Ffolkes,
It seems that my computer has developed some idiosyncrasies. I usually don’t turn it off very much, as I run a program that crunches data for a couple of cloud computing projects, one from UC Berkeley called SETI@home, and one from the American Physical Society called Einstein@home. But I decided to give the computer a break a couple nights here recently, and now it seems to want to find little things to do that annoy me. This morning my word-processing, database, and project program, Open Office Suite, wouldn’t open from the taskbar button; I had to work around it by using an already created document to open a new doc. Then Firefox, my internet browser, wanted to update itself for the sixth time. Just goes to show that our inanimate objects tend to take on human characteristics the more we use them. As I spend probably more than 10 hours a day working on this little machine, it has no doubt taken on some of my curmudgeonly traits. Ah well, as long as there is a work-around…..c’est la vie!
Today I have gathered a group of Pearls from some of history’s finest minds. Some were included simply for the beauty of the writing, others for the power of the ideas being presented. All are worth reading and contemplating, and should provide everyone with a good feeling or three with which to fortify their attitude for the day. If not, well, I’d have to say you really aren’t trying hard enough…..enjoy!
“Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.” — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) — “De Profundis”
“When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), “Caesar and Cleopatra”, Act III
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” — Thomas Jefferson to A. Stuart, 1791
“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” — H.L. Mencken
The other shape,
If shape it might be call’d that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d,
For each seem’d either,–black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem’d his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand.
— John Milton (1608-1674)
— Paradise Lost, Book ii, Line 666
“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity.” — William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Comedy of Errors — Act ii, Sc. 1
I love these lines, “black as night it stood, fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, and shook a dreadful dart!” And good old Will, he must have spent some time on the streets, or at least in a state of poverty, to be able to describe so perfectly in one line how it feels at the end of the day…”bruised with adversity.” Bruised indeed….. y’all take care out there….
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.
gigoid
Kowabunga!
gigoid 