25th June 2018
A few quotes I collected up in 2016. Worth another look.
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“In a universe of physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt while others get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.” – Richard Dawkins
“Like all good travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“Widdershins” (sometimes withershins, widershins or widderschynnes) is an ancient Scottish term meaning to go in a contrary direction, to go against the natural flow, against the natural movement of the sun, to go counter-clockwise, go lefthandwise, or to walk around an object by always keeping it on the left – Wiki et al
“Don’t assume that ‘WHY?’ deserves an answer when posed about the universe.” - Richard Dawkins
“Even when the rabbit appears convincingly from the hat, trickery is suspected. So could the entire cosmos simply pop into being, magically, for no reason at all?” - Paul Davies
Isambard Kingdom Brunel referred to his Clifton Bridge design as "my first child, my darling" – something I read
“If you’ve got someone to hug you’ll be as okay as you want to be” – I have no idea where I saw this
“The purposes of God are made clear to some old women, and nuns, and idiots.” - Patrick White in “Tree of Man”
"Men have two motivations - hunger and hanky panky, and they can't tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich." – fwd’d email
"They don’t make birthday balloons that go up to 90 – there just isn’t the market for them" - Herself
"Everyone comes into the game part way through" – read this somewhere
"Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die" – fwd’d email
Carravaggio had a disturbing penchant for hacking off heads, was said to have killed a tennis opponent over a bet, signed some of his paintings with his own blood, especially the “Sacrifice Of Abraham” in which Abraham is about to cut off his son’s head. Carravaggio was weird but geez he could paint – a stray website.
“Trying to look good limits my life” – designer Stefan Sagmeister
"She claimed that it’d been so long since she had sex, she’d healed over and become a virgin again" – family friend
“I have some sort of cancer in my fanny. Doesn’t seem fair, it’s not as though we used it all that much” – same family friend
"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing" – fwd’d email
"I started out with buggerall, and I’ve still got most of it" – an oldie but a goodie
"Apparently there are over 80 different conditions that have to exist within a very small range for life as we know it to happen, so the odds are phenomenal. It would be fascinating to see if any planets have enough of them for some sort of life and what it would be. What fun if they find it's much the same as us, but they're really irritating people who keep pestering us for millennia until eventually the whole earth changes its phone number" – playwright Therese Edmonds, pondering life out there.
"Everyone looks for God, or some version of God, if only to have something to deny" – found on the "Gondwanaland" cutting room floor.
"The cosmic dynamo – its humming, all the time – and it’s a damn fool tune - hmmmm mmmm hmmm - a listless little tune, making it up as it goes along" – something scribbled on the back of a receipt for electrical work, scribble that looks like mine.
"Why does God need 24 million people in Australia and more than 7 billion on Earth? Enough already of this cruel experiment – it isn’t working!!" - Letters to the editor
“Calories are little critters that live in your closet and sew your clothes up just a little bit tighter every night” – found on our favourite Irish caff’s website.
“Improvisation is too good to leave to chance.” – Paul Simon