14 Sep 2021

Posting for the first time here in seven years. Perhaps I'll begin using this old blog again, now that there is no chance of anyone finding it or reading it.

Small

When things get so big, I don't trust them at all
You want some control, you've got to keep it small
-- Peter Gabriel, D.I.Y, from "Peter Gabriel II", 1978

Door

"My only advice is, if you can get me to offer you $5,000 not to open the door, take the money and go home."
-- Monty Hall, quoted in the New York times, 21 July 1991.

Object

God help anyone sick enough to develop an emotional relationship with an inanimate object.
-- Seaweed Shark

Transmutation

There is an old alchemical concept that whoever learns to perfect the metals, learns so much else that he loses interest in transmutation.
-- Seaweed Shark

Morality

The Distinction between morality and obedience is rarely well articulated.
-- Seaweed Shark

Human Being

"While the world was full of people, all too full, finding a genuine human being was not easy." -- Eiji Yoshikawa

Big Books

Books should not be too big. A big book is too often like one of those "pan for gold" attractions in the Rocky Mountains: a few bright chips amid much sand and water.
-- Seaweed Shark

Words

I like words. They are, after our bodies, pretty much our first playthings.
-- Seaweed Shark

Noblest Spirits

"Only the noblest spirits can bear with equanimity the success of their friends."
-- Will Durant, Caesar and Christ p.289

Power & Pettiness

"I cannot at the same time do homage to power and pettiness -- to the truth of consummate science, and the mannerism of undisciplined imagination."
-- John Ruskin, Modern Painters V1, Intro, sec. 4

Modern

"Looking to science for deliverance from the tragicomedy of history is part of what it means to be modern."
-- John Gray (The New Republic, April 20, 2012)

Something Special

"I further know that if God has something special for you, you have a knowledge of it inside you, which causes you not to be satisfied with anything that is not that thing."

-- Leonard Cheshire

Three Mysteries

CREATION, EVIL, TIME ~ three mysteries, about which it is only possible, in the last analysis, to say that they are somehow interconnected, and that their relationship to the greater mystery of divine Reality is one of limitation.
-- Aldus Huxley

The Principle of Democracy

The principle of democracy is freedom, the principle of war is discipline; each requires the absence of the other.
~ Will Durant