Favourite/best quotes/proverbs/wordz of wisdom

[slicer15]

I like this one by Einstein:

"I don't know what World War III will be fought with, but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones."

I also like some sayings in general:
"Don't count your chickens before they've hatched."
"[Insert positive word here] is a virtue."
"The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle."
"Pain is just weakness leaving the body."

By the way, I don't live by the above, they're just some ones I found interesting. Not necessarily good, just interesting. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Oh, and this one amuses me:
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how wrong it may be."

Oh, and the one in my sig is cool.

[ 11-12-2003, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: slicer15 ]

[slicer15]

Originally posted by Gabrielles blades: But anyhow... lets see, quote to live by: "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." by socrates

Ah yes, I know that one...but if you know nothing, then you do know something because you know that you know nothing, therefore you do know something, even though you say you know nothing oh no I've gone cross-eyed... [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Jerome]

Originally posted by Gabrielles blades: In fact, many of his viewpoints were used by germany during WWII as justifications of their war/way of life.

Corerct - though his teachings were completely and utterly perverted by the German authorities. His ideas were taken and bastardised - and most of the matieral used by them were taken from "The Will To Power", which was never one of his own works but a collection of notes taken by his sister (desperate for fame, and a reconcilliation between the Nietzsches and the Wagners) - which are by and by unrepresentative of his philosophy as a whole, which always had at the heart of it the desire of improving thr life of the individual, and the quest to dispell much of what he saw was lacking in the human spirit - a call to self-revolution.

Frankly, he's the most misquoted, misrepresented and misunderstood philosopher who ever lived.

[ 11-12-2003, 02:15 PM: Message edited by: Jerome ]

[Xen]

Everything from Yoda,Aragorn and other wiseman.

[Faceman]

The center quote which defines my life and my intellectual suffering
"Scio Nescio" ("I know that I don't know")

Apart from that I don't live by quotes but I like some a lot, either for wisdom, entertainment or even for extreme cynizism (e.g. Stalin) which can tell us a lot about true life:
Quotes on war (were the firrst that came to my mind, odd for a pacifist somehow):

"War is the continuation of policy by other means." Karl von Clausewitz

"War does not determine who is right, only who is left" Bertrand Russel (IIRC)

"War solves every problem, no man no problem" Josef Stalin


Peace quotes (to balance it out):

"Fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity"

Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence. -Mohandas K. Gandhi

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

and my favourite Gandhi quote:
"In the end you will walk out (British will leave India) because 100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate, and that is what we intend to achieve. Peaceful, nonviolent, non-cooperation until you yourself see the wisdom of leaving, Your Excellency." (actually it is from the movie, but he said it in similar words on several occasions)

[Melusine]

Jerome summarised things nicely on the subject of Nietzsche (and for the last time, people, it's spelled N-I-E-T-bloody-Z-S-C-H-E! ). Anyway, I've never heard of his work "Übermensch" [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

Vask, as a Christian this should appeal to you [img]tongue.gif[/img] - it's one of my all time favourite poems and the sentiment expressed is just really beautiful and poignant. A bit long for a quote, but I just really love this, and know it by heart too. It's by the 17th century English poet George Herbert.

George Herbert - Deniall

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent eares
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse
My breast was full of fears
And disorder:

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,
Did flie asunder.
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go
Some to the warres and thunder
Of alarms.

As good go any where, they say,
As to benumme
Both knees and heart, in crying night and day
Come, come, my God, O come
But no hearing.

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To crie to thee,
And then not heare it crying! all day long
My heart was in my knee,
But no hearing.

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untun'd, unstrung:
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipt blossome, hung
Discontented.

O cheer and tune, my heartlesse breast,
Deferre no time;
That so thy favours granting my request,
They and my minde may chime,
And mend my ryme.

The beauty of it is in the volta at the end, where he, only at the very last stanza, regains his faith. The contrast between the despair in the earlier stanzas and the relief of the last one is in the words, but also in the mechanics of the poem. The meter itself is jarring in the despairing stanzas, and there is no rhyme. The last line of each stanza (which should be indented, like the second line of each stanza - automatic outlining on this forum though) just hangs there in the air, unresolved, "unstrung" but when he finds God, his meter is harmonious again and he 'mends his ryme'. The last line restores meter and ryme perfectly, as his heart and faith are restored. The verses where he is searching for answers, for a sign that his prayers are heard, are so beautiful too - the repetition of "but no hearing", the beautiful metaphors (his heart was in his knee, i.e. he was kneeling and praying). Oh well, most people I know cannot appreciate poetry because it always takes several readings to make sense of a poem and start to understand its mechanisms, so I'm probably posting this for nothing. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Still, I love reciting poems like this one in my head when I'm bored or lonely, the rhythm of it alone is soothing and makes for a good walking pace too.
And well, you asked for quotes that mean a lot, well, this one does. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Here's some shorter quotes I like, falling into the category of words of wisdom slash beautiful poetry, I guess.

For each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard.
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
(From Oscar Wilde - The Ballad Of Reading Gaol)

"Þæs ofereode, Þisses swa mæg"
(From the Old English poem Deor, very roughly translates as "that has passed, and so will this", in the sense of "I coped with that, and so will I cope with this")

And for some truly corny ones :
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages
(Shakespeare)

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
(Blake)

[ 11-12-2003, 06:23 PM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

[Melusine]

O, I remembered another one! It's from the Carmina Burana, a selection of songs/writings by 13th century students, vagabonds and other assorted riff raff , famously put to music by Carl Orff.

O Fortuna, velut luna
Statu variabilis
Semper crescis
Aut decrescis
Vita detestabilis
Nunc obdurat
Et tunc curat
Ludo mentis aciem
Ege statem
Potestatem
Dissolvit ut glaciem

(O Fortune, like the moon, you are changeable, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts like ice.)

Edit: just have to add some quotes of one of my all-time favourite poets John Donne... maybe my favourite poet period.
This is a poem I have been working on for a course which aims to find out which of the tons of manuscripts of his poems that we have comes closest to the lost original holographs (i.e. the poems how he intended them, in his own handwriting, the manuscripts of which have all been lost save one.)
I love the way he tries to twist an argument in so many knots. Brilliant.

The Triple Fool
I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so
In whining poetry ;
But where's that wise man, that would not be I,
If she would not deny ?
Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,
I thought, if I could draw my pains
Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay.
Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it, that fetters it in verse.
But when I have done so,
Some man, his art and voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain ;
And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.
To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,
But not of such as pleases when 'tis read.
Both are increasèd by such songs,
For both their triumphs so are published,
And I, which was two fools, do so grow three.
Who are a little wise, the best fools be.

And an excerpt from A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.


[ 11-12-2003, 06:51 PM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

[Night Stalker]

Originally posted by Melusine: O, I remembered another one! It's from the Carmina Burana, a selection of songs/writings by 13th century students, vagabonds and other assorted riff raff , famously put to music by Carl Orff. O Fortuna, velut luna Statu variabilis Semper crescis Aut decrescis Vita detestabilis Nunc obdurat Et tunc curat Ludo mentis aciem Ege statem Potestatem Dissolvit ut glaciem (O Fortune, like the moon, you are changeable, ever waxing and waning; hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts like ice. )

Mel! I love Carmina Burana! Thanks for the xlation! Ray Mansomething - keyboardist from The Doors, did an interesting "modern" arrangement of it. I like it, but I like the classical version better.

[Melusine]

NS, I know, I love it too. It's a fantastic piece of music. [img]smile.gif[/img]
I'd love to perform it again, we did some years back. Didn't you play the timpani in a performance of it?
If you love Orff's Carmina Burana, you might like his Catulli Carmina as well. A similarly dramatic work, meant to be staged like a play almost, but with texts from the poet Catullus.

[Jorath Calar]

See my sig... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Also one from the Preachers Comics... it's what the father of the main character says to him the night before he is shot in the head:

Son, you got to be one of the good guys, 'cause there is way to many of the bad

I had it in my sig for a long time some of you may remember... [img]smile.gif[/img]