Fab quote I just came upon

"Fairy Tales do not tell children the dragons exist. The children already know the dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
-C.K. Chesterton

Very cool. I like it.

If today is to be THE DAY, so be it.
If you seek to do battle with me this day
you will receive the best that I am capable of giving.
It may not be enough, but it will be everything
that I have to give and it will be impressive
for I have constantly prepared myself for this day.
I have trained, drilled and rehearsed my actions
so that I might have the best chance of defeating you.
I have kept myself in peak physical condition,
schooled myself in the martial skills and have
become proficient in the application of combat tactics.
You may defeat me, but you will pay a severe price
and will be lucky to escape with your life.
You may kill me, but I am willing to die if necessary.
I do not fear Death, for I have been close enough to it
on enough occasions that it no longer concerns me.
But I do fear the loss of my Honor
and would rather die fighting than to have it said
that I was without Courage.
So I WILL FIGHT YOU,
no matter how insurmountable it may seem, and
to death if need be, in order that it may never be said of me
that I was not a Warrior.

One Warrior's Creed

By Steven R. Watt

2WheelsGood wrote:

If today is to be THE DAY, so be it.
If you seek to do battle with me this day
you will receive the best that I am capable of giving.
It may not be enough, but it will be everything
that I have to give and it will be impressive
for I have constantly prepared myself for this day.
I have trained, drilled and rehearsed my actions
so that I might have the best chance of defeating you.
I have kept myself in peak physical condition,
schooled myself in the martial skills and have
become proficient in the application of combat tactics.
You may defeat me, but you will pay a severe price
and will be lucky to escape with your life.
You may kill me, but I am willing to die if necessary.
I do not fear Death, for I have been close enough to it
on enough occasions that it no longer concerns me.
But I do fear the loss of my Honor
and would rather die fighting than to have it said
that I was without Courage.
So I WILL FIGHT YOU,
no matter how insurmountable it may seem, and
to death if need be, in order that it may never be said of me
that I was not a Warrior.

One Warrior's Creed

By Steven R. Watt

Hmmmm - been watching Ross Kemp in Afghanistan?

G.

Lori wrote:

Hmmmm - been watching Ross Kemp in Afghanistan?

G.

It's not on terrestrial is it?

Remember I'm not ready for the big switch off.

"There's also one sort of fantasy fan that gets looked down upon for some inexplicable reason by many of the other camps (I mean, really; just what grounds has a person who only watches golf on television have for deriding someone who actually plays golf?).
They are called - among worse things I'm afraid - gamers.

Gamers are among the most intelligent and creative people in the world. They use their imaginations more robustly and more often than almost all other adults. Wherefore they tend to have strong minds, and with that comes stong opinions."

Ed Greenwood

There is a kind of love called maintenance
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it

Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;

Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists

And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds

The permanently rickety elaborate
Structures of living, which is Atlas.

And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”

Ingrid Bergman

Prisoner: I get it, good cop, bad cop, eh?
Vimes: If you like, but we’re a bit short-staffed today, so if I give you a cigarette, would you mind kicking yourself in the teeth?

Night Watch - Terry Pratchett

One for Craig:

Although an Englishman, it was in Scotland I found the three best things in my life: my wife, my constituency
and my Regiment.

Lt Col WS Churchill

"If WW1 was a bar fight:


Germany, Austria and Italy are standing together in the middle of a pub when Serbia bumps into Austria and spills Austria’s pint.

Austria demands Serbia buy it a complete new suit because there are splashes on its trouser leg.

Germany expresses its support for Austria’s point of view.

Britain recommends that everyone calm down a bit.

Serbia points out that it can’t afford a whole suit, but offers to pay for the cleaning of Austria’s trousers.

Russia and Serbia look at Austria.

Austria asks Serbia who it’s looking at.

Russia suggests that Austria should leave its little brother alone.

Austria inquires as to whose army will assist Russia in compelling it to do so.

Germany appeals to Britain that France has been looking at it, and that this is sufficiently out of order that Britain should not intervene.

Britain replies that France can look at who it wants to, that Britain is looking at Germany too, and what is Germany going to do about it?

Germany tells Russia to stop looking at Austria, or Germany will render Russia incapable of such action.

Britain and France ask Germany whether it’s looking at Belgium.

Turkey and Germany go off into a corner and whisper. When they come back, Turkey makes a show of not looking at anyone.

Germany rolls up its sleeves, looks at France, and punches Belgium.

France and Britain punch Germany. Austria punches Russia. Germany punches Britain and France with one hand and Russia with the other.

Russia throws a punch at Germany, but misses and nearly falls over. Japan calls over from the other side of the room that it’s on Britain’s side, but stays there. Italy surprises everyone by punching Austria.

Australia punches Turkey, and gets punched back. There are no hard feelings because Britain made Australia do it.

France gets thrown through a plate glass window, but gets back up and carries on fighting. Russia gets thrown through another one, gets knocked out, suffers brain damage, and wakes up with a complete personality change.

Italy throws a punch at Austria and misses, but Austria falls over anyway. Italy raises both fists in the air and runs round the room chanting.

America waits till Germany is about to fall over from sustained punching from Britain and France, then walks over and smashes it with a barstool, then pretends it won the fight all by itself.

By now all the chairs are broken and the big mirror over the bar is shattered. Britain, France and America agree that Germany threw the first punch, so the whole thing is Germany’s fault . While Germany is still unconscious, they go through its pockets, steal its wallet, and buy drinks for all their friends."

What you are now is the result of what you were. What you will be tomorrow will be the result of what you are now. The consequences of an evil mind will follow you like the cart follows the ox that pulls it. The consequences of a purified mind will follow you like your own shadow. No one can do more for you than your own purified mind - no parent, not relative, no friend, no one. A well disciplined mind brings happiness. - The Dhammapada (ancient Bhuddist text)

Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
Garrison Keillor

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

“You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories.”
― Garrison Keillor

“Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.”
― Garrison Keillor, The Book of Guys: Stories

I was brought up imagining that cream rises to the top, merit wins out, the race is to the swift and riches to men of understanding, but it ain't necessarily so. The swift stand a better chance if they are also beautiful.
GARRISON KEILLOR, "Not Smart? Not a Problem," A Prairie Home Companion, Jun. 22, 2010

And on the subject of George W Bush and Republicans:
“The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life.”
― Garrison Keillor

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.
GARRISON KEILLOR, "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore," In These Times

"Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself — a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred." - Frank Herbert - Children of Dune

"The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to illicit it, for the greatness is already there"

John Buchan

Time, they say, must the best of us capture,
And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,
For even the youngest of hearts grows old.
But in you, I think, the boy is not over;
So take this medley of ways and wars
As the gift of a friend and a fellow-lover
Of the fairest country under the stars.

John Buchan (again)

A Happy Childhood
A Happy Childhood
By William Matthews 1942–1997 William Matthews
Babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles.
Dr. Johnson

No one keeps a secret so well as a child
Victor Hugo


........
It turns out you are the story of your childhood
and you’re under constant revision,
like a lonely folktale whose invisible folks


are all the selves you’ve been, lifelong,
shadows in fog, grey glimmers at dusk.
And each of these selves had a childhood


it traded for love and grudged to give away,
now lost irretrievably, in storage
like a set of dishes from which no food,


no Cream of Wheat, no rabbit in mustard
sauce, nor even a single raspberry,
can be eaten until the afterlife,


which is only childhood in its last
disguise, all radiance or all humiliation,
and so it is forfeit a final time.


In fact it was awful, you think, or why
should the piecework of grief be endless?
Only because death is, and likewise loss,


which is not awful, but only breathtaking.
There’s no truth about your childhood,
though there’s a story, yours to tend,


like a fire or garden. Make it a good one,
since you’ll have to live it out, and all
its revisions, so long as you all shall live,


for they shall be gathered to your deathbed,
and they’ll have known to what you and they
would come, and this one time they’ll weep for you.



The map in the shopping center has an X
signed “you are here.” A dream is like that.
In a dream you are never eighty, though


you may risk death by other means:
you’re on a ledge and memory calls you
to jump, but a deft cop talks you in


to a small, bright room, and snickers.
And in a dream, you’re everyone somewhat,
but not wholly. I think I know how that


works: for twenty-one years I had a father
and then I became a father, replacing him
but not really. Soon my sons will be fathers.


Surely, that’s what middle-aged means,
being father and son to sons and father.
That a male has only one mother is another


story, told wherever men weep wholly.
Though nobody’s replaced.


Source: Selected Poems and Translations 1969-1991 (1992)

The poem ends...


Who knows if he’s happy or not?
A child is all the tools a child has,
growing up, who makes what he can.

"Several years ago I was asked to speak to a group of parents in Vermont. The title of the presentation was "Supporting Children with Special Needs." Five minutes into my talk, a parent stood up and interrupted me. She insisted that I stop referring to her daughter as someone with "special needs" (I had been using the term a lot).

"My daughter does not have special needs" she said. "My daughter has the same needs as anyone else. She has a need to live at home with her family. She has the need for a good education, friends, fun and a supportive family. Sometimes you professionals — in your efforts to provide special services to people — forget the ordinary, everyday things that people need.”

She must have known that I was embarrassed. I'm sure I turned eighty shades of red as I muttered through the rest of my presentation. After it was over, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, "You'll be fine." As awkward as I felt about the evening, I felt grateful too. I learned one of the most important lessons I have ever learned as a professional: sometimes, in our efforts to provide "special" services to people, we often forget the ordinary things people need everyday: friends, family, interesting and fun things to do, safety and security, and a chance to make a contribution to the larger community (in short, a chance to belong)."
David Pitonyak

Each day is an opportunity to travel back into tomorrow's past and change it. ~Robert Brault

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
--- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Jaxxal wrote:

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
--- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

Very deep . . .

G.

First heard that just before going rock climbing.


Top quote that man

Some marched, some sailed, some flew to join the war,
And not a few were brought home on their shields.
My heart is with those voiceless ones. They were
The harvest of the broken-hearted fields,
And I drew fortune from their bitter lack
Of any luck. Silent, my father stands
Before me now, as if he had come back,
While this lament, whose beauty never ends,
Not even with its final grandeur, casts
Its nets of melody to hold me still
Beneath his empty eyes. How long it lasts,
That spell, though it is just a little while.
Then he is gone again. The world returns:
Babylon, where the Tower of Babel burns.


-- Standpoint, December 2010

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." C.S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children.