Category Archives: Quotations

Bits and pieces provoked by things someone said. Someone famous.

12 March 2017 · 8:36 am

Time-Travelling Space Aliens

I smile, remembering the perfect quote for my post about listening to our future selves.

“Sometimes our impulses come to us from the future.”

I frown, realizing that I can’t swear to the wording.  And although I remember the story clearly, I can’t remember the name of the novel or the author, so I can’t confirm or correct it.  And just like that, the hunt is on.

Regrettably, Googling the half-remembered quote brings up interesting but not relevant sites about space aliens and time travel.   Continue reading →

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28 September 2014 · 9:00 am

Life Is

Life is a bucket brigade: Don’t slop the bucket when it’s your turn.

What’s that you say? You’ve never heard that metaphor for life before? You wonder if I made it up?

Well, OK. I understand your skepticism.

What else? You’re not crazy about it?

Well, OK. I understand your preference for the more standard and, I admit, more popular metaphors for life. Although those would just be, ahem, something someone else made up.

In this regard, a little internet surfing on this topic even turns up a Canadian songwriter.

Life is a highway, I’m gonna ride it, all night long.
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18 August 2013 · 8:49 am

You’re Too Kind

Starting with the expression that “it takes all kinds,” I explore just how many kinds there are.

 

It takes all kinds, or so I hear.  Although it’s not when someone is being a fun, thoughtful, or salt-of-the-earth kind.  No, I hear it only when someone is being an odd, difficult, or pain-in-the-ass kind.

Well, someone says, with a rueful shake of their head, it takes all kinds.  And the head shaking of the speaker is transmuted into head nodding by the listeners around the table.  Yes indeedy, it takes all kinds.

But this consensus leaves unanswered the bigger question: How many kinds are there?  That, it turns out, depends on who you ask.    Continue reading →

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28 April 2013 · 2:44 pm

By Bread Alone

A chance encounter with buckwheat tea leads to deep thoughts about bread, bread-like substances, and proverbs.

It started innocently enough.  Doesn’t it always?  It ended with yet another overwhelming spell on Dr. Google’s couch.  But I get ahead of myself.

If you find no fish, you have to eat bread.
Ghanaian proverb

Fish.  Yes, that’s where this story starts.  Brain dead from hacking through the proposal jungle for several days, I balk at planning and preparing an evening meal.  The Big Guy balks at passing on food entirely, so we drive to the sushi delivery place that’s well within walking distance, plunk ourselves at one of the few tables, and peruse the lengthy menu.  Well, given my remaining mental acuity, the Big Guy peruses the menu; I flip pages and look at the pictures.  Gyoza.  Rolls.  Tempura.  Unagi—is there a reason they’re not translating it?  What the heck is it?  Sashimi—oops, no, I know what the heck that is: a bridge too far is what that is.  I close the menu.    Continue reading →

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16 January 2011 · 4:28 pm

You Can Quote Me on That

It started innocently enough.  Doesn’t it always?  Toying with writing an article on how the mind works, I was amusing myself with the sparkly bits my subconscious kept dragging out for me to admire.

“We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”

Someone had said something like that:  Kant, maybe?  Half-remembered quotations: the wages not of sin, exactly, but of decades spent perusing literary greeting cards and bookmarks instead of reading worthy books.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the underlying fill is busy work masquerading as productivity.  I took a minute to ‘fact check’ this quotation: to confirm wording and attribution.  It would save trouble later, or so I rationalized.  Thus did this quotation launch nigh-on a thousand website visits.       Continue reading →

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