Emotional Intimacy Question: Favorite Quote

[ysabetwordsmith]

Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. This is the current list.

23. What’s your favorite quote?

I could never narrow it down to one.  Among the ones I've coined and use regularly:

"Do it fast, do it wrong, do it over."

"If you're not making any mistakes, you're not learning, you're coasting."

And from other folks:

"Not all those who wander are lost."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

"The world goes as it will, and not as you or I would have it."
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

Comments

[technoshaman]

Favourite me-quote, though I swiped most of it and simply updated it for post-1995 (since it dates to circa 1982):

"Thou shalt forever forswear and abjure the vile notion that All The World's a Windows Box."
-- me, after Henry Spencer, 10 Commandments of C Programming

Others:

"Now listen. I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissin' babies, I'm stealin' their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open"
-- Red October. The reason I _like_ this quote is underlined.

"Have fun stormin' the castle!" -- The Princess Bride

"There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
(If that needs a citation, somebody needs to go read the whole thing.)

"No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand. The Centauri learned this lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free."
-- Citizen G'Kar, "The Long Twilight Struggle" (B5 S2:E20)

And a couple of random uncited ones I'mma just drop here:

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

Crus de agnus Dei con quilon menthae.

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with catsup.

[gatheringrivers]

"Any technology, no matter how far advanced, is magic to those who don't understand it"
--Florence, Freefall webcomic

(I used to work in InfoTech - it's so *very* relevant...)

"If you're the smartest person in the room....you're in the wrong room"
--I see it attributed to the guy that runs Virgin over in the UK. No idea if he actually said it tho...

My top fav:
"A phone does not have a constitutional right to be answered"
--my dad, a few years before he passed

This remains my standard operating procedure with phone calls over the last 30 years: Phone on mute, wait for a voicemail. With mobile I can now add them to spam lists and the phone doesn't even send the signal to the watch. My friends know to text me first, THEN call when I give the ok if they're on a new number.

Spam calls are a crappy thing these days - it's really the only way to deal with it, short of not having a phone number...

(I do wonder if many of the spammers buy numbers from facebook...)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

There's a whole industry regarding phone lists, from legitimate cold calling to your worst phishers.

I've desperately tried to train Millennials how 20th century phone etiquette works (cue the RHPS "Let's Do the Time Warp Again" music) and they cannot grasp that my phone isn't on my person and that I've not got caller idea. Things must be planned and run to plan, allowing for catastrophes.

I find it sickeningly 'cute' FB thinks they can lure people to provide a mobile number when FB regularly loses control of data.

[gatheringrivers]

My phone's "address book" is basically a whitelist. If a number pops up and they're in my whitelist (meaning it shows up with a name) then I'll pick up, no problem. Not having a land line has actually worked out, long run, though it was a colossal pain in the rump for the longest time at the start trying to get people to switch numbers.

FYI: FB likely HAS everyone's phone numbers already, from copying data in other people's mobile device address books. Look up "shadow profiles".

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Given that mine is a listed number, the horse and the barn are flapping in Dorothy's tornado. I'm just annoyed seeing the request.

[no clue if that idea was my typo or autowrong.]

[pronker]

sickeningly 'cute' FB thinks Facebook scares me. I could be on there for business reasons, but no thanks.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I try to make a point of not having any sort of work adjacentness on FB. It's mainly something I'm on because my friends are scattered to the winds and I can't just run into them at the grocery store.

Springing to mind...

[gingicat]

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
—James Davis Nicoll, on Usenet

“I don’t worry about having a child with special needs. I worry about having a child who is cruel to those with special needs.” —Internet meme

“Nothing about us, without us!” —motto of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network

(More later...)

quotes from my office bulletin board

[gingicat]

A sonnet by my husband:

Will we go raking all the autumn leaves?
The lawn you love is buried underneath,
Or shall a spell that some enchanter weaves
Bespell them all into a fallen wreath?
The neighbors lawn is cleared and oddly green,
Without a leaf among the many trees.
Yet so maintained it is an eerie scene,
As nothing blows upon the gentle breeze.
Our neighbors have forgotten being young,
The magic of a child in the yard.
Our piles full of dampened leaves have clung,
Until we, holding hands, jump in them hard.
Our autumn is a precious time for fun.
The spell of time with you is never done.

(c) [husband], 2011/09/18

Mending Wall by Robert Frost (the whole thing)

"If we have to re-invent the wheel, can we at least make it round this time?"

"I myself am made entirely of flaws stitched together with good intentions"

part of the Agincourt speech from Henry V (Shakespeare)

"Just FYI - Life Can Be Joyful! The things we can most control are our actions and our thinking; the meaning we make of things that affect us and how we choose to react to what life brings us."
--Eve K. Lesses (aka my therapist)

[mdlbear]

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. G. K. Chesterton

A locked car with an open window is not a locked car. my father

[arlie]

“I Beseech You, in the Bowels of Christ, Think it Possible You May Be Mistaken” - Oliver Cromwell.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I seem to recall a lot of actions suggesting he didn't think this applied to him. (He was not in one of my focuses, so take with a full salt lick and say hi to the animals.)

[lb_lee]

Half perfect, all done > all perfect, half done.

"I ♥ My √x, x<0 Friend" I originally saw it on a friend's dorm room white board; no clue who originated it.

"All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder
For filth I'm glad to say
Is in the mind of the beholder"
--Tom Lehrer, "Smut"

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

I'm just passably fluent enough for the second one to grind into my station. ("Math is a language and Newton wanted it as esoteric as possible." Myself, just now.)

[pronker]

"Omnia temperentiā etiam temperentia ipsa." RandomPecans on Reddit.

"Illegitimati non carborundum." Vinegar Joe Stilwell

[mama_kestrel]

Pretty much in order of importance:

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, then what am I? And if not now, when?" - Maimonides

"I've heard men complain of doing women's work, and I've heard women complain of doing men's work, but I've never heard the work complain so long as it got done." Lloyd Alexander, Taran Wanderer

"Only a fool is never afraid" - Madeleine L'Engle

Quotes.

[curiosity]

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

― G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse


"I do not pretend to comprehend the ways of mortals
though I be numbered among them."

-- something I brought back from a dream about a conversation I had with Goddess when I was a kid.


"You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it."

-- Robin Williams


"I don't like to hold back, because that's how you hurt yourself."

-- Chester Bennington