Tuesday 30 October 2012

Unquestioning


"The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin."

Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

Monday 29 October 2012

The hills yonder


"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could."

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Friday 26 October 2012

Walks of Life


"The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy and the handicapped."

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, US Vice President (1911-1978)

Thursday 25 October 2012

Hngng tgthr


"You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates. And he does the same for you. You're his responsibility now and he's yours. If no one else will take care of him, you will. If everyone else rejects you, he won't. What do you think love is? Going to bed all the time?"

Jane Smiley, novelist (b.1949)

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Wrong kind of feeling


"The worst kind of people are those who confuse kindness for weakness."

Werner Makowski, banker (b. 1929)

Construction


"Death destroys the body, as the scaffolding is destroyed after the building is up and finished. And he whose building is up rejoices at the destruction of the scaffolding and of the body."

Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)

Deep bright


"Where the light is brightest, the shadows are deepest."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher (1749-1832)

Friday 19 October 2012

Poor on the moor


"I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of a country, one has to go there poor."

Grace Moore, actress and singer (1898-1947)

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Simply be


"Nature never said to me: Do not be poor. Still less did she say: Be rich. Her cry to me was always: Be independent."

Nicolas de Chamfort, writer (1741-1794)

Tuesday 16 October 2012

Scotophobia


"The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night."

Astral America (1988)

Jean Baudrillard, sociologist and philosopher (1929-2007)

Baudrillard time


« On ne parle de clonage qu'en termes biologiques. Or il a déjà été précédé par un clonage mental : le système de l'école permet de fabriquer des êtres qui deviennent une copie conforme les uns des autres.  »
in “Le Monde de l'éducation” - Octobre 1999


« La gloire auprès du peuple, voilà à quoi il faut aspirer. Rien ne vaudra jamais le regard éperdu de la charcutière qui vous a vu à la télévision.  »


« Le plaisir de l'eau sur les lèvres est supérieur à celui de boire.  »


« Jadis il fallait craindre de mourir dans le déshonneur, ou dans le péché. Aujourd'hui, il faut craindre de mourir idiot.  »


« Pourquoi la débilité des débiles est-elle devenue un fait de culture, alors que le fait bien plus épouvantable de la bêtise ordinaire ne bouleverse personne ?  »


« Rien n'emplit mieux une main qu'un sein.  »


Cool Memories – 1980-1985

Monday 15 October 2012

1,200 to 1,400 degrees Celsius


"A clay pot sitting in the sun will always be a clay pot. It has to go through the white heat of the furnace to become porcelain."

Mildred Witte Stouven

Friday 12 October 2012

Rhetorical un-question


"What is the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on."

Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Saturday 6 October 2012

What we teachers secretly hope for


"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

Henry Adams, historian and teacher (1838-1918)

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Enough time

 
"I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die."

William Wiley, artist (b. 1937)
 

Tuesday 2 October 2012

GEORGES BRASSENS - La mauvaise reputation

Citation qui mérite qu'on s'y attarde


"La loi, dans un grand souci d'égalité, interdit aux riches comme aux pauvres de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain."

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

Monday 1 October 2012

Burning


"Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned."

Heinrich Heine, poet, journalist, and essayist (1797-1856) 

Vs


"Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over Windows versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs."

Jack Lynch, English professor, author (b. 1967)

Lichen

The blind woman next to me fidgeting in her seat visibly uneasy brushed my arm as if in need of help with her train ticket but she tricked ...