Non coerceri a maximo, sed contineri a minimo divinum est

(“not to be limited by the greatest and yet to be contained in the tiniest—this is the divine”).

Quoted by Pope Francis on the vision of St. Ignatius

You should only pick your own nose.


Heard from a nice lady in Iowa.

Relationships were ... utterly mysterious, they took place between two subconscious minds, and whatever the surface trickle thought was going on could not be trusted to be right.

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

The whole meaning of the universe, its beauty, is contained in the consciousness of intelligent life.  We are the consciousness of the universe, and our job is to spread that around, to go look at things, to live everywhere we can. 

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars

To Evening

You set me and my thoughts a-wandering
along the path to the eternal void; and then
this wretched time flees, and with it
the throng of woes afflicting it and me;
and while I behold your peacefulness, that warlike
spirit that rages within me sleeps. 

From "Alla sera" by Ugo Foscolo, translated by Allen Shearer, seen on a Metro bus

"Creation" in [the] Hindu view of things is designated by the word srishthi, literally the "pouring forth" of the universe from the source.  As a complex plant or tree grows, bursting forth and developing from the simple unitary seed, or as a complex creature emerges and grows from an embryo, so is this whole and diverse universe poured forth from the ... very body of the divine.  There is no God who stands apart from it and creates it.... everything is a manifestation that has poured forth from the living body of the Whole, what some would call God.... Within this systemic whole, everything is alive and interrelated. 

Diana L. Eck, India: A Sacred Geography

When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

[History] doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

Mark C. Elliott, quoted in "Laptop U", The New Yorker (May 20, 2013)

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

Eric Ambler, A Coffin for Dimitrios

At the end we dream of the beginning.

James Church, The Man with the Baltic Stare