assorted thoughts
for my friends
from roger
=========================================================
Last night when the sun went down
and the light lifted -- it was levered
off the last high land to the westward
through tier after tier of cirrus
and cumulus cloud,
all the way to the zenith -- such
a finale of auroral cold fire
no one could speak here . . . We stood
like pillars of salt looking after it
a long while till it all faded
into grey-blue and dark-grey. Again
I wonder how we survive, how
we survive, when more than we had dreamt of
is given, for no reason, and for no reason
taken away.
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the
pig.
Universities are full of knowledge. The freshmen bring little, the seniors
take away none, and knowledge accumulates.
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you are
on.
I didn't want to be rich. I just wanted enough to get the couch upholstered.
-- Mrs. Zero Mostel --
Yes, but everytime I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
I don't know who discovered water, but I know it wasn't a fish.
Old age is a shipwreck.
-- DeGaulle --
Television has brought murder back into the home where it belongs.
-- Hitchcock --
If you are feeling good, don't worry; you'll get over it.
The time not to become a father is eighteen years (or, in this case, twenty)
before a war. -- Steve (our son), sent to me on 14 Jan 91 --
Oh, I feel somewhat better this morning,
but I always feel bad when I feel better because I know I'm going to feel
worse.
After I finish this project, I am going to have a nervous breakdown. I owe
it to myself, I worked for it, and nobody is going to talk me out of it.
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Reality is a failure of the imagination.
How difficult it is to know what passes in another mind; to have sympathy
and insight to penetrat the dross and rubbish which at time scum the surface.
It is more difficult still, when the inquirer holds the power of authority
and the other is examined as if an intellectual bankrupt.
In the middle of the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.
-- Dante --
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
-- Mae West --
I like the trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to
life than other things do.
Any fool can make a rule.
-- Thoreau --
Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
I had a lousy day. It wasn't
really lousy. In fact, it was a pretty good day. But it seemed lousy.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into
two types and those who don't.
-- Robert Benchley --
Wisdom is oftimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar.
-- Wordsworth --
Identity
Intimacy
Generativity
Integrity
-- Erikson ---
It is possible to get an education at a university.
The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind
to spot the wrong question.
There is no job so simple that it cannot be done wrong.
Every passing hour brings the solar system forty-three thousand miles closer
to globular cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there are some misfits
who insist that there is no such thing as progress.
Woman is a calamity, but every house must have its curse.
(1) A good solution can be successfully applied to almost any problem.
(2) No real problem has a solution.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words
mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master
-- that's all."
I write a lot -- every day, seven days a week -- and I throw a lot away.
Sometimes I think I write to throw away; it's a process of distillation.
-- Barthelme --
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a
bunch of blank paper.
-- Steve Martin --
There is never time to do it right, but there is always time to do it over
again. Almost anything is easier to get into than to get out of. Talk low,
talk slow and don't say too much.
-- John Wayne --
For a well-balanced perspective, the person who has a dog to worship him
should have a cat to ignore him.
-- Peterborough Examiner
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
-- Malamud --
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm
us.
-- Voltaire --
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
-- Gunther --
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. -- George Burns
--
UNIVERSITY ORGANIZATIONAL CHART
The DEAN
leaps tall buildings in a single bound
is more powerful than a locomotive
is faster than a speeding bullet
walks on water
gives policy to God
The DEPARTMENT HEAD
leaps short buildings in a single bound
is more powerful than a switch engine
is just as fast as a speeding bullet
walks on water if sea is calm
talks with God
PROFESSOR
leaps short building with a running
start and good winds
is almost as powerful as a switch engine
is faster than a speeding BB
walks on water in an indoor swimming pool
walks with God if special request is granted
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
barely clears a quonset hut
loses tug-of-war with locomotive
can fire a speeding bullet
swims well
is occasionally addressed by God
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
makes high marks on the walls when trying to leap buildings
is run over by locomotives
can sometimes handle a gun without inflicting a self-injury
treads water
talks to animals
INSTRUCTOR
climbs the walls continually
rides the rails
plays Russian roulette
walks on thin ice
prays a lot
GRADUTE STUDENT
runs into buildings
recognizes locomotive two out of three times
is not issued ammunition
can stay afloat with life jacket
talks to walls
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT
falls over doorstep when trying to enter buildings
says "Look at the choo-choo"
wets himself with water pistol
plays in mud puddles
mumbles to himself
DEPARTMENT SECRETARY
lifts buildings and walks under them
kicks locomotives off the tracks
catches speeding bullets in her teeth and eats them
freezes water with a single glance
She is God
Pigs may fly, but they are very unlikely
birds.
Classical taxonomy has almost ceased to count as a science. The explanation
seems to lie in a change in the valuation of knowledge... For taxonomy is
based on connoisseurship .... The knowledge of key features is invaluable
as a maxim for the identification of specimens, but like all maxims it is
useful only to those who possess the art of applying it.
-- Polanyi --
As the pines keep the shape of the wind even when the wind has fled, so
words guard the shape of the man even when the man has fled and is no longer
there.
Some books are to be tasted; others are to be swallowed; and some few are
to be chewed and digested.
If you put a poonful of wine in a barrel full of sewage, you get sewage.
If you put a spoonful of sewage in barrel full of wine, you get sewage.
There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who
watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.
Life is an ocean, you must plunge in and get wet. You simply cannot learn
to swim without getting in the water. In the same way, you cannot know about
life, God, love or anything without becoming involved. The time is past
for hanging back.
-- Jim Beall --
OLIVER NORTH CREDO: If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence
that you ever tried.
Happiness is seeing Lubbock TX in your rearview mirror.
Animals are divided into (a) those
that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained,
(d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h)
those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as
if they were made, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine
camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower
vase, and (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.
Look to the future and forget the past. Running away is a decision too.
The truth you seek has no past and no future. It is, and that is all that
it needs to be.
The test of first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas
in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald --
If you are going to swallow a frog,
it is best not to look at it too long.
If you are going to swallow many frogs,
swallow the biggest first.
The brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
In Buffalo NY, suicide is redundant.
Love reasons without reason.
-- Shakespeare --
To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another.
-- Leibnitz --
Love fades.
Mr. Dunkett found all his traps fail one after another, and was in such
despair at the way the corn got eaten that he resolved to invent a rat-trap.
He began by putting himself as nearly as possible in the rat's place.
"Is there anything," he asked himself, "in which, if I were
a rat, I should have such complete confidence that I could not suspect it
without suspecting everything in the world and being unable henceforth to
move fearlessly in any direction?" He pondered for a while and
had no answer, till one night the room seemed to become full of light and
he hears a voice from heaven saying: "Drain-pipes."
Then he saw his way. To suspect a common drain-pipe would be to cease to
be a rat. Here Skertchley enlarged a little, explaining that a spring was
to be concealed inside, but that the pipe was was to be open at both ends;
if the pipe were closed at one end, a rat would naturally not like going
into it, for he would not feel sure of being able to get out again; on which
I [Butler] interrupted and said:
"Ah, it was just this which stopped me from going into the Church."
When he [Butler] told me this, I [Jones] knew what was in his mind, and
that, if he had not been in such respectable company, he would have said:
"It was just this which stopped me from getting married."
-- Bateson in Steps to an Ecology of Mind --
I've tried relaxing, but -- I don't know -- I feel more comfortable tense.
-- Snoopy ---
I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.
-- Shaw --
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the believe that
one's work is terribly important.
-- Bertrand Russell --
There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.
-- Repplier --
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
-- Thoreau --
More than any time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads
to depair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us
pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen --
If you want an audience, start a fight.
-- Gaelic proverb --
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
Not people die, but worlds die in them.
-- Frost --
When in danger or in doubt
Run in circles, scream and shout.
if you get gloomy just
take an hour off and sit
and think how
much better this world
is than hell
of course it won t cheer
you up much if
you expect to go there
-- Marquis --
Man who walks in middle of road gets hit by trucks going both ways.
-- My Three Sons --
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune:
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
-- Shakespeare --
What matter is it how far we go?
His scaly friend replied,
There is another shore, you know,
Upon the other side.
-- The Mock Turtle --
It is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and
what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one
shouldn't read.
-- Oscar Wilde --
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
-- Maurois --
If we encounter a man of rare
intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
-- Emerson --
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
One should fight like the devil the temptation to think well of editors.
They are all, without exception -- at least some of the time -- incompetent
or crazy. By the nature of their profession they read too much, with the
result they grow jaded and cannot recognize talent though it dances in front
of their eyes.
-- Gardner --
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
-- Samuel Johnson --
You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for
anyone.
-- Ciardi --
Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you
first hoped.
-- Lillian Hellman --
A good title is like a good metaphor: it should intrigue without being too
baffling or too obvious.
-- Percy --
If there is a special Hell for writers, it would be in the forced contemplation
of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures
that any finished work of art implies.
That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love in
the same way after us.
-- Goethe --
I'm tired of all this nonsense
about beauty only being skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want,
an adorable pancreas?
-- Jean Kerr --
If there is anything better than to be loved, it is loving.
Man who walks in middle of road gets hit by trucks going both ways.
Love is an egotism of two.
-- La Salle --
Doctors are not scientists, at least not in their medical roles, because,
though they certainly draw on science, what they do is neither objective
enough nor oriented to the production of new knowledge -- nor should it
be. And they are certainly not artists, since aesthetic principles and independent
creativity have little or no place in practice, despite everything that
has been said about the 'art' of medicine. But doctors are craftspeople
of the highest order. Sometime, like engineers, they lean very heavily on
science. Sometimes, like diamond cutters, they seem to be coasting on pure
skill. And occasionally, like glassblowers or goldsmiths, what they do verges
on art.
-- St. Elsewhere --
There are only two ways to treat a woman: to make love to her if she is
pretty and to someone else if she is plain.
-- Wilde --
Man was born to toil and be obsessive about his labors. Woman was born to
complain, "You never pay attention to me." From these skirmishes,
the war of divorce develops.
It is folly to pretend that one ever wholly recovers from a disappointed
passion. Such wounds always leave a scar. There are faces I can never look
upon without emotion; there are names I can never hear spoken without almost
starting.
-- Longfellow --
Thank God, kids never mean well.
There is nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate.
Chemistry, which, like electricity, was nothing but a set of experiments
in Benjamin Franklin's time, turned into a science after Lavoisier had discovered
that fire was not a thing but a process, something which happened to things
-- an idea so far above the common thought that they guillotined him for
it in 1794.
Clinician: Learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing
about everything.
Researcher: Learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything
about nothing.
A man reserves his greatest and deepest love not for the woman in whose
company he finds himself electrified and enkindled but for that one in whose
company he may feel tenderly drowsy.
-- Nathan --
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved
for ourselves, or rather in spite of ourselves.
People are constantly creating these real unncessary neurotic problems for
themselves that keep them for dealing with the more real, terrifyingly unsolvable
problems about the universe.
-- Woody Allen in Manhatten --
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into
two types and those who don't.
It does not matter if one marries or not. One will regret it either way.
Heaven and earth are not humane.
What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works it way
up to a climax.
-- Sam Goldwyn --
I'd like to be rich enough so that I could throw soap away after letters
are worn off.
-- Andy Rooney --
Success is doing what turns you on.
-- Forbes --
There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them
than to travel with them.
-- Twain --
To teach is to learn twice.
With the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
-- Plato --
Anyone who marries for money earns every cent of it.
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet.
-- Mae West --
All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.
-- John Gunther --
So much of the time we're just lost.
-- The Verdict --
A FINALS PARODY
And it came to pass that early in the morning of the last day of the semester
there arose a multitude smiting their books and wailing. And there was much
weeping and gnashing of teeth for the day of judgment was at hand, and they
were sore afraid. For they had left undone those things that they ought
to have done and had done things which they ought not to have done, and
there was no help for it.
And there was many abiding in the dorms who had kept watch over their books
all night, but it naught availeth. But some there were who arose smilingly
for they had prepared for themselves the way, and made straight the path
of knowledge. And the wise ones were known as the burners of midnight oil
but by others they were called curvelousers. And the multitude arose and
ate a hearty breakfast.
And they came to the appointed place, and their hearts were heavy with them.
And they came to pass, but some passed out. And some of them repented of
their riotous living, and bemoaned their fate, but they had not a prayer.
And at the last hour there came among them one known as the instructor,
he of the diabolical smile, and passed papers among them, and went on his
way. And many and varied were the questions asked by the instructor, but
still more varied were the answers that were given, for some of his teachings
had fallen on fertile minds, others had fallen fallow among the fellows,
while others had fallen flat.
And some were there who wrote for an hour, others wrote for two, but some
turned away sorrowful. And of these many offered up a little bull in hopes
of pacifying the instructor, for these were the ones who had not a prayer.
And when they finished, they gathered up their belongings and went away
quietly, each in his own direction, and each one vowing to himself in his
manner, "I shall not pass this way again," but it is a long hard
road that has no turning.
To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
-- Mae West --
Just remember: when you are over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.
-- Peanuts --
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost
of living high.
-- Larson --
The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary
father.
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
It is better to live rich than to die poor.
-- Samuel Johnson --
What we don't have today, we will buy tomorrow.
-- Class of 1990 --
(on graffti wall in Gainesville Florida)
I am going in search of a great perhaps.
-- Rabelais --
The empiricist thinks he believes
only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than seeing.
-- Santayana --
If you have had your attention
directed at the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have
observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness
when they are first produced.
-- Whitehead --
To know how to criticize is good; to know how to create is better.
-- Poincare --
The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure,
yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers
may cast on her character.
-- Santayana --
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts.
Seek simplicity and distrust it.
-- Whitehead --
.... the subject-predicate habits of thought had been impressed on the European
mind by the overemphasis on Aristotle's logic during the long medieval period.
In reference to this twist of mind, probably Aristotle was not an Aristotelian.
-- Whitehead --
". . . the patriotic archbishop of Canterbury, found it advisable -'"
"Found what?" said the Duck.
"Found it," the Mouse replied, rather crossly: "of course,
you know what 'it' means."
"I know what 'it' means well enough, when I find a thing," said
the Duck: "it's generally a frog or a worm."
-- Carroll --
Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done.
Every passing hour brings the solar system forty-three thousand miles closer
to globular cluster M13 in Hercules -- and still there some misfits who
insist that there is no such thing as progress.
Science is never merely knowledge;
it is orderly knowledge.
-- Royce --
We cease to seek resemblances; we devote ourselves above all to the differences,
and among the differences are chosen first the most accentuated, not only
because they are the most striking, but because they will be the most instructive.
-- Pioncare --
I have a good job and a condo on the beach. I run four miles a day and play
tennis twice a week. I'm in perfect health, and my roller skates cost $100.
I guess you could say I'm unhappy.
The Dormouse went on: " -- that begins with an M, such as mousetraps,
and the moon, and memory, and muchness - you know as you say things are
'much of a muchness' - did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of muchness!"
"Really, now you ask me," said Alice, very much confused, "I
don't think - "
"Then you shouldn't talk," said the Hatter.
-- Carroll --
Your parents fuck you up. They don't mean to, but they do.
-- Synopsis of psychoanalytic theory --
Until recently we have had a split medicine. One branch, general medicine,
was interested in the body (soma); the other was interested in the soul
(psyche). The net result was that general medicine was a glorified form
of veterinary science, while psychiatry remained metaphysical.
The middle age crsis occurs when you realize that you are over the hill
before you ever reached the top of the heap.
Illegitimati non carborundum.
I hate money but it soothes my nerves.
-- Joe Louis --
Student to Teacher: "I think
you'll find my test results are a pretty good indication of your ability
as a teacher."
If they can send a man to the moon, why can't they send all of them there?
Every time history repeats itself, the price doubles.
Anybody who hates dogs and children can't be all bad.
-- W.C. Fields --
'O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.
Every age hath its book.
-- Koran --
The Logic of the Kettle
Rebuked for having returned a kettle with a hole in it, the borrower responds,
first that he never borrowed it; second, that when he borrowed it there
already was a hole in it; and third, that he returned it intact.
-- Tzvetan Todorov --
Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and feet. It's also
good for the ground. It makes it feel it's needed.
-- Snoopy --
Psychiatric classification is seen as an utterly unproductive form of occupational
therapy for those psychiatrists who have little inclination to delve into
the deeper recesses of their patients' minds, less stomach for what they
might find there, little apptitude for intuitive understanding, and no ability
to empathisize with or imagine themselves in their patients' predicaments.
"Did you say 'pig' or 'fig'?" said the Cat.
"I said 'pig'," replied Alice: "and I wish you wouln't keep
appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy."
"All right," said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly,
beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained
some time after the rest of it had gone.
"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice: "but
a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life."
-- Carroll --
More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.
-- FDR, 13 Apr 45 (for a speech to be given the day after his death) --
A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.
What the world needs is a computer to figure out all the things that don't
add up.
Diagnosis: To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is
to be ridiculous.
There is no place like this place anywhere near this place so this must
be the place.
I had a lousy day.
It wasn't really lousy;
in fact, it was a pretty good day.
But it seemed lousy.
Even us paranoids have enemies.
-- How many legs would a goat have if its tail were a leg?
-- Five
-- Wrong. Four. Saying a tail is a leg don't make it so.
Perhaps I believe that the world
can get forward most by clearer and clearer definitions of fundamentals.
Accordingly I propose to stick to tasks of nomenclature and terminology,
unpopular and ridicule-provoking though they may be.
-- Earnest Southard --
If you are feeling good, don't worry; you'll get over it.
Every time history repeats itself, the price doubles.
Once I thought I was wrong but that was a mistake.
If you don't know where you are going, any road will do.
If you are not sure where you are going, most likely you will end up somewhere
else.
What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly for
them.
Cliches of the late 1980s
Totally awesome.
Like sucks, then you die.
Don't worry, be happy.
Just say NO.
What is in it for me?
To err is human; to forgive is not company policy.
I hate quotations.
-- Emerson --
A CHRISTMAS CARD
There is nothing I can give you
which you have not;
But there is much, very much, that
while I cannot give it, you can take.
No heaven can come to us unless our hearts
find rest in today. Take heaven!
No peace lies in the future which is not hidden
in this present instant. Take peace!
The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within reach, is joy.
There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see,
And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look.
Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by
their covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy, or hard.
Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it
a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.
Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel's hand
that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or
a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there; the gift is there
and the wonder of an overshadowing presence.
Our joys, too; be not content with them as joys.
They, too, conceal diviner gifts.
And so, at this time, I greet you.
Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with
profound esteem and with a prayer that for you now and
forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.