” No ruler in the history of the world has ever been able to afford a war. They’re not affordable things. No prince ever says, ‘This is my budget, so this is the kind of war I can have.’ You enter into one and it uses up all the money you’ve got, and then it breaks you and bankrupts you.”
– an observation made by Thomas Cromwell, in “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel
“Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deep buried rock at the bottom of the current. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn’t dream of them himself.”
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe
“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
“You’re only ever given one, little spark of madness- you must never lose it.”
Robin Williams (1951-2014) Comic genius.
The first thing I learned in school was that some people are idiots; the second thing I learned was that some people are even worse.
Orhan Pamuk : “Istanbul” translated by Maureen Freely
“Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind.”
Quotation from “Middlemarch” by George Eliot
“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less ‘aggressive’ than sedentary ones.” Bruce Chatwin (“The Songlines”)
“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it”. – J.M. BARRIE
“The essential ministry of a Fool is to undermine beliefs, to seed doubts, to shock people into seeing the truth.”
“Life is unfair but remember: sometimes it is unfair in your favour.”
We might complain about our lot, but maybe we should be counting our many blessings.
