Quotations

[Neil Down]

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

Albert Einstein

[Chinahand]

I’m reading “I contain multitudes” by Ed Yong and couldn’t recommend it more as a readable but knowledgeable introduction to the incredible world of microbes. 

He was explaining how a certain type of beetle uses bacteria and fungus it carries within its body to infect the tree it is eating which then break down the wood and make it more digestible and neutralise the plant poisons the trees produce to try to combat the beetle infestation. And so an incredible symbiont combination usher the tree into the “good night”. 

I sort of remembered that final phrase as being an allusion to a poem but couldn’t remember which and so googled it. 

Dylan Thomas certainly knew how to turn a phrase:

1914 - 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

[Chinahand]

Mr Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more than usually serene... He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and clenching proof that we are peculiar  instruments of divine intention. 

George Elliot Middlemarch p521-2

Edited December 26, 2018 by Chinahand

[quilp]

On the perils of collectivism, perhaps...

"Following in the footsteps of others seems safe, and requires no thought - but it is useless to follow a well-trodden trail when the terrain itself has changed."

On being true to ourselves and others...

"By pretending things are other than they are, we undermine our own stability, destabilise our future - transforming the past from shelter to prison."

The indefatigable Jordan Peterson.

[Chinahand]

The problem with a child with attachment problems – and it’s a real vicious circle – is that if you’ve got a child who is more difficult to manage, then some of the biological processes that you need to establish in order to get them in the right place – and respond to them in a contingent way, so they find themselves in your mind and you can mirror their identity to them so that helps them organize themselves – that just doesn’t happen, because they’re all over the place. This can undermine some basic processes, which then makes things worse. 

Peter Fonag

https://www.haaretz.com/life/books/.premium-giving-new-meaning-to-psychoanalysis-1.5243899

Respond to them in a contingent way, so they find themselves in your mind and you can mirror their identity to them so that helps them organize themselves - if ever there was a definition of the requirements a parent needs to give that is it.

Freud and psychoanalysis are fascinating.

 

[Chinahand]

Read this today from Henry Van Dyke.

"Be satisfied with your possessions, but not content with yourself until you have made the best of them."

[N3Wzk0nzum3r]

"You Got to lose your mind before you find it but when you finally find it you'll find out you never lost it at all" - Oliver Hart aka Eyedea

 

Best wishes all ~

[Chinahand]

...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.

Albert Camus

 

More interesting quotations from him here:

https://www.orionphilosophy.com/stoic-blog/albert-camus-greatest-quotes

 

[Chinahand]

Roxanne, try the Myth of Sisyphus by Camus. A life changing read for me many years ago. 

[quilp]

This good also Roxanne...

Some of Lasch's writings are more relevant now than they were back when.

 

[The Phantom]

On 1/2/2022 at 9:18 PM, Roxanne said:

Marcus Aurelius 

Him and Sun Tzu get me through most issues (in that order).  Ironically both old, but still more than relevant. 

Nietzsche is pretty handy every now and then. 

[Chinahand]

I don't know much about Robert Ingersoll, but what little I've read of him has made me respect him a lot!

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life’s morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life’s joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art’s nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship”
― Robert Green Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV

[Chinahand]

Science Is the Knowledge of Consequences and Dependence of One Fact Upon Another

Thomas Hobbes. 

I like this quote. The word consequences has moral dimensions and I've always been intrigued by the nexus between morality and facts about the world. The old saw is you can't get an ought from an is, but I've always wondered about that. Because fire is hot and will burn you, you ought not play with it. 

Hobbes tells us we understand consequences through science and that gives us a basis for understanding what we ought to do beyond arbitrary commandments. 

[Chinahand]

The phase "bought with much blood and treasure" has occasionally been used by journalists and the like to describe things like the mess of the Iraq war and I always thought it was an interesting turn of phrase.

I've now discovered it comes from Oliver Cromwell. A figure I've often found an intriguing mix of the fascinating ("show it warts and all", "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken.” the republican commonwealth, the readmittance of Jews to Britain after 300 years) and the repugnant (fundamentalism, Drogheda etc).

Cromwell saw the Commonwealth as being "dearly bought with so much hazard, blood, and treasure" during the civil war. Isn't it amazing 370 years later people are still struck by, and so continue to use, the phrase.