Favourite Quotes

From my favourite author Douglas Adams...

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.

It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.

Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.

The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much, of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.

My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.


Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.

I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.

We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.


Albert Einstein

We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it (religion) should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.


Dogen Zenji

Not to study the Buddha way is to fall into the realm of shameless and erroneous ways. All preceding and succeeding Buddhas always practice the Buddha way.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.

Carrying the self forward to confirm the myriad dharmas is delusion. The myriad dharmas advancing and confirming the self is realization.

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?


Osho

If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing.

In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you.


Shunryu Suzuki

Real Practice has orientation or direction, but it has no purpose or gaining idea, so it can include everything that comes.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.