Quote Of The Day

silvermouse · December 2024

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
--Albert Camus

silvermouse · January 2

Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life. ~Dean Koontz

peter4jc · January 4

"The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it." ~John Ruskin

OutdoorsSmoke_21191 · January 8

Olekingcole · January 9

No problems, just more work to do. Seth Feroce

OutdoorsSmoke_21191 · January 10

“The antidote to this abuse of formal Government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

ShawnOL · January 10

I thought it was an armed populace.

CharlieHeis · January 16

"Juuuuust a bit outside. He tried the corner and missed" - Bob Uecker as Harry Doyle in Major League

Guitarded · January 16

@CharlieHeis said:
"Juuuuust a bit outside. He tried the corner and missed" - Bob Uecker as Harry Doyle in Major League

“Ball four…ball eight…ball twelve and Vaughan has walked the bases full.”

silvermouse · January 20

: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
~Edward Abbey

ShawnOL · January 20

One could replace the word growth with progress and the sentiment would be the same.

peter4jc · January 20

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” -Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr , 1963

ShawnOL · January 21

Nobody listened.

silvermouse · January 21

Walking was not fast enough so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew.
Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can go only as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down. ~Margaret Atwood

Amos_Umwhat · January 22

"If you call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? The answer is four, calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg." -- Abraham Lincoln.

OutdoorsSmoke_21191 · January 24

Olekingcole · January 24

“The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it's time to go shopping for a saddle.” - Schlomo, from Lucky Number Slevin

silvermouse · January 25

Tact:

"The ability to step on a man's toes without messing up the shine on his shoes,"

--Harry Truman

silvermouse · January 28

“Where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise”
--Thomas Gray

silvermouse · January 29

trust in doubt.

"We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — 'how can you live and not know?'
"It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know."
~Richard P. Feynman

ShawnOL · January 30

"The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."

Mahatma Gandhi

silvermouse · February 12

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.
Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

Bertrand Russell

Yakster · February 19

The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He hasn't. He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He thinks he can tell what he regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't. He goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it contentedly and never suspect.

Concerning Tobacco
by Mark Twain, 1899

d_blades · February 19

You realize the guote comes from a man, who ordered his cigars by the barrel.

silvermouse · February 20

There is a particular kind of melancholy that settles in when you begin to see the world for what it truly is—when the illusion shatters, and the raw, unfiltered truth of existence reveals itself. It is not the sharp sting of personal loss or the sorrow of fleeting misfortunes, but something deeper, more unsettling. It is the ache of awareness, the quiet grief of understanding too much.
You peer behind the curtain and realize that life, in all its vastness, is not the grand, poetic epic you once imagined—it is a collection of fragile, transient moments, slipping through your fingers even as you try to hold them.
You start to grasp that the fairy tales you once clung to—about love, happiness, and fulfillment—were never meant to last. They were beautiful illusions, comforting myths woven to soften the sharper edges of reality.
Love, which once seemed like an eternal force, now reveals itself to be delicate, ephemeral. It flickers like a candle caught in the wind, vulnerable to time, to distance, to the quiet erosion of unspoken words and unmet expectations. It is not the unbreakable bond the stories promised—it is a fleeting connection, something to cherish while it lasts, but never something to truly possess.
And with this understanding, a quiet sorrow takes root—a sorrow born from the knowledge that nothing, not even the things we hold closest, can ever truly be ours.
Happiness, too, is unmasked. It is not a permanent state, not a reward for effort or virtue, but a passing visitor—appearing in flashes, slipping away the moment we try to capture it.
We chase it, convince ourselves that once we attain it, it will stay, that we will finally be complete. But happiness is fluid, unpredictable. It is the sun breaking through the clouds for a brief, golden moment before vanishing again. The harder we try to grasp it, the more elusive it becomes, and in its absence, we feel its weight even more profoundly.
And then comes the loneliness—the profound disconnection that arises when you see life with new eyes and realize that most people still walk through it unaware. You move through the world feeling untethered, watching others engage in conversations, routines, ambitions, all without questioning, without seeing the fragile impermanence of it all. It is not a loneliness of isolation, but a loneliness of knowing—of carrying a weight that cannot be shared, of longing for a simplicity that can never be regained.
Yet, within this sadness, there is also an unexpected beauty—a quiet reverence for the fleeting nature of all things. To see life clearly is to understand that it is not made up of grand, sweeping moments, but of countless small, delicate ones. The laughter of a friend, the warmth of sunlight on your skin, the brief yet profound feeling of being understood by another soul—these are the threads that weave together the fabric of our existence. They are fragile, impermanent, but perhaps that is what makes them so precious.
In accepting their transience, in embracing the ephemeral nature of everything we love, we find a different kind of peace—not the peace of certainty, but the peace of surrender, of understanding that beauty exists because it is fleeting.

And so, the sadness remains, but it softens into something else—something quieter, something almost sacred. A deep knowing that life was never meant to be grasped or controlled, only witnessed, only felt, only lived.

If everything is fleeting, if nothing can truly be held onto, then what does it mean to truly live?

Artist unknown

Amos_Umwhat · February 21

^^Possibly the best expression of existential angst I've seen^^

silvermouse · February 21

peter4jc · February 25

silvermouse · March 2

Happiness is a rose; joy is its scent.
--Richard Fariña

peter4jc · March 10

Quote Of The Day

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And so, the sadness remains, but it softens into something else—something quieter, something almost sacred. A deep knowing that life was never meant to be grasped or controlled, only witnessed, only felt, only lived.

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