Swords Against Boredom

Here is a collection of sayings I’ve collected in the course of my life, all of which make sense — or not. Some of them have something to do with Zen — or not.

• The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown and it’s plain sailing.
  John Lennon

  ---

• I don’t believe in destiny
  Or the guiding hand of fate
  I don’t believe in forever
  Or love as a mystical state
  I don’t believe in the stars or the planets
  Or angels watching from above
  But I believe there’s a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love
  And make it last…
  Neil Peart, Rush
  

  ---

• Well, I don’t really think that the end can be assessed as of itself as being the end because what does the end feel like? It’s like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say, if the universe is indeed infinite, then how - what does that mean? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what’s stopping it, and what’s behind what’s stopping it? So, what’s the end, you know, is my question to you.
  David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
  

  ---

• Do not think you will necessarily be aware of your own enlightenment.
  Dogen, 13th-century Soto Zen master

  ---

• Nothing in the cry
  of cicadas suggests they
  are about to die
  Basho
  

  ---

• Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what’s actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, “Hang the sense of it,” and keep yourself busy.
  Slartibartfast, in the film “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

  ---

• You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.
  John Lennon

  ---

• The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
  H.P. Lovecraft, in “The Call of Cthulhu”

  ---

• I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
  Ray Bradbury, science fiction writer

  ---

• Reality is like a face reflected in the blade of a knife; its properties depend on the angle from which we view it.
  Hsing Yun

  ---

• My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it.
  Giacamo di Casanova, Venetian adventurer
  

  ---

• The reverse side also has a reverse side.
  Japanese proverb

  ---

• In an infinite universe of infinite duration, all things are possible — even God.
  Mine, adapted from something I read — but I forget the source

  ---

• I reject your reality and substitute my own.
  Adam Savage, “Mythbusters.”

  ---

• No matter what happens, fly the plane.
  Anonymous flight instructor

  ---

• natsu-gusa ya
  tsuwamono-domo-ga
  yume no ato

  Only summer grasses,
  after the mighty warriors,
  after their dreams of glory
  Basho

  ---

• Art has to be fearless. That’s the only way it can make a difference.
  John Cowan, New Grass Revival & The John Cowan Band

  ---

• I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.
  Mark Twain

  ---

• If you’re not obsessing about something, you’re probably not into it enough.
  Chris Thile, Nickel Creek

  ---

• Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.
  Robert A. Heinlein

  ---

• Life’s too short to drink bad beer.
  Dan Silcott

  ---

• There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
  William Shakespeare

  ---

• Not all who wander are lost.
  J.R.R. Tolkien

  ---

• Man is the reasoning animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute.
  Mark Twain

  ---

• You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice;
  If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
  Neil Peart, Rush

  ---

• When you pass through, no one can pin you down, no one can call you back.
  Ying An

  ---

• The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.
  Carl Sagan

  ---

• I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest.
  Alexandre Dumas

  ---

• Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.
  Woody Allen

  ---

• Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
  Philip K. Dick

  ---

• How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
  Abraham Lincoln

  ---

• Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.
  John Lennon

  ---

• Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?
  Calvin and Hobbes

  ---

• We do, diddily-do, diddily-do,
  What we must, muddily must, muddily must,
  Until we bust, bodily bust bodily bust.
  Kurt Vonnegut

  ---

• To know what is right and to not do it is the worst cowardice.
  Confucius

  ---

• Look for Buddha outside your own mind, and Buddha becomes the devil.
  Dogen, 13th-century Soto Zen master

  ---

• Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  ---

• If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

  Anatole France, French author and critic

  ---

• I want to look at life
  in the available light.

  Neil Peart, Rush

  ---