As for Extremists

"I am against all extremists.
In fact, I think they should be lined up against a wall, and shot."

Chevy Chase (October 8th, 1943)

Life lived quietly

"The best of life is life lived quietly,
where nothing happens
but our calm journey through the day,
where change is imperceptible
and the precious life is everything."

John Mc Gahern

135

"I am today
what I established yesterday."

am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jamesjoyce119807.html

I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_joyce.html

I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_joyce.html

James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941)

I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/james_joyce.html

Not sure about

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those
who in times of great moral crisis
maintain their neutrality.
Dante Alighieri

  [from my archive)

The Dangerous Vice of a Weak Character

The will for power ... far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly their most dangerous one.
Hannah Arendt

Measles of Mankind

Nationalism is an infantile disease.
It is the measles of mankind.
Albert Einstein
The World As I See It, 1935

Presidency No Place for Amateurs

One can never be sure that when a man becomes the President of the United States his sense of power and of purpose and his own source of self confidence will show him how to help himself enhance his personal influence.... The Presidency is no place for amateurs.
Richard Neustadt,
Presidential Power, 1964

Precious Life

The life where nothing happens
among the dear familiar things
is for me the most precious life.
...
And all we have
is those precious moments
and the hours and the days.

John McGahern

Worth some thoughts

If a book was well-written it can be obscene,
but it couldn't be immoral,
because if it was immoral,
it couldn't be true.

John Mc Gahern

Ach, John!

You need to have a good boring life
in which nothing much happens
except what's going on in your head.

John McGahern
about writing

Tree of Imagination

The tree which moves some to tears of joy
is in the eyes of others only a green thing
that stands in the way. 
Some see nature all ridicule and deformity...
and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination,
nature is imagination itself. William Blake

 

Marvel(lou)s

"Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children."
- Pablo Casals -

Thoughts

Cruelty appalls,
stupidity demoralises.

Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960)

About Questions II

If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don't have to worry about the answers.
Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow

About Questions I

Unwissende werfen Fragen auf,
welche von Wissenden vor tausend Jahren schon beantwortet sind

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

»Maximen und Reflexionen«, Verlag der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Weimar, 1907

 

Der Weg ist das Ziel

A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

Oui oui

Ce monde est un grand Bedlam, où des fous enchaînent d'autres fous. / This world is one great bedlam where maniacs  enchain other maniacs. / Diese Welt ist ein einziges großes Tollhaus, wo Irre andere Irre in Ketten legen. /
[Voltaire]

Some grains of corn

Monsieur Rousseau whose 300th birthday is being celebrated today – well, more less than more – like many others gave evidence that he who writes a lot not seldom does write a lot of rubbish, such as

——• Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.

However, being no blind hen one could find some grains of corn, so to write. 

Judge yourself.

• People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

• No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

• Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

• However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once. 

The peace of the night. 

Lounging

I love idleness so much and so dearly,
that I have hardly the heart
to say a word against it ...
[Charles James Fox]

Hurra, I am rich!

Nenne dich nicht arm, weil deine Träume nicht in Erfüllung gegangen sind!

Wirklich arm ist nur, wer nie geträumt hat.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Don't call yourself poor, 'cause your dreams did not come true.

Really poor is only who never dreamed.