You always won, everytime you placed a bet
You’re still damn good, no one’s gotten to you yet
Everytime they were sure they had you caught
You were quicker than they thought
You’d just turn your back and walk
You always said, the cards would never do you wrong
The trick you said was never piay the game too long
A gambler’s share, the only risk that you would take
The only loss you could forsake
The only bluff you couldn’t fake.

Bob Seger, Still the Same

[A] man is to guard himself against taking a thing in general.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

[R]epublicanism has been revived as a modern ideology. Disillusion with classical liberalism, because it has led to unrestrained capitalism, and with Marxism, because it has resulted in political tyranny, has created a vogue for a “republican” philosophy, with a commitment to effective legal restraints upon the executive, an active ideal of participatory citizenship, and a belief that the collective good should take priority over private interest. Thus defined, “republicanism” appears to be an attractive, nonsocialist alternative to capitalism and globalization.

Keith Thomas, "Politics: Looking for Liberty" in the May 26, 2005 NYRB.

Destiny is calling me
Open up my eager eyes
‘Cause I’m Mr Brightside.

The Killers

There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

I may be a chump in many ways...but I know when and when not to be among those present.

"Bertie Wooster" in Very Good, Jeeves! by P.G. Wodehouse

Bush's Culture of Life

...at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are....there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Theodor Seuss Geisel, submitted by a friend

Do not, however, hope wholly to reason away your troubles; do not feed them with attention, and they will die imperceptibly away. Fix your thoughts upon your business, fill your intervals with company, and sunshine will again break in upon your mind.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

Existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed—a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking. Seen in these stark terms, life on this planet is a gory spectacle, a science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste excrement as they move along in search of more flesh.... Life cannot go on without the mutual devouring of organisms. If at the end of each person’s life he were to be presented with the living spectacle of all that he had organismically incorporated in order to stay alive, he might well feel horrified by the living energy he had ingested. The horizon of a gourmet, or even the average person, would be taken up with hundreds of chickens, flocks of lambs and sheep, a small herd of steers, sties fill of pigs and rivers of fish. The din alone would be deafening... each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.

Ernest Becker, Escape From Evil as quoted by the Shakespeare Theatre

Human moments are stolen away by a thousand petty impediments.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

The sicker you get, the harder it is to remember if you took your medicine.

George Carlin

For the black fumes which rise in your mind, I can prescribe nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and sometimes serious. Change of place is useful...

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as the essence of bullshit.

Harry G. Frankfurt, as quoted in Defining Bullshit, Slate.

...metabolism sets the pace for myriad biological processes. An animal with a high metabolic rate processes energy quickly, so it can pump its heart quickly, grow quickly, and reach maturity quickly. Unfortunately, that animal also ages and dies quickly....There is a universal biological clock..."but it ticks in units of energy, not units of time."

"Life on the Scales," Erica Klarreich, Science News, February 12, 2005

No one ever knows what's next,
but they always do it.

George Carlin

Hell burns within my breast....
I praise and love the one who makes my fire so hot.

Lorenzino de Medici, from Madrigal

"Be still, and know that I am God." - Psalm 46.10

Rice in a Beggar's Bowl

Of all my thousand choices tonight
I walk into the snowy woods and wait.

Snow rests in peace
on each bough where it has fallen.
The branches are content to bow
like servants with their burdens,
as are all living things content
to wait.

I stand, hands in my pockets,
and let my life fall like snow
in the empty bowl of this meadow;
my mind becomes a slender branch.

My heart settles on the silent earth.

Attend to this moment
until it is enough.

Pastor Steve

The martini according to Wikipedia.