Thom Ryng
Love, Pray, Walk, Write
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As it is said
No plan survives contact with the enemy.(Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder)The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.("Supernatural Horror in Literature", H.P. Lovecraft, 1927)His ignorance is encyclopedic.(Abba Eban)I am not young enough to know everything.(Oscar Wilde)To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.(Thomas Jefferson)Ora et Labora. (Pray and work.)(Motto of the Order of Saint Benedict)The most merciful thing in the world, I think,is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociate knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality,and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.("Call of Cthulhu", H.P. Lovecraft, 1928)When ships to sail the void between the stars have been invented, there will also be men who come forward to sail those ships.(Somnium, Johannes Kepler, 1634)Where they burn books, they will end in burning people.(Heinrich Heine)Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.(Oliver Wendell Holmes )Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.(Jorge Luis Borges)I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world ... a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.("The Repairer of Reputations", Robert W. Chambers, 1895)Corruptissima republica, plurimae leges. (The more corrupt the republic, the more laws it has.)(Annales, Tacitus, 69)The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.(G.K. Chesterton)Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.(William Pitt, 1783)If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.(Carl Sagan)I could carve a better man out of a banana.(Theodore Roosevelt)Faith and reason are like the shoes on your feet - you can get further with both than just one.("The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", J. Michael Straczynski, 1997)The Red Queen shook her head. "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"(Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll, 1862)From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.(Groucho Marx)Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.(Thomas Carlyle)Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?(The Rock. T.S. Eliot, 1934)Make the smart, hard working officers your staff officers, they plan to make the right things happen. Make the smart, lazy ones your commanders, they make the right things happen with the least effort. Leave the stupid, lazy ones alone, they hurt nothing. Get rid of the stupid, hard-working ones, they make work for everyone.(Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder)Clastrum sine armarie est quasi castrum sine armamentarie. (A monastery without a library is like a castle without weapons.)Anywhere is walking distance, if you've got the time.(Stephen Wright)-
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Thom Ryng