Wisdoms of the Ages

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Be self aware about your blessings. 

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One seldom sees a motorcycle parked in front of a psychiatrist's office.

 

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A conspiracy of ignorance often masquerades as common sense. Frequently two of the million monkeys typing agree.

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Through chances various
through all vicissitudes
we make our way

- The Aeneid, Virgil, circa between 29 and 19 BC

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The world is a fine place and worth fighting for...

- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls
 

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Thank you, God, for this good life, and forgive us if we do not love it enough.

 

- Garrison Keillor

 

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 Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It's a good life, enjoy it.

 

- Jim Henson

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The mountain of Good is steep.
No man reaches the summit.
But all should make the attempt.
 

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It's true there is no "I" in team, but there is a "U" in stupid.

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Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God‐​given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God‐​given sense of justice in your heart.

- Voltaire

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The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

- Plato

 

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The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
 

- Jack London 

 

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Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

- Bertrand Russell

 

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Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

 

- Albert Einstein

 

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All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

 

- Blaise Pascal
 

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Hard times create strong men
strong men create good times
good times create weak men
and weak men create hard times.

- G. Michael Hopf

 

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We are under the gross misconception that we are a good species going somewhere important and that at the last minute we will correct our errors and God will smile on us. It is a delusion.

 

- Farley Mowat

 

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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

 

- Edmund Burke

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

circa 1770

 

More commonly:  "All it takes for evil to succeed is for enough good men to do nothing"

 

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Jock Ewing: It's about time you learned the art of subtlety.  
JR Ewing: Why should I be subtle?
JE: Because the lack of it turns competitors into enemies, and enemies into fanatics. 

Dallas
Diggers Daughter, S1E1
April 2, 1978

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Shakespeare

All the world's a stage

 —

 

King Lear, Act 4 Scene 6, lines 178-79; King Lear to Gloucester

O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?

&

Journeys end in lovers’ meeting

—  

 

Shakespeare Love Quotes 17: 

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better

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I’ll make my heaven in a lady’s lap

— 

 

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough,
But riches fineless is as poor as winter
To him that ever fears he shall be poor.

Shakespeare
Othello, Act 3, Scene 3

 

—

 

When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.

Shakespeare
King Lear Act 4 Scene 6
 

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I’m no slave to whistle, clock, or bell
Nor weak-eyed prisoner of Wall Street
Let me be easy on the man that’s down
Let me be square and generous with all
And guide me on that long, dim trail ahead
That stretches upward toward the great divide

- Adapted from “A Cowboy’s Prayer” by Badger Clark. Featured in the music video for “She Used to Love Me A Lot” by Johnny Cash
 

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To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

- George Orwell 

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It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

- J. Krishnamurti

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It's just time, is all.    I could buy anything, but I couldn’t buy time.

- Earl Stone, The Mule (2018)

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The unexamined life is not worth living.

- Socrates
 
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Life is a sexually transmitted disease, with a 100% mortality rate.

- R.D. Laing

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If your dreams don't scare you, they are not big enough.

- Richard Branson

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I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.

- Simone de Beauvoir

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We can't choose what we choose in life.  And when it seems that we choose what we choose, perhaps by going back and forth weighing different options, we don't choose to choose what we choose.

- Sam Harris

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Be merciful to yourself.

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You only die once, and until then, like it or not, you’ve got to live.

- Ashleigh Brilliant

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There's no fool like an old fool.

- The Proverbs of John Heywood, 1546

 

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I heard a thousand blended notes

While in a grove I sat reclined

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 

 

To her fair works did nature link
The human soul that through me ran
And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

- William Wordsworth

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Refusing to ask for help when you need it is refusing someone the chance to be helpful. 

- Ric Ocasek

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When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

- Mark Twain

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We want no parlay with you and your grisly gang who work your wicked will.

- British Prime Minister Winston Churchill - referring to Hitler

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Remember thee this thing I say unto you:

 

For Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.

- Unknown

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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. 

 

- Isaac Asimov

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Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

- Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

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It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

- Voltaire

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By the time you get close to the answers it's nearly all over.

- Merle Haggard, d April 2016

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The chains of habit are too light until they are too heavy to be broken.

- Warren Buffett

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There’s a corollary of Murphy’s Law that says the more you tinker with something in an attempt to improve it, the faster you will break it permanently.

- Jay Bazzinotti

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Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss, the police German and it's all organized by the Italians.

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Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.  

 

- Sam Harris

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“Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

[Benjamin] Franklin supposedly responded, with a rejoinder at once
witty and ominous: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

 

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Sitz im Leben

One's setting in life (German)

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Remember that:  you've got to appreciate what you have, while you still have it.

Warren Schmidt, About Schmidt (2002)

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To hunt a species to extinction is not logical.

- Spock, Star Trek IV

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Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

- Epicurus

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May you be forever blessed with food, drink, and rest for your body, and laughter, hope and love for your soul.

הלוואי שתהיה מבורך לעולמים עם אוכל, שתייה, ולנוח לגופך, וצחוק, תקווה ואהבה נפשך

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It is time for all you believers (of any religion) to ask why do you believe. Is it based on any real evidence or is it based on some form of authority? In just about every case, you will have to admit that your beliefs arise from the indoctrination you received as a very young child from your parents and from other authority figures such as your priests, imams, rabbis, and ayatollahs. And being a child you had no capacity to challenge or even think of the rationality of these authoritative claims - this is equivalent to child mind abuse. So you become an adult. All this religious indoctrination and the holy texts have molded you. Some of you may start to think a little and realize that submitting to the literal "laws" of your faith is somewhat extreme - after all most of us do not believe that slavery should exist, but just about all the holy texts had no issue with slavery. Little by little, we do not have to believe the religious explanations for disease, starvation, and tsunamis. But the fundamentalists believe they know that all of these are the results of some supernatural intervention for alleged sins. To believe, with no evidence, claims made in the Age of Ignorance is irrational – after all in those times it was also believed that matter was comprised of fire, earth, water and air. It is time to wake up and think a little. Ignorance, intolerance and arrogance are the natural outcomes of blind faith.
 
- Morris Burke

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

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In America, they say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

But that just sounds like someone trying to sell two guns.

- Unattributed

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60 Minutes with The Sad Violin - Poe Nart

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Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.

- Hubert H. Humphrey

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Oh God, thy sea is so great
And my boat is so small

- Admiral Hyman Rickover who gave this plaque to President Kennedy who favored this quote and used in his remarks at the dedication of the East Coast Memorial to the Missing at Sea, May 23, 1963.

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Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

- John Piper, in A Sweet and Bitter Providence

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There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Isaac Asimov
Newsweek, 21 January 1980

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Do what you can, with what you have, where you are at.

T. Roosevelt

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Dreams don't have deadlines.

Conversations With God, cir 2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XPrYqXp6lI&feature=youtu.be&t=1690

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Having dreams is what makes life tolerable.
Pete, Rudy (film), cir 1993

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You know, there's something... immoral about abandoning your own judgment... We just can't let this get out of hand. And we're gonna do whatever we have to do to make this come out right.

J.F. Kennedy
Cuban Missile Crisis, Oct 1962

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Diligence is the mother of good luck.

Benjamin Franklin

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God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as He did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Reinhold Niebuhr, 1937

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Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.

John Wesley

John Wesley was an Anglican cleric and theologian who, with his brother Charles and fellow cleric George Whitefield, is credited with the foundation of Methodism.  1703-1791 London, England.

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God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.

James H. Aughey 1828-1911

John Hill Aughey was a minister imprisoned and condemned to execution by the arrogant officials of the South for his outspoken anti-Secession and pro-Union beliefs.  Because of the "crime" of loyalty to the Union, he was subjected to an almost fatal imprisonment; he was put in irons, abused and insulted, and destined for execution on the gallows. He twice made his escape, and the second time, through almost incredible exposures and perils, succeeded in reaching the lines of the Union army. He makes a miraculous flight to freedom, to report the details of his ordeal in what was to become a highly praised and popular autobiography.  Although he has harsh words for his captors, he portrays many other Southerners with sympathy. He was especially eager to protect the reputation of his fellow ministers, saying that many indeed protested slavery and secession, and that at the right time they will again be heard, when constitutional law is restored.

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Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Baruch Spinoza
Part IV Preface
Ethics, cir 1677

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In life seek to underpromise
and to overdeliver

JG Knudtson
2016

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Keep no secrets of thyself from thyself.

Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.

Old men are twice children.

Greek Proverbs

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Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Robert Herrick - 1591-1674

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Our dreams are big - our hopes high - and goals long-term - and the path is difficult.  But the only failure is not to try.

President Jimmy Carter
Carter Center

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All gave some

Some gave all

- Tribute To USA Vietnam Veterans

 

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It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.

Carl Sagan
"The Burden of Skepticism" in Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 12, Issue 1 (Fall 1987)

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Arlen Bitterbuck: Do you believe that if a man sincerely repents enough for what he done wrong, then he'll get to go back to the time that was happiest for him and live there forever? Could that be what heaven's like?
Paul Edgecomb: I just about believe that very thing.
Arlen Bitterbuck: I had me a young wife when I was eighteen. We spent our first summer in the mountains, made love every night.  And she'd lie there after, bare breasted in the fire light.  We would talk sometimes till the sun come up. That was my best time...

Arlen Bitterbuck
Played by Graham Greene
The Green Mile cir 1999

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxIzAnRdXO0

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Inside many apparent improvements are lurking a host of unforeseen consequences.

Ashleigh Brilliant

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To live in the hearts of those you have left behind is to never die.   Godspeed to all living creatures - a life well lived is always too short.

Unattributed

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Treat people like angels: you will meet some and help make some.

Unknown

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Make new friends, but keep the old,
They are silver, but these are gold.

Unattributed

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A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
(on the American Civil War)

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[humorous]

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.

Hal Abelson, MIT

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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects us all indirectly.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  

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“... In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?”
 

&

 

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

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The point has been made that many people believe true science is merely a vast collection of facts when in reality it is a method, a style of thinking and is the only way of accurately interrogating the world around us, seeing it as it really is and not what we imagine it to be or how we might prefer it.

JG Knudtson
2015

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Supposedly, when Abraham Lincoln was once asked to write a "blurb" for a book that he really didn't care for, he sent the following response:

"Those who like this kind of book will find it just the kind of book they like."

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An idealist is one who, upon noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

H.L. Mencken

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The Heart has reasons that Reason know nothing of.

Blaise Pascall

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The problem is not that there is too much skepticism or too much of a commitment to empirical reality.
There is no society in human history that ever suffered because their people became too reasonable.
Too committed to evidence and argument.
And that's all you need to know to put this canard to rest.

Sam Harris
on religion

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We love to know we are not alone.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more. Only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

C.S. Lewis
Shadowlands

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To love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

To love is to be vulnerable.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

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We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (cir 1955) (Le Phénomène Humain)

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Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them to become what they are capable of being.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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That which does not kill me makes me stronger.

Friedrich Nietzsche
Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows

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All that glitters is not gold.

- Variously attributed to Aesop and Chaucer

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Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Dale Carnegie

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Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.

Arthur Schopenhauer

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Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is. You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000.  Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.

Rob Watson, Environmentalist

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My philosophy is:  It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

Anthony Hopkins

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And how a can man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

Horatius
Thomas Babington Macaulay

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Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

T.S. Eliot

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"Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one." 

 

- Marcus Aurelius

 

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"God," he says, "either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to,
or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can.
If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak and this does not apply to god.
If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful which is equally foreign to god’s nature.
If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god.
If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?"

Lactantius, On the Anger of God, 13.19  - aka Lactantius's De Ira Dei (c. 318), (epicurian aporia)

also, very similar:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor, 121-180 AD

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The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

Theodore Rubin

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Take your life in your own hands and what happens?
A terrible thing: no one to blame.

Erica Jong

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You have enemies?  Good.  That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

Winston Churchill

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If you find a good wife, you'll be happy; if not you'll become a philosopher.

Socrates

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All that we've been given by those who came before,
The dream of a nation where freedom would endure.
The work and prayers of centuries have brought us to this day.
What shall be our legacy, what will our children say?
Let them say of me, I was one who believed
in sharing the blessings I received.
Let me know in my heart when my days are through,
America, America, I gave my best to you.
America, America, I gave my best to you.

American Anthem
Performed by Norah Jones
Gene Scheer
Ken Burns
The War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv7PXU-l2E

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You too will be lost in the sands of time.

JG Knudtson
2013

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“There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We want to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vadar in all of us.  Thing is, this ain't no either/or proposition. We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness, stare it down and own it. As brother Nietzsche said, being human is a complicated gig, so give that old dark night of the soul a hug!  And howl the eternal yes!”

Chris In The Morning
Jules et Joel
Northern Exposure
Season 3 Episode 5

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Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Albert Einstein

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The chief cause of problems is solutions.

Eric Sevareid
CBS news journalist

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Evil never sleeps

Thus, Good must never take a vacation

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The tragedy of man is that he can conceive self perfection but cannot achieve it.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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You only live once. Make sure it’s enough.

The Most Interesting Man In The World

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I slept and dreamt that life was a joy.
I awoke and saw life was service.
I acted and behold, service was a joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

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Psychology is just meta-hacking an OS that was randomly bashed out by a million monkeys on typewriters over a few billion years and runs on constantly changing, badly shielded hardware with a lot of legacy design issues.  I think.

Unknown

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How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  Two. One to screw it in, and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of indifferent nothingness.

Anonymous

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There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Lama

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This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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To be sane in a world of madmen is in itself madness.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Life is just one god damned thing after another.

Ulysses S. Grant

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The Dalai Lama was once asked what thing about humanity surprises him the most.  His reply was:

Man, because he sacrifices his health to make money.
Then he sacrifices his money to regain his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future, that he doesn’t enjoy the present.
And as a result, he doesn’t live in the present or the future.
And he lives as if he’s never going to die.
And then he dies having never really lived.

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".. but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas..."

Ishmael, Moby Dick, Herman Melville, 1851

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When [my friend] said he had trouble getting along with his mother, I liked him better.  I like a man with faults, especially when he knows it.  To err is human -- I'm uncomfortable around gods.

Hugh Prather
Notes To Myself
My Struggle To Become A Person

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You've got to keep trying...

Reach for the light – a Bud Light

 

- Dick York

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The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, ~1100 A.D.

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Yiddish proverb:

Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht.

Translation: Man plans, God laughs.

 

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A Yiddish saying explains that "a schlemiel is somebody who often spills his soup and a schlimazel is the person it lands on". The schlemiel is similar to the schmuck but, as stated in a 2010 essay in The Forward, a schmuck can improve himself while a schlemiel is "irredeemably what they are".

 
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In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky-her grand old woods-her fertile fields-her beautiful rivers-her mighty lakes and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slave-holding and wrong; When I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten; That her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.

Frederick Douglass
January, 1846

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... For I sought [happiness and contentment] next in remaking the lives of other men. I went forth to reform the world. I denounced the ways of mankind, and bemoaned the backwardness of my time, and talked only of glories that were past, or were to come. I wanted many laws to make life easier for me, and for youth. But the world would not listen, and I grew bitter. I gathered anecdotes of human stupidity, and heralded the absurdities and injustices of men. One day, an enemy said, 'You have in yourself all the faults which you scorn in others; you, too, are capable of selfishness and greed; and the world is what it is because men are what you are.' I considered it in solitude, and found that it was true. Then it came to me that reform should begin at home; and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.

Will Durant

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The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most.  I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.

Ulysses S. Grant

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I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I've brought a big bat. I'm all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Dr. Seuss

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When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather did – in his sleep. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.

Bob Monkhouse (1928-2003)

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Don't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

Unknown

==

Dans ses écrits, un sàge Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.

The Perfect Can Be The Enemy Of The Good.

(In his writings, a wise Italian says that the [insisting on the perfect] is - or can be - the enemy of the good) 

Voltaire
La Bégueule

==

Hontar: We must work in the world, your eminence. The world is thus.

Altamirano: No, Señor Hontar. Thus have we made the world.  Thus have I made it...

Cardinal Altamirano, The Mission (1986)

==

Magnanimity is not weakness.

==

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

==

Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.

Bob Marley

==

When a diplomat says yes, he means ‘perhaps’;
When he says perhaps, he means ‘no’;
When he says no, he is not a diplomat.

When a lady says no, she means ‘perhaps’;
When she says perhaps, she means ‘yes’;
When she says yes, she is not a lady.

Alfred Denning
Speech to the Magistrates Association, 1982

==

A can of worms is all too easily opened.

Me

==

Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."

Abraham Lincoln,
The Second Inaugural Address, 1865

==

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.

- Abraham Lincoln, address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838

==

It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.

Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

==

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.

Abraham Lincoln

==

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII
1623

==

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

Job 1:21 (KJV)

==

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Leo Tolstoy

==

Life is a sexually transmitted condition with a 100 percent mortality rate.

- Unknown

==

The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicably. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.

T. H. Huxley, 1887

==

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens . . . The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

Johannes Kepler
Mysterium Cosmographicum, 1596

==

You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice...

Bob Marley

==

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Carl Sagan

==

 

Is it true?

Is it kind? 

Is it necessary?

- Socrates

 

==

 

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
 

- Epicurus 

 

==

 

And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we have begun at least to wonder about our origins - star stuff contemplating the stars - organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth, and perhaps throughout the cosmos. Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. *WE* speak for earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.

Dr. Carl Sagan
Cosmos XIII - Who Speaks For Earth

==

Humans are known taxonomically  as Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise man" or "knowing man"), and are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal  primates  in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo.

Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the hands for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other species. Mitochondrial DNA and fossil evidence indicates that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago.  With individuals widespread in every continent except Antarctica, humans are a cosmopolitan species. As of May 2010, the population of humans was about 6.8 billion

Like most higher primates, humans are social by nature. However, humans are uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization. Humans create complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families to nations. Social interactions between humans have established an extremely wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which together form the basis of human society.

Humans are noted for their desire to understand and influence their environment, seeking to explain and manipulate natural phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills, which are passed down culturally; humans are the only animal species known to build fires, cook their food, clothe themselves, and use numerous other technologies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens

--

Whatever you are, be a good one.- Abraham Lincoln

--

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-be-kind-to-unkind-people-they-need-it-the-most-ashleigh-brilliant-39-17-46.jpg

---

 

1965: Long Hair.
2015: Longing for hair.

1965: The perfect high.
2015: The perfect high yield managed fund.

1965: Keg.
2015: EKG.

1965: Acid Rock.
2015: Acid Reflux.

1965: Moving to California because it's cool.
2015: Moving to California because it's warm.

1965: Growing pot.
2015: Growing pot belly.

1965: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor.
2015: Trying NOT to look like Marlon Brando or Elizabeth Taylor.

1965: Our president's struggle with Fidel.
2015: Our president's struggle with fidelity.

1965: Being caught with Playboy magazine.
2015: Being caught with Playboy magazine.

1965: Killer weed.
2015: Weed killer.

1965: Finding a new, hip joint.
2015: Getting a new hip joint.

1965: Rolling Stones.
2015: Kidney stones.

1965: Screw the system!
2015: Upgrade the system.

1965: Peace sign.
2015: Mercedes emblem.

1965: Parents begging you to get your hair cut.
2015: Children begging you to get their heads shaved.

1965: Taking acid.
2015: Taking antiacid.
 
1965: The Grateful Dead
2015: Dr. Kevorkian
 
1965: Hoping for a BMW.
2015: Hoping for a BM.

1965: Passing the driver's test.
2015: Passing the vision test.

1965: Whatever
2015: Depends

 

 

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A Few More ...

God grant me the Senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.

Now that I'm older, here's what I've discovered: I started out with nothing, I still have most of it.

My wild oats have turned to prunes and All Bran.

I finally got my head together, now my body is falling apart.

Funny, I don't remember being absent minded...

It is easier to get older than it is to get wiser.

The only time the world beats a path to your door is if you're in the bathroom.

If God wanted me to touch my toes, he would have put them on my knees.

It's not hard to meet expenses ... they're everywhere.

 

 

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Circulating via email and social media, this has to be the funniest, most outrageous "college application essay" ever written. Is it real? Yes. Was it written for the purpose of applying for college? No.

Description: Satire/Email hoax
Circulating since 1990
Status: Not an actual application essay (details below)

Example

 

This is an actual essay written by a college applicant to NYU in response to this question:
 

3A. IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION: ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

 

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently.

 

Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row. I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

 

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

 

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400.

 

My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me. I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations with the CIA.

I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid.

On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prize-winning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin.

I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

 

But I have not yet gone to college. 

 

(The author was accepted and is now attending NYU.)

Analysis

This satirical essay — or a version of it — was written in 1990 by high school student Hugh Gallagher, who entered it in the humor category of the Scholastic Writing Awards and won first prize. The text was then published in Literary Cavalcade, a magazine of contemporary student writing, and reprinted in Harper's and The Guardian before taking off as one of the most forwarded viral emails of the 1990s.

Though it was not Gallagher's actual college application essay, he did submit it as a sample of his work to college writing programs and was accepted, with scholarship, to New York University, from which he graduated in 1994. Since then he has worked as a freelance writer. His first novel, Teeth, was published by Pocket Books in March 1998.
 

Sources and Further Reading

A Star by Accident - Spoof Launches His Career
Newsday, 10 December 1992

You Probably Read His Essay for College, But Now 26, Gallagher Has Graduated to Writing Novel
Baltimore Sun, 15 March 1998 

 

---

Subject: A speech for all occasions

AN ADDRESS FOR ALL OCCASIONS

Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen.

It is indeed a great and undeserved privilege to address such an
audience as I see before me.  At no previous time in the history
of human civilization have greater problems confronted and
challenged the ingenuity of man's intellect than now.  Let us
look around us.  What do we see on the horizon?  What forces are
at work?  Whither are we drifting?  Under what mist of clouds
does the future stand obscured?

My friends.  Casting aside the raiment of all human speech, the
crucial test for the solution of these intricate problems, to
which I have just alluded, is the sheer and forceful application
of those immutable laws which, down the corridors of time, have
always guided the hand of man, groping, as it were, for some
faint beacon of light for his hopes and aspirations.  Without these
great vital principles, we are but puppets responding to whim
and fancy, failing entirely to grasp the hidden meaning of it
all.  We must readdress ourselves to these questions which press
for answer and solution.  The issues cannot be avoided. There
they stand.  It is upon you, and you, and, yes, even upon me,
that the yoke of responsibility falls.

What, then, is our duty?  Shall we continue to drift?  No!  With
all the emphasis of my being I hurl back the message: "NO!"
Drifting m
ultimate goal to

"An Address to End All Addresses,"
by Parker Nevin, printed in
1948 in t

---

ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S FAMOUS CIVIL WAR CONDOLENCE LETTER TO YOUNG ***** MCCULLOUGH ABOUT DEATH, LOSS AND MEMORY**

Executive Mansion,
Washington, December 23, 1862.

Dear *****

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before.

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.

Your sincere friend

A. LINCOLN.

---

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: "Stop. Don't do it."

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Are you religious?"

He said: "Yes."

I said: "Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?"

"Christian."

"Me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow. Me too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?"

He said: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

I said: "Die, heretic scum," and pushed him off.

---

On Religion

Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto his brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.

Hebrews 2:17

==

8 But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing: that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9 The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:8-9 - 21st Century King James Version (KJV21)

==

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Micah 6:8 (KJV)

==

Where were you when I laid the Earth’s foundation … while the morning stars sang together and all the Sons of God shouted for joy?

Job 38:4, 7

==

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV

==

What Christ is saying always, what he never swerves from saying, what he says a thousand times and in a thousand different ways, but always with a central unity of belief, is this:  "I am my Father’s son, and you are my brothers." And the unity that binds us all together, that makes this earth a family, and all men brothers and the sons of God, is love. 

==

Praying is done in our time.
The answers come in God's time.

- Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, Holy Cross, (near Notre Dame), IN, USA - the movie Rudy (1993)

==

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"

- SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN

==

Live Simply. Love Generously. Care Deeply. Speak Kindly.
Leave the rest to God. Earth has no sorrows that Heaven cannot heal. God Bless!

==

Vaya con Dios!

Go With God!