The Lie

Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

--Pablo Picasso

Just Mount

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes
monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go
out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you
are taking.

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Alternative Outcomes

None can change the past or our memories. But we change what a memory means to us by opening up to alternative outcomes of similar situations.

--Paul Marshall Reeder

Stepping Out

What really draws me to travel is the prospect of stepping out of the daylight of everything I know, into the shadows of what I don't know, and may never know. Confronted by the foreign, we grow newly attentive to the details of the world, even as we make out, sometimes, the larger outline that lies behind them.

--Pico Iyer

Good Advice

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it; it is never of any use to oneself.

--Oscar Wilde

Forgotten Gift

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

--Albert Einstein

Exciting Opportunity

This has always been the genius of industrial capitalism--to take its failings and turn them into exciting new business opportunities.

--Michael Pollan

Things Longer

Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.

--Jerome K. Jerome

Guard Dog

Anger is the guard dog of denial.

--Donna Cunningham

Entirely Natural

I am a bit of a physics chauvinist. I think that according to the best of our current knowledge, our world is an entirely natural, physical place that does not depend on any supernatural powers.

--Taner Edis

Too Difficult

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

--Madeleine L'Engle

Time to Time

In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.

--Edward P. Tryon

Eternal

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars...everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.

--Thornton Wilder

Spellbound

Confusing names with nature, you come to believe that having a separate name makes you a separate being. This is--rather literally--to be spellbound.

--Alan W. Watts

Everything Is Different

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.

--Irene Peter

Slow Promises

The person who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Price Only

There is nothing in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and he who considers price only is that man's lawful prey.

--John Ruskin

In Evening Air

I see, in evening air,
How slowly dark comes down on what we do.

--Theodore Roethke