Remember that life is not measured in hours but in accomplishments.
- James Pike

When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.
- Paulo Coelho

#QOTD: "Journalism is printing what somebody else doesn't want printed - everything else is public relations." - George Orwell

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
- Jim Morrison

"Je t'ai pas raconté la fois où j'ai été déserteur ?" J.
#qotd

Dogs have owners, cats have staff.

#QOTD: "Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you." - Aldous Huxley

From the #Orbital #Fondling #Bay the Poobah says: “If #Yuri #Gagarin was the first man in #space, I’ll be the first to plant my flag in your ______.”

Some explore the #stars. Others explore #orifices. Only the brave do both.

Complete the blank, you cosmic deviant. Bonus points for accuracy, originality, and orbital innuendo.

#YuriGagarin #QOTD #QuoteOfTheDay #PoobahSays #SaturdayVibes #MemeCoin #Meme #Memes #ThePoobah #SacredNonsense #SurrealHumour #CryptoCult $POOBAH

A quotation from Robert Ingersoll

Millions upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars of bigotry. The Catholic burned the Lutheran, the Lutheran burned the Catholic, the Episcopalian tortured the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian tortured the Episcopalian. Every denomination killed all it could of every other; and each Christian felt in duty bound to exterminate every other Christian who denied the smallest fraction of his creed.

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
Lecture (1874-05-03), “Heretics and Heresies,” Free Religious Society, Kingsbury Hall, Chicago

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/ingersoll-robert-gre…

Really enjoyed the exhibition on women in Somerset in WWII at the Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury. Useful for my research for On This Day in Somerset!

#qotd What was the last interesting place you visited?

A quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, then to die daily in the sick-room.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Essay (1878-04), “Æs Triplex,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 37

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/stevenson-robert-lou…

A quotation from Montaigne

But I do not approve of what I see in use, that is, to seek to affirm and support our religion by the prosperity of our enterprises. Our belief has other foundation enough, without going about to authorize it by events: for the people being accustomed to such plausible arguments as these and so proper to their taste, it is to be feared, lest when they fail of success they should also stagger in their faith.
 
[Mais je trouve mauvais ce que je voy en usage, de chercher à fermir & appuyer nostre religion par la prosperité de nos entreprises. Nostre creance a assez d’autres fondemens, sans l’authoriser par les evenemens. Car le peuple accoustumé à ces argumens plausibles, & proprement de son goust, il est danger, quand les evenemens viennent à leur tour contraires & des-avantageux, qu’il en esbranle sa foy.]

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
Essay (1572), “That a Man Is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinance [Qu’il faut sobrement se mesler de juger des ordonnances divines], Essays, Book 1, ch. 31 (1.31) (1595) [tr. Cotton/Hazlitt (1877)]

Sourcing, notes, alternate translations: wist.info/montaigne-michel-de/…

A quotation from Orwell

   In the queerest way, pleasure and disgust are linked together. The human body is beautiful: it is also repulsive and ridiculous, a fact which can be verified at any swimming pool. The sexual organs are objects of desire and also of loathing, so much so that in many languages, if not in all languages, their names are used as words of abuse. Meat is delicious, but a butcher’s shop makes one feel sick: and indeed all our food springs ultimately from dung and dead bodies, the two things which of all others seem to us the most horrible. A child, when it is past the infantile stage but still looking at the world with fresh eyes, is moved by horror almost as often as by wonder – horror of snot and spittle, of the dogs’ excrement on the pavement, the dying toad full of maggots, the sweaty smell of grown-ups, the hideousness of old men, with their bald heads and bulbous noses.
   In his endless harping on disease, dirt and deformity, Swift is not actually inventing anything, he is merely leaving something out.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1946-09), “Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels,” Polemic, No. 5

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/orwell-george/76157/

#QOTD: "There are no finished books, only exhausted authors." - Bob Sutton

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
- Natalie Goldberg

A quotation from Abraham Lincoln

This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our Republican example of its just influence in the world — enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites — causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1854-10-16), “In Reply to Senator Douglas,” Peoria, Illinois

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/3661…

A quotation from Teddy Roosevelt

   It is not possible to lay down an inflexible rule as to when compromise is right and when wrong; when it is a sign of the highest statesmanship to temporize, and when it is merely a proof of weakness. Now and then one can stand uncompromisingly for a naked principle and force people up to it. This is always the attractive course; but in certain great crises it may be a very wrong course. Compromise, in the proper sense, merely means agreement; in the proper sense opportunism should merely mean doing the best possible with actual conditions as they exist.
   A compromise which results in a half-step toward evil is all wrong, just as the opportunist who saves himself for the moment by adopting a policy which is fraught with future disaster is all wrong; but no less wrong is the attitude of those who will not come to an agreement through which, or will not follow the course by which, it is alone possible to accomplish practical results for good.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer, US President (1901-1909)
Essay (1900-06), “Latitude and Longitude Among Reformers,” The Century Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 2

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/roosevelt-theodore/1…

A quotation from Thomas Carlyle

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Essay (1837-12-06), “On Sir Walter Scott,” The London and Westminster Review, No. 12/55, Art. 2 (1838-01)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/carlyle-thomas/66391…

A quotation from Eric Hoffer

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 61 (1955)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/hoffer-eric/76161/

A quotation from Josh Billings

How menny people thare iz whoze importance depends entirely upon the size ov their hotel bills.
 
[How many people there are whose importance depends entirely upon the size of their hotel bills.]

Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist, aphorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, ch. 156 “Affurisms: Embers on the Harth” (1874)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/billings-josh/76159/