Tag Archives: quotes

Five Wise Lines from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

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The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature, a complete impossibility!

Algernon

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn’t read.

ALgernon

It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind.

Algernon

One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.

Algernon; [fyi: “Bunburying” is the use of appointments with ficticious individuals to get out of one’s duties and obligations.]

One should always eat muffins quite calmly.

Algernon

Five Wise Lines from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

All art is quite useless.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are fascinating.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.

Five Wise Lines from Ben Franklin

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Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.

Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.

Never confuse Motion with Action.

And Five Honorable Mentions:

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

How many observe Christ’s birthday! How few his precepts!

It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Tis a great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults; greater to tell him his.

Five Wise Lines from Macbeth

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Macbeth & Banquo Encounter the Witches
by Theodore Chasseriau

“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”

Duncan in Act I, Scene 4

“Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor.”

Macbeth in Act I, Scene 7

“when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors”

Wife of Macduff in Act IV, Scene 2

“Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat up the honest men and hang them up.”

Son of Macduff in Act IV, Scene 2

“Life ‘s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Macbeth in Act V, Scene 5

Five Wise Lines from Tsurezuregusa by Kenkō

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Yoshida Kenkō by Kikuchi Yosai [Date Unknown]

There is much to admire, though, in a dedicated recluse.

Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (No. 1)

Going on a journey, whatever the destination, makes you feel suddenly awake and alive to everything.

Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in IdleNess (No. 15)

You can find solace for all things by looking at the moon.

Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (no. 21)

Something left not quite finished is very appealing, a gesture toward the future.

Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (No. 82)

It’s in easy places that mistakes will always occur.

Kenkō Yoshida, Essays in Idleness (No. 109)

CITATION: Kenkō Yoshida & Kamo no Chōmei. 2013. Kenkō and Chōmei: Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki. London: Penguin. 206pp.

Five Wise Lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet

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We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots… a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”

HamLet to Claudius in Act IV, Sc. 3

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Hamlet to Queen Gertrude in Act I, Sc. 5

I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

Hamlet to rosencrantz & Guildenstern in Act I, sc. 2

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Polonius to claudius & gertrude in act II, sc. 2

A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

hamlet to rosencrantz in act IV, Sc. 2

Five Wise Lines from Chōmei’s Hōjōki

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drawing by Kikuchi Yōsai

On flows the river ceaselessly, nor does its water ever stay the same.

 Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki

No one owns a splendid view, so nothing prevents the heart’s delight in it.

Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki

Knowing what the world holds and its ways, I desire nothing from it, nor chase after its prizes. My one craving is to be at peace; my one pleasure is to live free from troubles.

Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki

These days, I divide myself into two uses — these hands are my servants, these feet my transport.

Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki

When I chance to go down to the capital, I am ashamed of my lowly beggar status, but once back here again I pity those who chase after the sordid rewards of the world.

Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki

Reference: Saigyō Hōshi, Kamo no Chōmei, Yoshida Kenkō. 2021. Three Japanese Buddhist Monks. New York: Penguin Books. 112pp.

Available Here

PROMPT: Quote

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Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

Four, actually:

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Plato (attributions vary)

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

William Shakespeare (in HamLet)

Contentment comes not so much from great wealth as from few wants.

Epictetus

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

James a. Michener

Food for Thought [Voltaire & Smartphones]

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When Voltaire said:

“Once a nation begins to think, it is impossible to stop it.”

I don’t think he’d anticipated smartphones.

Five Wise Lines from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” [Plus Five Lines, More]

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No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.

william blake

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

William blake

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.

William Blake

The fox condemns the trap, not himself.

William Blake

Exuberance is Beauty.

William blake

Without Contraries is no Progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.

William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.

William blake

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.

William Blake

I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years. He answer’d: ‘The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.’

William Blake

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

William blake

NOTE: William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven in Hell” is available in many collections of his poetry, and is in the public domain and available via Project Gutenberg at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45315