Year’s End Round-Up Of Notes And Quotes

December 1996

(Kindling for the fire of your own imagination and inspiration):

“I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.” (Rebecca West)

“When the Chinese government in the 1950s responded to a proliferation of rats who ate inordinate portions of crop by putting a bounty on them, the peasants started raising rats.” (Allan Bloom, LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, p. 29)

“Father,” said a small boy, “What is a demagogue?” “A demagogue, my son, is a man who can rock the boat himself and persuade everybody else that there is a terrible storm at sea.” (Source ?)

“Every man who possesses real vitality can be seen as the resultant of two forces. He is first the child of a particular age, society, convention; of what we may call a tradition. He is secondly, in one degree or another, a rebel against that tradition. And the best traditions make the best rebels.” (Gilbert Murray, English classicist)

Garbage: Americans produce about 230 million tons of refuse each year, amounting to 5.1 pounds per person per day.

A priest went with one of his parishioners to a baseball game. “Watch No. 21 out there,” said the padre proudly, “he always crosses himself before he steps to the plate.” “Tell me, Father,” asked his companion. “Does that help him get on base?” Replied the cleric wisely, “It does, if he’s a good hitter.”

“The good doctor is one who keeps his patient amused while nature works the cure.” (Alan Watts, PSYCHOLOGY EAST AND WEST)

“God is a devil who rejoices in human suffering. He may be. There’s no evidence to show he isn’t.” (C.F.G. Masterman, English Liberal politician and a a strong Anglican, quoted by Hugh Thomas, HISTORY OF THE WORLD, p. 592)

“Socrates, Aristotle, Jesus, Michael Servetus, Giordano Bruno, George Fox, William Penn, Thomas Paine were all condemned for blasphemy.” (Leonard Levy, BLASPHEMY)

“What makes man (sic) human are more than animal needs:

Homo Faber – from his need to make
Homo Credens – from his need to believe
Homo Ludens – from his need to play”

(Daniel J. Boorstin, CLEOPATRA’S NOSE)

“The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritations, concerns and duties.
Help us to perform them with laughter and kind faces; let cheerfulness abound with industry.
Give us to go blithely on our business all this day.
Bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.”
(Robert Louis Stevenson)