July 21, 2019 Filed under Amused, Inspiration
“Bloody explorers. Ponce off to mumbo-jumbo land and arrive home with a tropical disease, a suntan, and a bag of brown lumpy things, and Bob’s your uncle and everyone’s got a picture of them in the lavatory. I mean, what about all the people who do all the work?”
Edmund Blackadder
July 18, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
Once as I told in glee
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning yet tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendor.
July 10, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.”
Leonard Bernstein (possibly quoting someone else)
June 25, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
“Much in the universe baffled me, yet I knew I could pry the answers out of books if I lived & studied longer. Geology, for example. Just how did these ancient sediments & stratifications get crystallised & upheaved into granite peaks? Geography — just what would Scott & Shackleton & Borchgrevink find in the great white antarctic on their next expeditions … which I could – if I wished – live to see described? … As I contemplated an exit without further knowledge I became uncomfortably conscious of what I didn’t know. Tantalising gaps existed everywhere. … What of the vast gulfs of space outside all familiar lands?”
H.P. Lovecraft, describing why he decided not to commit suicide as a young man.
June 25, 2019 Filed under Inspiration
“It’s not that plotting the whole journey is undesirable. It’s that it’s impossible. When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending, and get moving.”
Chip & Dan heath, The Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard