Tom's Life Bits

Some quotes I like.

‘It’s just like man’s vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because he is dumb to his dull perceptions.’ —MARK TWAIN

If I were to add a custom command phrase:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said…“
Alexa: ”…let there be light”
*Blinds go up

• Collected Author Quotes

Making Mistakes Long paragraph about “If You’re Not Making Mistakes, then You’re Not Doing Anything.” Elon Musk had a more recent quote that if you're not having failures then you are not pushing the innovation envelope enough. This was in reference to SpaceX blowing up rockets in the early days.

“Even the biggest failure beats the hell out of never trying”

“Be the change you wish to see in the world” - Mahatma Gandhi

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Maya Angelou

“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.” — Dr. Seuss

Mark Twain “Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.” — Mark Twain

“Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” — Albert Camus

Gathering Customer Requirements - too long for a quote so listed separately.

“To travel well is better than to arrive first.” - seen on a tombstone in the IFC Movie “The Florentine”

“The Road is the Destination”

“I mean I don't know how to not have fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play it,” he said in his Carnegie Mellon lecture. “You just have to decide if you're a Tigger or an Eeyore. I think I'm clear where I stand on the great Tigger/Eeyore debate. Never lose the childlike wonder. It's just too important. It's what drives us.”
-Randy Pausch

A fool with a plan is better than a genius with no plan at all.
- T Boone Pickins on Good Morning America

Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Great Way has no gate.
Clear water has no taste.
The tongue has no bone.
In complete stillness a stone girl is dancing.
- Seung Sahn

The clock of life is wound just once,
and no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop;
at late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own;
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in “tomorrow”,
for the clock may then be still.
- unknown

The Clock of Life by Robert H Smith

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just where the hands will stop,
At late or early hour.

To lose one's wealth is sad indeed,
To lose one's health is more.
To lose one's soul is such a loss
As no man can restore.

The present only is our own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in 'tomorrow'
For the clock may then be still.

Art is the path
of the creator
to his work
-Ralph Waldo emerson

All I know about the Well is the frightening depth. It is deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darknesses have been boiled down to their ultimate density. -Haruki Murakami

Be humble, for you are made of dung. Be noble, for you are made of stars.
-Serbian proverb

When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.
-Brian Aldiss

When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.“
- Hugh White

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
- Donald Trump

“Do you want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.”
- Tom G and others

“Life is Good”!
- Tom G and others

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away

Life Is A Painting, Cover The Entire Canvas

I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.
- Fran Lebowitz

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.
- Henry Van Dyke

“all things excellent are both difficult and rare.”
- philosopher Baruch Spinoza -

May love and laughter and adventure and joy be under your rainbow the rest of your lives. - nice wedding toast

“Congress is the only whorehouse in the country that doesn't make money”?
- Mark Twain

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained

Most people in life lose joy because they stop learning. They're not interested anymore in learning something brand new. - Kathy Lee Gifford on NBC Today Show

Valentines poems by Tom G

What you don't get as a child you spend the rest of your life looking for. - Kathy Lee in the context of the death of Michael Jackson

Steal. The government hates competition. Seen on artwork at Artspace on Aug 7, 2009.

I found this on Investor Village today:
There was an old codger named Plunkit
Who took his old car in to junk it
He just came to see us
In his shiney new Prius
Now Plunkit is Green, who'da thunk it !!

Joseph Campbell, “Follow your bliss”

Joseph Campbell, “Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself.”
“The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.”

The Adventure you're ready for now is the one you go through life with.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Margaret Thatcher

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of the bufflalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset - Chief Crowfoot, his last words. 1890

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
- Charles Kuralt

Every time a child is born into this world it's Nature's attempt to make a perfect human being. - Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Nature, time and patience are the three great physicians. - fortune cookie from Lake Pine Chinese takeout April 2010

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
-George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
- Ronald Reagan

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

1. Arthur Schopenhauer
   

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, “I used everything you gave me.” - Erma Bombeck

Apache Blessing from Anne Nicholas via Facebook

Be not the slave of your own past—Plunge into the sublime seas, Dive Deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self respect, with new power, with an advanced experience, that shall explain and overlook the old.

Lessons from Margaret Juntwait:

• “Be a friend worth dying for”
• “Make the ordinary extraordinary”
• “Look for the beauty in everything and everyone”
• “Don't waste time being perfect.”

Chinese Fortune Cookie
As one grows to understand life less and less, one learns to live it more and more.

“AWOL on the Appalachian Trail” by David Miller -
““it is the task, not the employer, that is served” and that “the doing matters more than the attainment or reward.

From the YouTube channel “Ambition Strikes”
There are people who are less qualified than you,
doing the things you want to do,
simply because they decided to believe in themselves.

From the YouTube channel “vccground”
If you want something you never had
You will have to do something you've never done
No one is naturally talented, they worked hard for it.

In the summer, the ants worked and saved, while the grasshoppers played. The ants warned that come winter, there would be no food. The grasshoppers laughed at their labors and sacrifices.

As winter approached and food disappeared, the grasshoppers pleaded.

The ants said that you must reap what you sow. But then, on the first Tuesday in November, the grasshoppers were given the chance to take the ants’ food.