Quotes

1. In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
   1. As you sow, so shall you reap.
2. Child is father of the man. Wordsworth
   1. Boy is father of the man. Wodehouse, who else?
3. Don’t make me hate you. Loving you is painful enough. Fleabag season 1 Recent re-watch.
4. Let’s see now. What was Naoko talking about that day? Of course, the field well. Norwegian Wood.
5. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
6. The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. Pascal
   1. It is not always rational, is it?
7. Humor gives you a sense of proportion. P. L. Deshpande
   1. Humor is the most liberating force. P. L. Deshpande
8. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’ Whittier
9. The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. Bertrand Russell
10. When you reach there, there is nothing there there. (This is how I remember the quote.)
11. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Gandhi
12. There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. Shakespeare
13. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. Bill Gates
14. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. Feynman
15. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. Bertrand Russell
16. That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, lest you should think he never could recapture the first fine careless rapture! Browning
17. Fear follows crime and is its punishment. Voltaire
    1. Till recently, I thought it was from the novel.
18. Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify. Thoreau
    1. Sounds great. And I agree with Simplify…Simplify thing. But what do you identify as detail?
19. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. Orwell
    1. I have come across a few similar quotes. (Atticus Finch comes first to mind. “Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets.”)
    2. No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. - Recently I came across a variant of this Nathaneil Hawthorne quote in Sopranos.
20. All movements go too far. Bertrand Russel
21. Most people can learn a lot more than they think they can. Elon Musk
22. Don’t let someone change who you are, to become what they need. (found on pinterest)
23. Truth is everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for. Bob Marley
    1. It is kind of weird that the people you wish wouldn’t hurt you are the ones who hurt you deeply. The family, close friends, etc. The people you went out of your way to make comfortable are likely to be the people who cause you most discomfort.
24. I will never understand people. They are the worst.
25. You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. Contact movie
26. Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.- Neils Bohr
27. If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.- Leslie Lamport
28. A person’s success in life is determined by having a high minimum, not a high maximum. If you can do something really well but there are other things at which you’re failing, the latter will hold you back. But if almost everything you do is up there, then you’ve got a good life. And so I try to learn how to get through things that others find unpleasant.- Donald Knuth
29. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
    1. This is one version of the serenity prayer.
    2. Of course, if you want to lead an interesting life your prayer could be the Calvin And Hobbes version: the strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference.
30. Apologies, once postponed, became harder and harder to make, and finally impossible.- Margaret Mitchell in Gone With the Wind.
31. From recently read Call for the Dead (The first book in the Smiley series by John le Carré. And probably because it’s the author’s early work, it’s not as good or complex as A Spy Who Came In From The Cold or Tinker Tailor… or Honorable Schoolboy or Smiley’s People. I have read these before but planning to re-read. Just for the complexity… There the plots are as complex as Wodehouse’s. Which reminds me of another quote/ tweet… Programmers are attracted to the complexity like moths to flames.)
    1. It dawned on him gradually that he had entered middle age without ever being young.
       1. That feeling.
    2. It’s the devil you don’t know that gets you.
    3. Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism…When had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom?
    4. When he closed his eyes they seemed to turn inwards on the chaos of his brain.
32. From another recently read book A Murder of Quality Second book in the Smiley series by John le Carré (Again not as good or complex as the latter books in the Smiley series.)
    1. What a shame, thought Fielding, that a mind so perceptive of beauty had no talent for creation.
    2. It was a peculiarity of Smiley’s character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end.
    3. Smiley was not opposed to social distinctions but he liked to make his own.
       1. The novel has a background of English class system as seen in public (private, really) schools.
       2. And if you need a bit of fun poked at the class system, here is Stephen Fry on the receiving end on QI (mostly) because of his posh background. It has my favorite Knock Knock joke. Stephen is gifted in the areas of telling jokes as in this video and stories like the late queen elbowing him or his Norfolk tea party. Of course, the idea of Hugh Laurie or Rowan Atkinson vacuuming Fry’s carpet is interesting but what’s more interesting is that Charles, the current King and then Prince of Wales thought that he’s being shouted at and addressed as Charlie by Hugh Laurie’s wife. Also, people probably loved Princess Diana because even though from the Royal family, she seemed more accessible, more human and more like them. Of course, some people are posh and repressed so the class system cuts both ways.
       3. Above I posted three different links to a single Stephen Fry story. The first two are there because of difference in the detail (Mr. Bean and Bertie Wooster vacuuming). The last one was for adding the context to Spitting Image thing. Princess Diana liked watching it even though it did- at that time- make fun of the Royal Family.
       4. Lastly, in Alan Carr’s video there is a reference to Inca vs Aztec on QI. So, I could not resist one of my favorite QI clips: pink polenta.
33. Haven’t you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you’ve had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?- Gustave Flaubert
34. “The world strips you of everything - belief, kindness, trust, innocence. Then you must learn to choose these values. All of these eventually become a choice, not the natural way of being.” from a tweet.
35. “Bonasera, Bonasera, what have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?”- The Godfather opening scene
36. “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” from the movie in which Meg Ryan says ‘I need a kleenex’.
    1. I guess this might be true for many things- not just love.
    2. Assuming that the quote is true, is the converse(?) also true? Suppose you don’t start/ want to start something ASAP, does it mean you are not fully sold on that thing?
37. “We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.”- Calvin and Hobbes
38. “If Michelangelo were a heterosexual, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted basic white and with a roller.”- Rita Mae Brown. Not sure if it’s actual quote but it makes sense to some degree.
39. This advice/ quote about reading poetry resonated.
40. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.- Albert Einstein
41. Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action’.- Goldfinger