"Given that we all believe things on insufficient evidence, why not believe that there's a little good in everyone?"
"If the art of the magician is to distract attention from what's really happening, then what is life but the ultimate magic trick?"
"Need lovers always agree? I dunno -- need poetry always rhyme?
"Ever have a day when you can't get started on anything because nothing else can wait?"
"Have you ever wondered how there came to be less wealth than fair shares?"
As reported in Genesis, the Creator surveyed His handiwork and saw that everything was good, not great, which pretty much squares with my own assessment.
The thing I like best about keeping my own company is that I can usually sense when it's time to leave.
Nothing last forever, which is not to say it cannot seriously overstay its welcome.
If I distrust people different from me, it is because they are not different enough.
According to recent psychological studies, the need to own a dozen cats is really a suppressed desire to own two dozen cats.
I don't want any living thing to live in fear of me.
I don't want anyone to feel that there is a truth that cannot be uttered in my presence.
I want never to see another person's honest ambitions as a personal threat.
I want never to claim that I am anyone's conduit to the Word of God.
I want never to judge or be judged by first impression.
I want to share what I've learned, not proselytize what I've always believed.
I want never to exert power over anyone merely to demonstrate that I can.
I want never to think that people just instinctively know when they are valued or loved or appreciated.
I want, now and then, to say to those I love what I would say to them if they had just died in my arms.
Trouble is, well-intentioned people often make things worse, but ill-intentioned people rarely make things better.
Somewhere amidst life's endless array of distractions lies its purpose, although it is often a challenge to decide which distraction it is.
To correct someone's bad grammar and be accused of semantics is like correcting someone's bad arithmetic and being accused of mathematics.
Happy people are more often happy in spite of something than because of something.
We are all in the course of a lifetime many different people -- strangers to us now, shadows in our past, but their battle scars remain ours to carry, their sins ours to atone, their promises ours to keep. How do you reconcile this person you are with these people you once were?
Who be these strangers from my past
These ghosts who haunt my day,
Whose battle scars I carry still,
Whose debts I must repay,
Whose trinkets fill my attic space,
Whose idle thoughts my brain,
Whose sins reside upon my soul,
Forever to remain.
How came this mortal coil to be
My final residence,
This house forever haunted by
Its previous occupants?
We think of Doomsday as when everything will end, but what if Doomsday is when everything began?
We speculate on there being a parallel universe, but what if there's a perpendicular universe?
Science and Religion have this in common -- that they see everything as true or false. But, see, what if it's multiple choice?
"There are days when you feel that if you walked down the street in a clown costume, no one would recall seeing anyone in a clown costume."
"There is no actual law that says you can't get locked into a daily routine that makes you happy."
"Whatever you're trying to prove, it's good occasionally to spend a day not trying to prove it."
"Never let anything ruin your day that is not on the list of things you will let ruin your day."
~~ from Reflections
We learn from our mistakes, which explains the education level of those who claim they have never made one.
Life is an exercise in the pursuit of happiness, the actual experience of happiness confined to brief pauses in the pursuit..
If you are to succeed in life, you must ignore the advice of those who dearest desire is to keep you from being disappointed.
No one ever entered their teen years with a well-thought-out exit strategy.
The most basic requirement of a job interviewer is to distinguish the skills needed to do the job from the skills needed to pass the job interview.
It is a mistake to subscribe to reality unless you also subscribe to the annual updates.
While I like a politician who claims to know what I deserve, I would hope he/she is better informed on other subjects.
The obstacle to having a better-informed electorate is that the people elected to office rarely see it as a problem.
I have heard many descriptions of hell that sound like hell, but I have never heard a description of heaven that sounds like heaven. Eternal hellfire is easy to imagine. It is harder to imagine an eternity of anything being heavenly.
All I know about wisdom is that it lies somewhere beyond ignorance and short of certainty.
I have never envied another's material possessions, although I have envied the happiness they get from them.
There are days when I am unaccountably happy, and, in fact, that is usually the reason for it.
There are reasons for happiness and reasons for unhappiness, although unhappiness seems to be the more ingenious in coming up with them.
I compare the pursuit of happiness to a day of fishing -- it helps if you stock the pond.
Never say to someone, "I see what you're trying to say." Few people want to hear a clarification of what they're trying to say.
It is sad to think how many domestic disagreements are wordless, conducted in mutual silence..
In a just world you would get what you rightly deserve and everyone else would get what's coming to them.
In the end it's probably less important that you believe in God than that there's a God who believes in you.
It is rare that a woman who does the same thing every Tuesday all her married life has a husband who can tell you what she does on Tuesdays.
Ignorance is the state of knowing only what you've learned from people you want to hear it from.
There is a tendency to blame people of faith for the intolerance of people who know for sure.
Hard Lesson Learned #24: "Never say anything in public that you are hearing for the first time."
People incapable of faith more often find refuge in certainty than doubt.
Sometimes the faith to believe in a miracle comes easier than the gullibility to believe in the rational explanation.
Everyday life for a mortal being is mostly about doing things today that won't matter tomorrow, therein accounting for their urgency.
Generally speaking, the more you learn of how the world works, the less you blame yourself.
Most happiness, like most worry, depends pretty much on how small a thing you can make important.
The most life-changing "what if" we ever ask is, "What if it isn't all about me?"
The trouble with caring only about yourself is that it's always the first step to not caring about anyone.
What you discover about self-love is that it doesn't last, and it's the devil to go your separate ways.
Today's Deep Thought: "A miracle is something without which whatever happened would have taken a miracle."
We shared a vow to love forever.
Now life's a fading afternoon,
And bent with age I fear "forever"
Was always just some whistled tune.
But then I feel your glance upon me,
And in your eyes that light sublime,
And, lo, I realize, "forever"
Had never anything to do with time.
For when a love's a boundless loving,
And when with heart and soul you've cared
Then truly have you loved "'forever"
In every moment that you've shared.
I asked, "How can anyone who really knows me ever love me?" only to discover that it was the only way anyone ever would.
"It's not easy -- loving someone through the chinks in their armor -- especially when the love they return is so often trapped inside."
"To truly know someone is to know the thing they never speak of -- and to recognize the silences that speak of it."
It seems backwards. In the callowness of our youth, we are asked to decide on education, career, marriage and parenthood. In the experience of our old age, we are asked to decide on what to have for lunch.
How do I reconcile Fate and Free Will? Well, here's an attempt.
At birth we are given a jigsaw puzzle with a picture on the box. We are not required to construct that picture. We are just required to use the pieces in the box.
~~~
Genius is the ability to do what no one thought possible, and to do it in a way that can clearly be improved upon.
One thing you can learn from your dog is when to go lie under the dining room table and await developments.
You'll know that AI has completely replicated human intelligence when it forms a Flat Earth Society.
If Time were to pause, say for ten minutes, how exactly would it know when to start up again?
Never act for "a whole list of reasons." Rarely does a compelling reason occur as part of a list.
It is perhaps fortunate that the intelligence it takes to be a human being is not a requirement for admittance into the species.
I wish that politicians who can't add 2 + 2 would stop saying, "By my calculus... ."
We all have a life story, and the clue to the ending is not necessarily in a chapter already written.
It's curious how so many people who are old and cynical believe exactly what they were taught when they were young and gullible.
There is this sense you get in old age of having outlived your completed memoirs.
One of the easier questions to answer in life is why you have so little when you ask so little.
The strongest person is vulnerable in some way, and the weakest person strong in some way. In exactly what way neither knows until they are tested, and in fact, until they are tested, neither knows which person they are.
Maybe the world is made such a perilous place so that no one would ever think they were meant to face such peril alone.
You get to an age when fewer things pique your curiosity than pique your don't-give-a-damn.
In explaining one's self to others, one should make especially clear the part where the explanation is over.
After a lifetime of receiving consolation prizes, I finally finished first and discovered that it is not only more gratifying but more consoling.
September 29, Michaelmas Day, is almost upon us. There's still time, however to send a greeting to a friend or relative. Why would you? Well, here are a few reasons you might.
To a Friend:
