"America is the sublime and the abominable." (Jean-Pierre Melville)

"Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." (Mae West)

“Fashion, which elevates the bad to the level of the good, subsequently turns its back on bad and good alike.” (Eric Bently)

It's hard to put the coke spoon to your nose when you're doing the Downward-facing Dog.

Enlightenment is a moving target.

“Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” (Will Rogers)

"The city lifts its hand like a cripple, O my lord Shu-Sin,
It lies at thy feet like a lion-cub, O son of Shulgi.
O my god, the wine-maid has sweet wine to give,
Like her date-wine sweet is her vulva, sweet is her wine..."

(Sumerian love song, 3rd Millennium BCE)

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” (The Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical, Coptic-language, gnostic gospel consisting of 114 sayings from [they say] Jesus; later suppressed as heresy by early church fathers, only to be rediscovered in 1940s Upper Egypt)

"In the place where I am now, I look back over my life. I look back at the world I’ve left behind. What message do I want to leave? I want to make sure that you all understand that each and every one of you has a role to play. You may not know it, you may not find it, but your life matters, and you are here for a reason...

"And I just hope that reason will become apparent as you live through your life. I want you to know that, whether or not you find that role that you’re supposed to play, your life does matter, and that every single day you live, you make a difference in the world. And you get to choose the difference that you make." (Jane Goodall's final message to the world, spoken six months before her death)

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” (Michelangelo Buonarroti)

"Only when one knows where one is to rest can one have a fixed purpose. Only with a fixed purpose can one achieve calmness of mind. Only with calmness of mind can one attain serene repose. Only in serene repose can one carry on careful deliberation. Only through careful deliberation can one have achievement. Things have their roots and branches; affairs have their beginning and end. They that know what comes first and what comes last come themselves near the Way." (The Great Learning, authorship unknown but often attributed to Zengzi, a disciple of Confucius; perhaps as early as 200 BCE)

Only in Ohio do you get four seasons in one day.

"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." (Plato)

“Winston Churchill is always expecting rabbits to come out of an empty hat.” (Field Marshall Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell)

"But good writers have a reason for doing things the way they do them, and if you tinker with their work, taking it upon yourself to neutralize a slightly eccentric usage or zap a comma or sharpen the emphasis of something that the writer was deliberately keeping obscure, you are not helping. In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process. They weigh queries, and they accept or reject them for good reasons. They are not defensive. The whole point of having things read before publication is to test their effect on a general reader. You want to make sure when you go out there that the tag on the back of your collar isn't poking up—unless, of course, you are deliberately wearing your clothes inside out." (Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen)

"Little wit in the head makes much work for the feet." (Anonymous)

"Death is the last and best reward for a life well lived." (Bob Weir)

"When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am the Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. When they are again become sober they have drawn from the sea all that they brought with them, all that they can bring with them to dry land. I have not a single friend, I must live alone. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to other artists; I associate with Him without fear; I have always recognized and understood Him and have no fear for my music—it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must be freed by it from all the miseries which the others drag about with themselves." (Ludwig van Beethoven)

“All business proceeds on beliefs, on judgements of probabilities, and not on certainties.” (Charles William Eliot)

Philophile, n. Lover of ‘philes.’