Many paths up the mountain...

My whole life, I've done everything I was supposed to do,
and all it did was make me miserable.

~ from Suits

You'll always feel the same, you'll just keep getting older

~ Nora Ephron

The Perfect Icebreaker:

How's your day?

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

~ E. M. Forster

If you want to be loved, give love...

~ paraphrased from the early stoic Hecato of Rhodes, in Seneca's Moral Letters to Lucilius

Do the best that you can until you know better.

Then, when you know better, do better.

~ Maya Angelou

(Chris ) Rock's set is surprisingly pro-bully; his reasoning is that being bullied toughens you up and gets you ready for the real world, which is filled with assholes.

~ Rolling Stone, on comedian Chris Rock

Ancient wisdom about when to give up on an argument

If a man objects to truths that are all too evident, it is no easy task finding arguments that will change his mind. This is proof neither of his own strength nor of his teacher’s weakness. When someone caught in an argument hardens to stone, there is just no more reasoning with them.

~ Epictetus - Discourses I, 5.1

A sobering metaphor for life

Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them.

And some are given a chance to climb, they cling to the real or the gods or love.

Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.

~ Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish, in the Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones quote for today's political environment.

A lion doesn't concern himself with the opinions of sheep.

~ Tywin Lannister

Power always thinks it has a great soul.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The man who goes around the room just once is ahead of the man who just sits there.

When $$$ > safety

This windshield decal is dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love Fig Newtons!

~ Ricky Bobby

Be wary of those who believe they are 100 percent right

"The data run counter to your anecdotes."

~ Robby Mook, 2016 Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager, to Bill Clinton, when Clinton suggested to his wife's advisors that, considering Brexit, they might be underestimating the strength of the populist tide.

From "Shattered" by Jonathon Allen and Amie Parnes

It seems that everybody has an opinion these days...

The World is changed by your example,

not by your opinion.

~ Paul Coelho

Sagan wrote this in 1995...

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and not one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

~ Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

deja vu all over again...

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

~ Ecclesiastes 1:9

“It’s no use going back to yesterday,” said Alice, “because I was a different person then.”

~ Alice, in Alice in Wonderland

What do you want after you stop caring about your life?

I want to save my life while I still care about it.
I want a divorce.

~ female protagonist in the HBO show, Divorce

A great warrior is just an average man with laser-like focus.

~ Bruce Lee

Are you ready to change the energy of the universe?

~ Natalie Maines, of the Dixie Chicks, at a Sept 2016 concert in Kansas City

Unless you puke, faint, or die,
keep going

~ Jillian Michaels

The sky is not really the same when your are watching it alone.

~ Clark, to Lana. Smallville

Time marches, choices narrow.

~ Nancy on Weeds

Without doing, dreaming is useless.

~ Rilla Alexander

Troubles hurt the most when they are proved self-inflicted.

~ Sophicles

The man who has no imagination has no wings.

~ Muhammad Ali (1942 - 2016)

Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.

~ Louis Armstrong

When you’ve been constantly repeating the need for a “revolution” and it still hasn’t happened, you are probably not the one who will be leading it.

— John in Winter Park, Fla., reacting to a NYTimes article about Senator Bernie Sanders seeking to damage Hillary Clinton’s standing late in the Democratic race.

"Isn't it frustrating? Wanting somebody who doesn't want you back?"

~Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones

What is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

~ Albert Camus

Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.

~ Zora Neale Hurston

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

~ Anais Nim

Close, but no cigar

Shame sticks to you like tar...

~ Monica Lewinski

A zen story

A monk told Joshu, “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you to teach me.”

Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice porridge?”

The monk replied, “I have.”

“Then,” said Joshu, “Go and wash your bowl."

At that moment the monk was enlightened.

A meditation regarding the people who believe that Donald Trump really saw muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey City...

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be:
An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.”

~ Thomas Jefferson

Whoever said it, it's good advice

"Let's keep an open mind, but not so open that our brains fall out."

~ attributed to Judge Harry Stone on Night Court
~ also attributed to Carl Sagin

~ originally said by Walter Kotschnig

Dooby dooby doo!

"Ubi dubium, ibi libertas"

with doubt, there is freedom

How's the view from down there?

Sometimes, you just have to lay in the gutter and watch the cars go by...

~ Steve, on periodic melancholia

The virtue of a man ought to be measured, not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct.

~ Blaise Pascal

Leonard Nimoy's last tweet...

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.

LLAP

~ Leonard Nimoy

Now if I could just find that person...

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

The World only spins forward.

~ Tony Kushner

Isaac had some good ones...

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' "

~ Isaac Asimov

You can't reason a person out of a conclusion they arrived at unreasonably.

The Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of stones...

There are four kinds of persons: zeal without knowledge; knowledge without zeal; neither knowledge nor zeal; both zeal and knowledge.

~ Pascal, Pensees

Open your eyes, man!

It's just a matter of time before a man opens his eyes and gives up his one dream, his one dream of happiness.

~ Ronny (played by Nicholas Cage) in Moonstruck

Hut, two, three, four...

Time marches,
choices narrow.

~ Nancy on Weeds

Original Haiku...composed on a gym treadmill

A leaf-covered path.
A moon-lit night, just us two;
walking hand in hand.

I'm packed and ready to go...

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

~ Rumi

Sometimes easier said than done...

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.

~ Oprah Winfrey

At least now you know...

I've been honest with you.
I simply cannot love you the way you want me to.

~ Dr. Miranda Jones, on the Star Trek episode Is There in Truth No Beauty?

Both in music and in life...

You get zero points for playing hard things badly.

~Tommy Igoe

Pertaining to the Super Bowl...or any event in your life, really.

Act like you've been here before.

~ Vince Lombardi

Guess some of us are missing out...

Love is life.

And if you miss love, you miss life.

~ Leo Buscaglia