overview
I wish I had more time for spare time. In the meantime, I've set aside some of the time I have — picture a minute — by labelling it "Spare." Time is calm, true, quiet....
"It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth,
and if we can teach our children to honor nature's gifts,
the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever" (Jimmy Carter)
december 2004
I guess I'll die another day (Madonna).
january 2005
Help me find the balance I need between work, play, loving others, and self-care.
february 2005
Most people do not see choices that — objectively — do exist.
march 2005
Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments (Thich Nhat Hanh).
april 2005
Faster, Faster! I'm sciencing as fast as I can! (Professor Farnsworth, Futurama).
may 2005
To interfere with the life of things means to harm them and oneself.... He who imposes himself has that small, manifest might; he who does not impose himself has the great, secret might.... (Taoist principle of wu-wei).
june 2005
There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: (1) Recklessness, which leads to destruction; (2) cowardice, which leads to capture; (3) a hasty temper, which can be provoked by insults; (4) a delicacy of honour which is sensitive to shame; (5) over-solicitude for his men, which exposes him to worry and trouble (Sun Tzu's The Art of War).
july 2005
You know, you remind me of a poem I can't remember. And a song that may never have existed. And a place I'm not sure I've ever been to (Grandpa, The Simpsons).
august 2005
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? (Albert Einstein).
september 2005
If you can make one heap of all your winnings | And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, | And lose, and start again at your beginnings | And never breath a word about your loss .... | If you can fill the unforgiving minute | With sixty seconds' worth of distance run - | Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.... (Rudyard Kipling).
october 2005
Do nothing merely out of good resolutions. Discipline yourself only to yield to love, suffer yourself to be attracted (Henry David Thoreau).
november 2005
We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone (Orson Welles).
december 2005
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment (Jalad Ud-Din Rumi).
january 2006
It is a well-known finding of social psychology that observers of action tend to attribute actions to personal characteristics of the actor, rather than to the actor's situation, while actors tend to see their own behavior more as a product of the situation they are in.... (Herbsleb, Atkins, Boyer, Handel, & Finholt, CHI 2002).
february 2006
Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you (Don Juan, qtd. in Carlos Casteneda).
march 2006
With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble (Keshavan Nair).
april 2006
The only way to speak the truth is to speak lovingly (Henry David Thoreau).
may 2006
It is not things, but what we think about things, that troubles us (Epictetus).
june 2006
How would I be if I were the person I would like to be.... How would I be, relate, create, act, feel? What leads me toward this end and what draws me back? (Lawrence Le Shan).
july 2006
Puse la frente entre las olas profundas, descendi como gota entre la paz sulfurica, y, como un ciego, regresé al jazmin de la gastada primavera humana (I leaned my head into the deepest waves, I sank through the sulfuric peace, and, like a blind man, returned to the jasmine of the exhausted human springtime) (Pablo Neruda).
august 2006
... release from our fears, resentments, inferiority complexes, negative points of view, self-centeredness, criticism of others, over-sensitiveness, inner conflicts, habits of procrastination, undisciplined sex, wasting money, boredom, false perfectionism, jealousy, and envy of others.
september 2006
Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us (William James).
october 2006
Success is not the measure of a man but a triumph over those who choose to hold him back (Bill Clinton).
november 2006
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm (Winston Churchill).
december 2006
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand (Cool Hand Luke).
january 2007
Life is not a search for happiness. Happiness is a byproduct of living the right kind of a life, of doing the right thing.
february 2007
Time is the fire in which we burn (Delmore Schwartz).
march 2007
I was really lost, I'm a little less so at the moment.... That to me is the spiritual life (Bono).
april 2007
It is futile to regret. You do one thing, you do another. So what. What's the difference. Same result (Charlie Arglist, The Ice Harvest).
may 2007
Words can eat a man alive (Ian Hunter).
june 2007
I dwell in Possibility (Emily Dickinson).
july 2007
Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart. The movement in which I am a pattern or convolution began incalculable ages before the (conventionally isolated) event called birth, and will continue long after the event called death. Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything. (Alan W. Watts).
august 2007
Subjectivity, by its nature, is nontransferable (Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, & Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love).
september 2007
I don't regret killing them, just killing them badly. I've gotta make amends (Frank Falenczyk, You Kill Me).
october 2007
Mistakes are just successes that you mess up (Michael Scott, The Office).
november 2007
Favour and disgrace would seem equally to be feared; honour and great calamity, regarded as personal conditions of the same kind (Lao-tzu, The Tao-te Ching).
december 2007
As some writer I can no longer identify remarked, every good idea has already been thought of by somebody else, who did not appreciate its significance (Carl Bereiter, Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age).
january 2008
Homer: Oh ... and how is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?
Marge: That's because you were drunk.
Homer: And how (The Simpsons).
february 2008
At the deeper levels, in front of the mystery of time, we are mortal beings solemnly aware of our finitude — longing, perhaps, for that in ourselves which partakes of the eternal. But at the surface levels of ourselves, in front of the problem of time, we are like frantic puppets trying to manage the influences of the past, the threats and promises of the future and the tense demands of the ever-diminishing present moment (Jacob Needleman, Time and the Soul: Where has all the Meaningful Time Gone—and can We get it Back?).
march 2008
Time does not change us. It just unfolds us (Max Frisch).
april 2008
Any framework that claims that any time, place, or organization of people will produce perfect happiness should be peremptorily dismissed, and Utopias should be given sceptical scrutiny (Daniel Nettle).
may 2008
Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize half of them are stupider than that (George Carlin).
june 2008
To be the miracle, | Get out of its way (Diane Duane, The Book of Night with Moon).
july 2008
... to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of (David Brooks, The New York Times, 8/8/08).
august 2008
Little moments like that prove to me that there is some kind of all-powerful, all-knowing force that controls everything in the universe ... and it's so fucking bored that it'll actually take time out to orchestrate a petty letdown like that (George, Dead Like Me).
september 2008
By acting like a man in love, he became a man in love again (Paris, Je T'aime, 2007).
october 2008
Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced [sic] your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? ... My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate (Sarah Palin, Vice-Presidential Debate 2008).
november 2008
The one advantage to being older is that I know a few things about a few things, and I'm young enough not to forget them, and old enough to know the difference between the two. I'm old enough to take advantage of age discrimination laws, but young enough to date college girls, but old enough to know better. I'm the perfect age. I could die now, but I won't because I am young (Michael Scott, Deleted Scenes: The Office).
december 2008
The Website is hiding. Forming alliances with other sites. Preparing an attack for which we will have no defense (Dwight Schrute, The Office).
"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development,
invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears" (Edgar Allen Poe)
january 2009
The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements free as they are insignificant. What shall we choose? Weight or lightness? (Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being).
february 2009
There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life (Henry David Thoreau, Walden).
march 2009
Brenda: Yeah. We live. We die. Ultimately nothing means anything.
Nate: How can you live like that?
Brenda: I don't know. Sometimes I wake up so fucking empty I wish I'd never been born, but what choice do I have (Six Feet Under).
april 2009
I know a few things about love. Horrible, terrible, awful ... awful things (Andy Bernard, The Office).
may 2009
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans (Henry David Thoreau, Walden).
june 2009
Can you find anyone that enchanting without sex. Nobody (David Kepesh, Elegy).
july 2009
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." (Isaac Asimov).
august 2009
Fakt 48: Fakts still exist even if they are ignored (Harvie Krumpet).
september 2009
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts (John Locke).
october 2009
I am certainly wiser than this man: it is true that neither of us knows anything that is good. But he supposes that he knows something, and yet knows nothing. It is true that I too know nothing; but I do not pretend to know anything (Plato, Apology of Socrates Before His Judges, 21 D).
november 2009
The beginning of education is the examination of terms (Antisthenes).