Birthday Wisdom 2K5

I turn 29 at midday Saturday April 2, New Zealand time.
Last year I asked everyone to put a favourite quote in the comments, any kind of quote. A bunch of people did and it was really quite staggeringly nice. Go and look.
So, I’m asking for the same thing this year. Your birthday gift to me: a cool quote in the comments to this post. It can be from a song, or a philosopher, or a set of VCR instructions. I don’t care. Just anything that you want to put there.
This will, again, make me a happy moose.
Happy birthday, me!

38 thoughts on “Birthday Wisdom 2K5”

  2. I’ll give you some more Tori to add to what I gave you last year:
    “She runs like fire does
    just picking up daisies
    comes in for a landing
    a pure flash of lightning”
    I’m basing my new Changeling on these lines.

  3. “In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.”
    Aristotle

  4. “…you should do what you beleive is right as if you don’t you may end up having to hide what you really feel.”
    – Year 11 Student’s Essay
    Gil: Look, I’m serious. Whoever did this, you’re in big trouble.
    Blah: You said “urine,” blah.
    – Greg the Bunny

  5. “Proverbs for Paranoids #3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t need to worry about the answers.”
    – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow.
    Props for the Greg The Bunny quote, Matt. 🙂
    “Crayons taste like purple.” – Turty the Turtle, Greg The Bunny

  7. Roleplaying quote that Seraph made in our Toon/Sorcerer game:
    “When the Bananas start screaming, I’m going to go around the back.”

  8. “Vanity is a weakness indeed, but pride; where there is true superiority of mind, pride will always be under good regulation.”
    ~Mr Darcy, Pride & Prejudice
    Happy Birthday. Take care of yourself. Be proud.
    ~mO x

  9. “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
    ~Jim Elliot (Martyred missionary)
    “Cannabalisms wrong…” The Lads
    “And if you give in, don’t eat the skin, it’s fattening” Also from the Cannabalism song by The Lads.
    “When the crazy wiard turns his back, we leave. Fast!” Matt, written not to another player in a roleplaying game I don’t remember, but I still have the not somewhere.
    Happy birthday Mr M.

  10. Happy birthday Morgue!
    “Bhikkhus, if beings knew, as I know, the result of giving and sharing, they would not eat without having given, nor would they allow the stain of meanness to obsess them and take root in their minds. Even if it were their last morsel, their last mouthful, they would not eat without having shared it, if there were someone to share it with. But, bhikkhus, as beings do not know, as I know, the result of giving and sharing, they eat without having given, and the stain of meanness obsesses them and takes root in their minds.” Buddha, Itivuttaka 26
    “So Pooh rose and sat down and said ‘Thank you,’ which is the proper thing to say when you have been made a Knight, and he went into a dream again, in which he and Sir Pump and Sir Brazil and Factors lived together with a horse, and were faithful knights (all except Factors, who looked after the horse) to Good King Christopher Robin… and every now and then he shook his head, and said to himself, ‘I’m not getting it right.’ Then he began to think of all the things Christopher Robin would want to tell him when he came back from wherever he was going to, and how muddling it would be for a Bear of Very Little Brain to try and get them right in his mind. ‘So, perhaps,’ he said sadly to himself, ‘Christopher Robin won’t tell me any more,’ and he wondered if being a Faithful Knight meant that you just went on being faithful without being told things.”

  12. And how could I go past:
    ‘I have always had the greatest respect for other people’s crackpot beliefs’ – Sam the Eagle
    😉
    h

  13. I can resist everything but temptation. –Oscar Wilde
    Morgue, wir freuen uns auf Deutschland!

  15. “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand” – Homer Simpson
    Happy Birthday

  16. ” I feel just like Santa Clause except thinner and younger and female and, well, Jewish.”
    – Willow, handing out gifts.
    Happy Birthday, big bruvver!

  17. “This is the movie of the screenplay of the book about a girl who meets a junkie.
    The messenger gets shot down just for carrying the message to a flunkie.
    We can’t be certain who the villans are ‘cuz everyone’s so pretty
    But the afterparty’s sure to be a wing-ding as it moves into your city.”
    — Sheryl Crow, There Goes The Neighborhood
    Happy Birthday Morgue!

  18. I may have got the first two wrong, they’re off the top of my head:
    “Bread first, then art” – Bertolt Brecht
    “We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.” – WH Auden
    “You just go on nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout ‘Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep’.” – Frank O’Hara

  19. Um the only one I can think of is
    “The only thing I can offer the world is my own confusion”
    I can’t remember exactly who said it, I think it was Kedorak, but I’m not sure.
    Anyways Happy Birthday mate!! I hope to see you in may(ish) when I call over next!

  20. remember don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education:
    “I live a thousand times, and it’s always like the very first time”- Transplants
    “So, yeah, my people figured that maybe there’s something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because it’s always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn’t need to. The land was the church. The land was the religion. The land was older and wiser than the people who walked on it. ”
    I have learned to use the word ‘impossible’ with the greatest caution.
    — Wernher von Braun
    Ich will
    Ich will dass ihr mich versteht
    Könnt ihr mich hören?
    Könnt ihr mich sehen?
    Könnt ihr mich fühlen?
    Ich versteh euch nicht
    “We may lack a land to live in; we cannot lack one to die in.”
    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
    “Suetonius, in holding up a mirror to those Caesars of diverting legend, reflects not only them but ourselves: half-tempted creatures, whose great moral task it is to hold in balance the angel and the monster within – for we are both, and to ignore this duality is to invite disaster” – Gore Vidal “Robert Graves and the Twelve Caesars”
    “These opening and closing scenes retain a haunting presence in the mind; they are set pieces but they have the life-marking power of certain dreams. They are like the pillars of the gate of horn, through which wise dreams of true art can still be said to pass.” – Seamus Heaney – XII
    “I have no praise for such conduct; but in my opinion, at least, the splendid achievements of Alexander are the clearest possible proof that neither strength of body, nor noble blood, nor success in war even greater than Alexander’s own – not even the realization of his dream of circumnavigating Libya and Asia and adding them both to his empire, together with Europe too – that none of these things, I say, can make a man happy, unless he can win the one more victory in addition to those the world thinks so great – the victory over himself.” Arrian, Anabasis IV.8
    “Kill me and in the end you know I’ll live again”- Crowbar
    Thanatopsis- Bryant
    So live, that when thy summons comes to join
    The innumerable caravan, that moves
    To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take
    His chamber in the silent halls of death,
    Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
    Scourged to his dungeon, but sustain’d and sooth’d
    By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
    Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
    About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. – William Cullen Bryant
    “What I have in my heart I’ll take to my grave” – Hatebreed
    “A man’s foot steps lead him to all sorts of places” Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment
    The foolish man thinks he will live forever,
    If he keeps away from fighting;
    But old age won’t grant him a truce
    Even if the spears do. – Havamal Sayings of the high one
    The age old don’t get caught up in the things of possession
    “Moderate at council a man should be, Not brutal and overbearing; among the bold the bully will find ones as bold as he”- The Alfather
    And so we go, on with our lives
    We know the truth, but prefer for lies
    Lies are simple, simple is bliss
    Why go against tradition when we can
    Admit defeat, live in decline
    Be the victim of our own design
    The status quo, built on suspect
    Why would anyone stick out their neck
    Fellow members, club we’ve got ours
    I’d like to introduce you to our host
    He’s got his, and I’ve got mine
    We’ve got Decline- nofx
    “Let me take you to the herding ground, where all good men are trampled down. Just to settle a bet that could not be won, between a prideful father and his son”-Bad Religion
    “All good children go to heaven”- Bad Religion
    The dark angels will promise a bright tomorrow but ask for blood today.

  21. A final quote, this is one from the gravestone of a Roman soldier, i found it not long ago and it really meant something to me for some reason:
    “Titus Flaminius, son of Titus, of the Pollia tribe, from Faventia, 45 years old, with twenty-two years’ service, soldier of Legion XIV Gemina. I served as a soldier and now here I am. Read this and be more or less lucky in your life. The gods keep you from the wine-grape and water when you enter Tartarus. Live decently while your star grants you time for life.” – RIB 292 Viroconium Cornoviorum Britain

  22. eh, as good an excuse as any to post one of my unpublished poems.
    THE ONLY PERSONALITY TEST YOU WILL EVER NEED
    comes with the New World 200% Guarantee.
    Simply decide whether the following
    are True or False.
    There is a strict time limit:
    you must take as long as you require
    so pace yourself carefully.
    Choose your own items
    but don’t be afraid to ask for advice.
    Mark yourself; add up your score.
    Convert to a percentage.
    Your score:
    0%: you haven’t really taken the test,
    don’t worry, it doesn’t count.
    100%: congratulations!
    you have a perfect, lovable personality.
    But if you get 200%
    you may be ready to enter a New World.
    –Robert Sigley (August 2001)

  23. “Long live the new flesh!”
    David Cronenberg
    “Where you came from is gone, where you thought you were going to from never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”
    Flannery O’Connor
    “Oh yeah, that story about how I blew up my own house because it was infested with midgets.”
    – Reggie
    Happy birthday you young bastard. 🙂

  24. Happy Birthday, o wondrous back rub giver!
    “It’s better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness.”
    Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

  25. OoooooOOooooOoooooooooOOoooo! Happy Birthday! OooooOOoooOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooOoooooOoooooooooOOooooooooooooOooooooooOooooooOooooooooooOOO!

  26. Something that proves itself to be true for me, time and again, is:
    “assumption is the mother of all f*&k-ups”.
    Happy Birthday!
    Andrew

  27. “There is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness. The latter is, in my opinion, the giving of one’s time and energy in the alleviation of pain and suffering.
    “It entails going out, finding and helping those who are suffering and in danger and not merely in leading an exemplary life, in a purely passive way of doing no wrong.”
    Nicholas Winton, 1939.

  28. Hey Morgue, meant to be working now but fvck it!
    Happy birthday and here’s three from me for ya!
    ~
    There is no future, there is no past (except in our memories). All of that stuff is either gone forever or not here yet. So what we can only really do is concentrate on living this moment well, and only this moment. If you’re in a place that makes you scared or unhappy, get out of there and move towards a place, or person, or a frame of mind that you believe will make you feel better about yourself and this moment. You don’t have to think about God or the future or any of that big scary stuff– Only think this and try to resolve the question– What/where/who would make me happier than I am right now? When you know the answer, move towards it, knowing that you are out of the bad and moving towards the good. That in itself should make you feel better.
    JONATHAN CARROLL
    ~
    Humor is necessary. It keeps us going. It is the cushion between life and death.
    SAGE FRANCIS
    ~
    I suppose I could be denigrated as operating in the realm of escapist fantasy, but escapist from what? It’s not like these things bring “happiness.” But the imagination serves as an essential piece in the puzzle of the sacred, and that’s part of what holds my attention to these so–called “concepts.”
    TREY SPRUANCE (Mr Bungle)
    ~

  29. “I don’t pretend to know what you want
    But I offer love.”
    – Distant Sun, Crowded House.
    Happy birthday!

  30. In the interest of lowereing the tone, I belatedly give you…
    ‘Hey cutie,
    That’s a beautie,
    Of a booty,
    It’s my duyt,
    To do you,
    Underneath my duvet!’
    From the track, “68 and I Owe You One,” on DJ NU-MARK’s “Hands On”
    (Sequence Records) which has the MC from All Time High performing a rap about oral sex (amongst other things: for instance he rhymes ‘God Damn…’ with ‘purchase a pram’ in the first couple of lines). Hilarious – shout out to Scottish Mike for letting me listen to this!

  31. “oah yum, buskuts”, Tama, Shortland Street.
    and
    “There’s no place like home”, Gulliver.

  32. ‘We say, “Love your brother.” We don’t say it really, but… ‘
    ‘We don’t literally say it.’
    ‘No, we don’t say it.’
    ‘We don’t really, actually mean it.’
    ‘No, we don’t believe it either, but…’
    ‘But we’re not racists.’
    ‘But that message should be clear.’
    – This is Spinal Tap

  33. ….and we won’t stay the same. What stays the same deceives the simple and….

  34. #20th birthday: “All 4 surviving Dr Whos and their 24 Assistants have been invited” From an item on the 20th Birthday of the Time Lord and a BBC celebration at Longleat.
    #25th Birthday “The greatest show in the galaxy featuring a new villain called the Chief Clown, the Happiness Patrol” and a return to “the year 1963 in London”
    #40th Birthday “Who’s a Birthday Boy…Daleks were dead scary because unlike nearly every other monster you could think of, they lacked any approximation to human hands…coaxing one Dr Who out of retirement for a cover photograph was hard enough but securing 4 for a multi-cover special was something else…” The Radio Times 319 November 2003:
    Happy Happy Joy Joy Morgue

  35. “Everyone we know contributes to who we are”
    -Me, my wedding speech.
    “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”
    -Me again.
    Liz- “How’s the toast coming along?”
    Me- “Good, I’m just putting it out.”
    “All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain”
    -Roy Batty, Bladerunner
    “My mouth went through the ceiling and my body fell through the floor. I couldn’t find the key ’cause there was no way I could see, and someone had moved the door.”
    -Who was in my room last night?, Butthole Surfers.
    “Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true. Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil. Jesus was an architect, previous to his career as a prophet. All Of a sudden I found myself in love with the world, so there was only one thing I could do. Was ding-a-ding-dang, my dang-a-long-ling-long”
    “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified”
    -Jesus built my hotrod, Ministry
    “I’m a great lyricist,
    I can write,
    words like this.”
    “Lyrics this good don’t write themselves,
    thats why I wrote them myself.”
    -Beers, Deja Voodoo.
    Happy Birthday Mr M

  36. In the spirit of the moment,
    “We know
    That we have power over ourselves to do
    And suffer – what, we know not till we try.”
    Many happy returns brother.

  37. Had a look through my desk calendar, and found:
    “No needle is sharp at both ends.” – Ancient Chinese proverb.
    Something in that for all of us, I think. Happy belated birthday wishes etc, mate.

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