This is but a small collection of quotes I have run across over the years.
The story was given to me by a dear friend, who felt that its content
was quite fitting for my humble abode...
"There once was a man who would know Truth. And he traveled all
the land looking."
...
"At last, he found her. Truth was a wizened old woman with but a single
tooth left in her head. Her eyes were rheumy. Her hair greasy strands.
But when she called him...her voice was low and lyric and pure, and that
was how he knew he had found Truth."
...
"He stayed a year and a day by her side and learned all she had to teach.
And when his time was done, he said, 'My Lady Truth, I must go back to my
own home now. But I would do something for you in exchange.'"
...
"She told him, 'When you speak of me, tell your people that I am young
and beautiful.'"
...
"...So much for Truth."
-Jane Yolen
"The wounds caused by ignorance are far more crippling than those
gained by seeking truth..."
-Irene Radford
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
-Henri Bergson
"But it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged
from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has
been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it."
-Mark Twain
"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
-Flannery O'Connor
"...of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism'
is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time. If it sometimes
pains them to make a choice--if the choice turns out to look like a 'noble
sacrifice'--you can be sure that it is in no wise nobler than the discomfort
caused by greediness...the unpleasant necessity of having to decide between, both
of which you would like to do when you can't do both. The ordinary bloke
suffers that discomfort every day, every time he makes a choice between
spending a buck on beer or tucking it away for his kids, between getting up
when he's tired or spending the day in his warm bed and losing his job. No
matter which he does he always chooses what seems to hurt the least or pleasures
the most. The average chump spends his life harried by these small decisions.
But the utter scoundrel and the perfect saint merely make the same choices
on a larger scale. They still pick what pleases them."
"Age does not bring wisdom...but it does give perspective...and the saddest
perspective of all is to see far, far behind you, the temptations you've
passed up."
