Lao-Tzu

The Way of Lao-Tzu

I have three treasures. Guard and keep them:

     The first is deep love,

     The second is frugality,

     And the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world.

Because of deep love, one is courageous.

Because of frugality, one is generous.

Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.

He who knows does not speak.

He who speaks does not know.

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

To produce things and to rear them,

To produce, but not to take possession of them,

To act, but not to rely on one's own ability,

To lead them, but not to master them -

This is called profound and secret virtue.

Manifest plainness,

Embrace simplicity,

Reduce selfishness,

Have few desires.

Abandon learning and there will be no sorrow.

To yield is to be preserved whole.

To be bent is to become straight.

To be empty is to be full.

To be worn out is to be renewed.

To have little is to possess.

To have plenty is to be perplexed.

He who knows others is wise;

He who knows himself is enlightened.

There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.

There is no greater guilt than discontentment.

And there is no greater disaster than greed.

When armies are mobilized and issues joined,

The man who is sorry over the fact will win.

To know that you do not know is the best.

To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.

Heaven's net is indeed vast.

Though its meshes are wide, it misses nothing.

Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle

Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy. 

All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

I said I wasn't interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn't really interested either. As things turned out, we had both overestimated our apathies, but not by much.

His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable, serene. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical. I had spent the night with Sandra.

My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur.

"...and I am the chiefest housekeeper of all."

Her smile was glassy, and she was ransacking her mind for something to say, finding nothing in it but used Kleenex and costume jewelry.

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative of almost all mankind.

"I don't know whether I agree or not, I just have trouble understanding how truth, all by itself, could be enough for a person."

He had had a dazzling talent for spending millions without increasing mankind's stores of anything but chagrin.

"The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!"

The major point at which his reason and his sense of humor left him was when he approached the question of what people were really supposed to do with their time on Earth.

Midgets are, after all, diversions for silly or quiet times...

Timequake

Many people need desperately to receive this message: "I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone."

The Sirens of Titan

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

Slapstick

Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous. 

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice

'...You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves.'

'You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.'

     'Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven's sake! Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.'

     'Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,' said her father; 'she times them ill.'

     'Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose,' said Mr Bennet; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the raptures of his wife.

     'Oh!' said Lydia stoutly, 'I am not afraid; for though I am the youngest, I'm the tallest.'

     'He is also handsome,' replied Elizabeth, 'which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.'

'There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.' - Elizabeth Bennet

'When I am in the country,' he replied, 'I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same.' - Mr Bingley

     'I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!'

     'I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,' said Darcy.

     'Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.'

     Elizabeth took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in attending to what passed between Darcy and his companion. The perpetual commendations of the lady either on his hand-writing or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in unison with her opinion of each.

     'How delighted Miss Darcy will be to receive such a letter!'

     He made no answer.

     'You write uncommonly fast.'

     'You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.'

     'How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of the year! Letters of business too! How odious I should think them!'

     'It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.'

     'Nothing is more deceitful,' said Darcy, 'than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.'

     'And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of modesty?'

     'The indirect boast; - for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing any thing with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.'

     'There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.'

     'And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.'

     'And yours,' he replied with a smile, 'is willfully to misunderstand them.'

     'You judge very properly,' said Mr Bennet, 'and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?'

     'They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggestion and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.'

     Mr Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.

     Lydia's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every sister except Mary agreed to go with her; and Mr Collins was to attend them, at the request of  Mr Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself; for thither Mr Collins had followed him after breakfast, and there he would continue, nominally engaged with one of the largest folios in he collection, but really talking to Mr Bennet, with little cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such doings discomposed Mr Bennet exceedingly. In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquility; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free from them there...

"...for I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our estimation." - Mr Collins

"Is not general incivility the very essence of love?" - Elizabeth Bennet

...and the good-natured wishes for her well-doing, which had proceeded before, from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton, lost but little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband, her misery was considered certain.

It was a fortnight since Mrs Bennet had been down stairs, but on this happy day, she again took her seat at the head of her table, and in spirits oppressively high.

She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been happy with him; when it was no longer likely they should meet.

...and more than commonly anxious to please, she naturally suspected that every power of pleasing would fail her.

Their arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Bennets; and Jane more especially, who gave Lydia the feelings which would have attended herself, had she been the culprit, was wretched in the thought of what her sister must endure.

'He is as fine a fellow,' said Mr Bennet, as soon as they were out of the house, 'as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lucas himself, to produce a more valuable son-in-law.'

'I will not spend my hours in running after my neighbors every time they go away, and come back again.' - Mr Bennet

She was in no humour for conversation with any one but himself; and to him she had hardly courage to speak.

As soon as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that must deaden them more.

'That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.' - Elizabeth Bennet

'I was sure you could not be so beautiful for nothing!' - Mrs Bennet

'Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.' - Elizabeth Bennet

'Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable.' - Elizabeth Bennet

Charles Lamb

Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.

- Witches, and Other Night Fears

A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.

- Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are The Best

Cannot the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone?

- ?

The human species, according to the brest theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the mend who lend.

- The Two Races of Men

Your borrower of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

- Ibid.

Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.

-?

Charles Dickens

Pickwick Papers

I wants to make your flesh creep.

Despair seldom comes with the first severe shock of misfortune. A man has confidence in untried friends, he remembers the many offers of service so freely made by his boon companions when he wanted them not; he has hope -- the hope of happy inexperience.

Oliver Twist

There is something about a roused woman, especially if she add to all her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness and despair, which few men like to provoke.

David Copperfield

It is a fact which will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge, and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go "meandering" about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, "Let us have no meandering."

My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance that it was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady over the garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to nobody else.

     "Miss Trotwood," said the visitor. "You have heard of her, I dare say?"

     My mother answered that she had had that pleasure. And she had the disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering pleasure.

     My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of committing and assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better training for such an encounter than she was that evening.

He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room to take up the less space.

He couldn't have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one, for he spoke as slowly as he walked, but he wouldn't have been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.

     Mr. Chillip was fluttered again by the extreme severity of my aunt's manner, so he made her a little bow, and have her a little smile to mollify her.

     Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember that she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable. 

...I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at work...

I could observe, in little pieces, as it were, but, as to making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond me.

...the wonderful charm of it was that it was a real boat, which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely, but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.

Nothing happened, however, worse than morning.

     Of course I was in love with little Em'ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized, and made a very angel of her.

     As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em'ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.

'I am a lone lorn creetur...and everythink goes contrary with me.' 

     'Yes, yes, it is,' cried Mrs. Gummidge. 'I know what I am. I know that I am a lone lorn creetur', and not only that everythink goes contrary with me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It's my misfortun'.'

     I really couldn't help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. 

     'I an't what I could wish myself to be,' said Mrs. Gummidge. 'I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn't feel 'em, but I do. I wish I could be hardened to to 'em, but I an't...'

At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em'ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep.

     He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each 

My stripes were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.

I take a last drowning look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh.

The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding away, and going I dont' know where. I wonder where they do go, by the by?

But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery.

To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again before me as they used to do.

Again, I see her dark eyes roll around the church when she says 'miserable sinners', as if she were calling all the congregation names.

"Whatever I am, I am affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn't say it, if I wasn't sure that I am."

"I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was before. I have many faults, but not that."

"I don't ask much. I am not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a mere form, sometimes."

The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness on earth.

Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did a clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in them both.

Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring.

     "Generally speaking," said Miss Murdstone, "I don't like boys. How d'ye do, boy?"

     Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same, with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:

     "Wants manner!"

     

     I never shall forget the waking next morning, the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance.

     "What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?"

     "School. Near London," was Peggotty's answer. I was obliged to get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat, in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the keyhole and put my ear there, and though her words tickled me a good deal, I didn't hear them.

    

     The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. They squeezed me so hard sometimes, that I could not help crying out, 'Oh! If you please!' - which they didn't like at all, because it woke them.

In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over bya  dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learnt.

...they were pretty sure of getting into trouble tomorrow, do what they would, and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves today.

Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home, and to find that every objet I looked at, reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a dream I could never dream again!

She was singing in a low tone. I think i must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.

...'he takes great pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful to him, and very submissive to him even in my thoughts; and when I am not, Peggotty, I worry and condemn myself, and feel doubtful of my own heart, and don't know what to do.'

'When I call you a ridiculous creature, or a vexatious thing, or anything of that sort, Peggotty, I only mean that you are my true friend, and always have been...'

We were very happy; and that evening, as the last of its race, and destined evermore to close that volume of my life, will never pass out of my memory.

     In short, I was not a favorite there with anybody, not even with myself; for th ose who did like me could not sh ow it, and those who did not, showed it so plainly that I had a sensitive consciousness of always appearing constrained, boorish, and dull.

     What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather, carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and blunted them!

     What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I!

    ...what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and yet was in everybody's way...

     'When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,' said Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, 'were they all well?' After another pause, 'Was your mama well?'

     I tremebled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her earnestly, making no attempt to answer.

     'Because,' said she, 'I grieve to tell you that I hear this  morning your mama is very ill'

     A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face, and it was steady again.

     'She is very dangerously ill,' she added.

     I knew all now.

     'She is dead.'

Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day say: 'Well done.'

Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth.

I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion.

     The mother who lay in the grave was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.

'If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.'

     I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very profound: 'Oh!'

     In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out of the face of a clock that has stopped...

When she had finished her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair, knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure, with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted to hide my confusion by proceeding with it, but my knife tumbled over my fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing under my aunt's close scrutiny. 

"Oh!" said my aunt, "I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting."

"You are no stranger to the fact that there have been periods of my life, when it has been requisite that I should pause, until certain expected events should turn up, when it has been necessary that I should fall back, before making what I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in terming - a spring. The present is one of those momentous stages in the life of a man. You find me, fallen back, for a spring, and I have every reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result." - Mr. Micawber

He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.

He quite shook hands with me -- which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advanace of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with it. 

     She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good -- I owed her so much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell her (as I had often done in letters) what an influence she had upon me, but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.