A Few Maxims – Oscar Wilde

 

A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

• Education is an admirable thing.  But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
• Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.
• The English are always degrading truths into facts.  When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
• It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
• The only link between Literature and Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.
• In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public.  Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
• Most women are so artificial that they have no sense of Art.  Most men are so natural that they have no sense of Beauty.
• Friendship is far more tragic than love.  It lasts longer.
• What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art.  It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art.
• A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist.  It lacks imperfection.
• The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious.  The only thing that the public can see is the obvious.  The result is the Criticism of the Journalist.
• Art is the only serious thing in the world.  And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
• To be really mediæval one should have no body.  To be really modern one should have no soul.  To be really Greek one should have no clothes.
• Dandyism is the assertion of the absolute modernity of Beauty.
• The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.  The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.
• One should never listen.  To listen is a sign of indifference to one’s hearers.
• Even the disciple has his uses.  He stands behind one’s throne, and at the moment of one’s triumph whispers in one’s ear that, after all, one is immortal.
• The criminal classes are so close to us that even the policemen can see them.  They are so far away from us that only the poet can understand them.
• Those whom the gods love grow young.

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Bibliographic Notes:  First published, anonymously, in the 1894 November 17 issue of Saturday Review.

Ten Rules for Being Human

You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."

There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."

Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.

"There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."

Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

You will forget all this.

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http://enlightenment.multiply.com/

Instructions for Life in the new millennium from the Dalai Lama

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, respect for others and responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go some place you’ve never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

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http://kryon.com/inspiritmag/inspire/this/dalaiLama.html
http://www.haestad.com/philosophy.asp

Quote of the day

 

 

"Love and happiness are merely driving forces for what is ultimately the goal of life: death".

 

Very profound isn’t it? It should be, it’s mine

 

 

Well anyway, I was reading this article on how human existence is possible only if fundamental constants such as the speed of light or the strength of gravity are not higher or lower than what is observed. I found it quite interesting and much more optimistic than my "quote". It’s a theory but it’s worth a look if you are looking for something interesting to read online… http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16038052/

 

 

For more space news check out http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3033063/ which includes an article about how liquid water may have flowed within the past few years on the Red Planet. Maybe there really was life there after all… Well who knows…

 

 

Back to my profound quote now… I really have been thinking about life and all the things we go through every day… and for what? We all end up dying… It’s a bit sad… Is our life really such a waste? Or is there a purpose? It really gets to you when you think about this stuff… Everything around you seems so pointless… Erm.. yeah whatever, I’m off… Invasion is on

Einstein Quotes

• "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction."
• "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
• "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
• "I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details."
• "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
• "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
• "The only real valuable thing is intuition."
• "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
• "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
• "God is subtle but he is not malicious."
• "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
• "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
• "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
• "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
• "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
• "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
• "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
• "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
• "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
• "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it."
• "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
• "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
• "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
• "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
• "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
• "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
• "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
• "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
• "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
• "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
• "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
• "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
• "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
• "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe."
• "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
• "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
• "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
• "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."
• "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead."
• "Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
• "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!"
• "No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"
• "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
• "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
• "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
• "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
• "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
• "A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
• "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
• "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
• "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
• "One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
• "…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."
• "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
• "A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
• "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

Copyright: Kevin Harris 1995 (may be freely distributed with this acknowledgement)

Some fun quotes (2)

• If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
• It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is rarely a mistake. (Mencken)
• Odd things, animals. Dogs look up to you. Cats look down to you. Only pigs see you as an equal’ (Churchill)
• Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. (Hanlon)
• Everyone rises to his level of incompetence. (the Peter principle)
• The meek may inherit the earth – but not its mineral rights. (Getty)
• … a difficulty for every solution” (Samuel, on the Civil Service)
• There will be no more misery… when the world is our rotisserie.  (Tom Lehrer)
• Midget psychic escapes prison: small medium at large
• Democracy is… the worship of jackals by jackasses. (Mencken)
• EC institutions have produced European beets, butter, cheese, wine, veal and even pigs. But they have not produced Europeans. (Weiss)
• Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. (Hubbard)
• … a place where the money falls apart in your hands, but you can’t tear the toilet paper. (Wilder, on France)
• Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead. (Thurber)

Some fun quotes (1)

• God is a comedian, playing to an audience that’s too afraid to laugh.” (Voltaire)
• People who make no mistakes do not usually make anything.
• [A pessimist is] someone who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.” (Shaw)
• A little inaccuracy can save tons of explanation.” (Saki)
• All human actions are equivalent, and all are doomed to failure.” (Sartre)
• A cynic is a man who, upon smelling flowers, looks around for a coffin.” (Mencken)
• Curiosity kills more mice than cats.
• Culture is, roughly, anything we do which the monkeys don’t.” (Raglan)
• Birth, n., the first and direst of all disasters. (Bierce)
• Blow your mind. Smoke gunpowder.
• Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory.” (Gell-Mann)
• Glory may be fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
• History repeats itself; historians repeat each other.” (Guedella)
• History is the sum total of things which could have been avoided.”(Adenauer)
• Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” (Elliot)

 

…. to be continued