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?”
–Greta Christina
(via Sex Is Not The Enemy)
“The only scenario I can think of in which it makes sense to stockpile a lot of gold is one where you and your household goods are unexpectedly teleported into the sixteenth century. If you worry a lot about this, then by all means, stockpile gold. But you should also probably take the precaution of stockpiling antibiotics and how-to books on dentistry.”
—Megan McArdle
I love a good quotation, because a good quotation is a concentration of thought, whether profound or humorous. I keep an extensive quotes file of things that have struck me as worth reading over from time to time, as many others I know do.
So today, I was over at the excellent Making Light blog. I read ML regularly, but I generally do so via RSS, so I don’t often find myself on their actual webpage. But today, I was, and a quote in the sidebar caught my eye and literally made me catch my breath.
“Forgiveness requires giving up on the possibility of a better past.” (unknown)
Now, this is nothing I didn’t already know, and its even something I’ve tried to express in the past. But I’d never seen it put so elegantly and succinctly.
“I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with members of the “Flat Earth Society” either. I do not debate with people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of my church’s participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more each day.
Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people. Life moves on.
As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than a century ago: “New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth.” I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it.
I am unwilling to argue about it or to discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever. This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to celebrate it,”
(much thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the pointer)
“I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant. Ultimately, the message of gospel music is that everything’s going to be all right. If you listen to millions of gospel records – and I have – and try to distil what they all have in common it’s a sense that somehow we can triumph. There could be many thousands of things. But the message… well , there are two messages… one is a kind of optimism for the future rather than a pessimism. Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‘oh my god, its all going down the tubes’, like the blues often is. Gospel music is always about the possibility of transcendence, of things getting better. It’s also about the loss of ego, that you will win through or get over things by losing yourself, becoming part of something better. Both those messages are completely universal and are nothing to do with religion or a particular religion. They’re to do with basic human attitudes and you can have that attitude and therefore sing gospel even if you are not religious.”
—Brian Eno
“But you get the same level of consideration, trust, and respect. And you didn’t even have to take your clothes off.”
Seen everywhere.
When you see this, post in your own journal with your favorite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not “As you wish” or the Inigo Montoya speech.
Westley: There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in the world. It would be a pity to damage yours.
“I’m just pointing out that there’s equal-opportunity ouch in the nude roller derby.”