QUOT'IN

• 2010-03-11

  Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you’ll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.

  — William Bennett

• 2010-02-18

  Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

  — Plato

• →

  I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

  — Michael Jordan

• 2010-01-25

  Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.

  — Susan B. Anthony

• 2009-12-26

  The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

  — Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

• 2009-12-24

  Now you’re listening to Joe Lieberman say that he will filibuster anything with a public option. Let me understand this: One guy from a small state in New England is going to decide on a singular basis what’s good for the health care of 300 million people? That’s our form of government, and I don’t get it.

  — David Simon, Vice Magazine Interview

• 2009-11-23

  “The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.”

  -Winston Churchill

• 2009-10-19

  To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

  This is my symphony.

  — William Henry Channing

• 2009-08-12

  McNulty: Let me understand. Every Friday night, you and your boys are shootin’ craps, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snot Boogie… he’d wait til there’s cash on the ground and he’d grab it and run away? You let him do that?

  Suspect: We’d catch him and beat his ass but ain’t nobody ever go past that.

  McNulty: I’ve gotta ask you: if every time Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away… why’d you even let him in the game?

  Suspect: Got to. This America, man.

  — The Wire - Season One, Episode One

• 2009-08-11

  The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

  — Bertrand Russell