Favorite quotes

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Magento: "If you're using half your concentration to look normal, then you're only half paying attention to whatever else you're doing."

Yoda: "No. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."

Happy to see Aldous Huxley has already been mentioned. I'll put two of his that I find particularly memorable:

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes." -- Aldous Huxley

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'" -- Aldous Huxley

Zen has many quotes/stories/situations that can strike at least as deep as a great quote. The first to come to mind (and easy to find):

A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"
"Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.
"I am a samurai," the warrior replied.
"You, a soldier!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."
Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head."
As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!"
At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.
"Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin.

"I don't want to live forever through my work, I want to live forever by not dying." Woody Allen

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”


― John Steinbeck

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.
-John Lennon

'A house without a cat, a well-fed, well -petted and properly revered cat, may be a perfect house, perhaps, but how can it prove its title? ' -Mark Twain

"Blood, instead of gold, makes the history" - translation from one Italian song.

"Want some bacon?"
"No, man, I don't eat pork."
"Are you Jewish?"
"Nah, I ain't Jewish, I just don't dig on swine, that's all."
"Why not?"
"Pigs are filthy animals; I don't eat filthy animals."
"Yeah, but bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good."
"Hey, a sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know, 'cause I'd never eat the filthy Motherf***er. Pigs sleep and root in s**t. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eatin' nothin' that ain't got sense enough to disregard its own feces."
"How about a dog? A dog eats its own feces."
"I don't eat dog either."
"Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?"
"I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy, but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way."
"Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, it would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?"
"Well, we'd have to be talkin' about one charmin' motherf***in' pig. I mean, he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"You can't sterilise your own genotype any more than you can your own bionic life force." Pathos

Calvin: You know, sometimes the world seems like a really mean place.
Hobbes: That's why animals are so soft and huggy.
Calvin *hugs Hobbes*: Yeah.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Aesop

I'm finished being everybody's butt-monkey!
Xander Harris

To himself: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
Raj Koothrappali

" Do not be fooled by its commonplace appearance. Like so many things, it is not what is outside, but what is inside that counts." - the peddler in Disney's Aladdin.

"Humph. If you can come up with a load of complaints like that, you must be fine." --- Grovyle, (Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky).

I love freaking Grovyle.

"I didn't know that Chesire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn't know that cats *could* grin."
"They all can," said the Duchess,"and most of 'em do."



-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland