Mr.Piffka's Quotes

"Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."
Mark Twain

I love that quote, Dyslexia, though curiously, the violet's fragrance is so brief as to be nearly ephemeral. My ma said it was because the violet was so pure and our senses are immediately overwhelmed by its raw beauty.




Here's Mr. P's quote for December 26th. I love this one - Go Margaret!

"Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible." - Margaret Mead (1901-1978)


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Margaret Mead? Physically, she was short and pudgy, walked with a light, firm step, wore a distinctive cape and carried a tall, forked walking stick.

"The talk of small boys among themselves consists almost entirely of boasting." - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"Other world! There is no other world! Here or nowhere is the whole fact." - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Natural Religion

"Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble the football." - John Heisman

I could not understand the last one....

LOL -- That's American football for you, G... almost without understanding!

Heisman is who the extremely famous and yearned-for Heisman Trophy was named for. He's saying here (I think) that any guy who fumbles a football (errrr, that means almost catches but doesn't and drops it, so the pass doesn't count) should have died young instead of bothering to grow up and make such an "awful" mistake. It's tongue-in-cheek, at least from Mr.P's pov.

Men and their sport....tsk tsk

"All governments are run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed." - I. F. Stone (1907-1989)

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and from Piffka, just for fun, Isidor Feinstein's interview with himself on his 70th birthday...
I.F. Stone breaks the Socrates Story!

Double Dip Quote for New Year's Eve
"My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns. We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand." - James Watt, U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, Washington Post 5/24/1981

"Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful." - Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), Life and Letters

Now there is an inscription, composed of the juxtaposed.

Here's to you and family on New Year's, piffy.

Piffka

Hey, these are good. Very good, too, Dyslexia! <clap! clap!>
Mr Piffka is a man of my own heart!

Thanks, MsOlga! I'll pass your kind words back to Mr.P. I hope that Dys comes back with some more quotes soon.

"As God's my judge, I do cry holy, holy,
Upon the name of love however brief,
For want of whose ill-trimmed, aspiring wick
More days than one I have gone forward slowly
In utter dark, scuffling the drifted leaf,
Tapping the road before me with a stick."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), When did I ever deny, though this was fleeting

"All human evil comes from man's inability to sit still in a room." - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Now there's a good one.

Yeah, I agree!

I seem to remember hearing interesting things re Blaise Pascal, but not what they were.

Heehee, well, Pascal was an odd duck! He was a mathematician and physicist who argued with Descartes about whether or not there was such a thing as a "vacuum." (Descartes thought not!) He published his first mathematical paper at 16, died young... at 39. He was apparently a real genius, though twisted by his religion. He was educated at home under odd circumstances... not allowed to read mathematics by his father until he started working out problems on his own, then he was allowed to read Euclid!

He was a famous Catholic whose work, Pensées, is still considered an argument for faith. He disliked the Jesuits and championed the Jansenists (an odd group who believed in the evil of humanity). He was said to have worn, at some point in his life, a cincture, ie. a rope belt, embedded with nails so that he could "punish" himself when he had wicked thoughts. He was known for believing that wagering was a human condition and developed Pascal's Wager* for determining whether or not to believe in God. Take your pick, Osso, the guy was loonie and raised by loonies!

Sounds like one of the a2k threads, all by one guy.