Entry 160

My diary is a mirror telling the story of a dreamer who, a long long time ago went through life the way one reads a book.

Anais Nin

The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.

Anais Nin

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

Anais Nin

To write is to descend, to excavate, to go underground.

Anais Nin

Dreams have helped me to live.

Anais Nin

We do not talk -- we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.

Henry Miller

Entry 159

Fiction was invented the day Jonas arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

There is no eel so small but it hopes to become a whale.

German proverb

LEVIATHAN, n. An enormous aquatic animal mentioned by Job. Some suppose it to have been the whale, but that distinguished ichthyologer, Dr. Jordan, of Stanford University, maintains with considerable heat that it was a species of gigantic Tadpole (Thaddeus Polandensis) or Polliwig---Maria pseudo---hirsuta. For an exhaustive description and history of the Tadpole consult the famous monograph of Jane Potter, Thaddeus of Warsaw.

Ambrose Bierce

Entry 158

So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet in his kind Is bit by him that comes behind.

Jonathan Swift

Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a congressman can.

Mark Twain

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.

Lord Alfred Tennyson

Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk.

Jack Handy

Entry 157

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

C.S. Lewis

I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.

Oscar Wilde

The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

Andrew Carnegie

It may be the cock that crows, but it is the hen that lays the eggs.

Margaret Thatcher

Entry 156

I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are.

Groucho Marx

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
A. Whitney Brown

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made of meat?
Author Unknown

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.
George Bernard Shaw

A vegetarian is a person who won't eat anything that can have children.
David Brenner

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
Paul McCartney

Entry 155

It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true.

Henry Kissinger

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George Orwell

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Albert Einstein

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

Alexander Pope

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

Benjamin Disraeli

A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang.

Benjamin Franklin

Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.

Bernard M. Baruch

In this war – as in others – I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.

Butler Shaffer

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

General Douglas MacArthur

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

George Orwell


We have met the enemy and he is us.

Walt Kelly

Entry 154

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein

All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.

Albert Einstein

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Frank Zappa

It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.

Chinese proverb

Entry 153

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.

French proverb

The leaves of memory seemed to make

A mournful rustling in the dark.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Though a tree grows so high, the falling leaves return to the root.

Malay proverb

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come.

Chinese proverb

A tree never hits an automobile except in self-defense.

Author unknown

Entry 152

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.
George W. Bush


The oil can is mightier than the sword.
Everett Dirksen

Entry 151

Men should be like coffee: hot, sweet and strong.
Dutch proverb


Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.
Turkish proverb


Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?
Stephen Wright

Bring me a bowl of coffee before I turn into a goat.
J.S. Bach

Entry 150

Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe. It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.
Werner von Brahn

Two two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
Einstein

Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes---goodwill among men and peace on earth.
Einstein

There was no "before" the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.
John D. Barrow

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.
Voltaire

Entry 149

The clouds,--the only birds that never sleep.
Victor Hugo

The low'ring element Scowls o'er the darken'd landscape.
John Milton

Far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on the trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.
Martin Luther


Thus we play the fool with the time and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.
William Shakespeare


The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky---seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
Joseph Conrad

Entry 148

Romance often begins by a splashing waterfall and ends over a leaky sink.
Unknown

I think every big town should contain artificial waterfalls that people can descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person found advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours.

Bertrand Russell


What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerald Manley Hopkins

Although it was wonderful to see all that water tumbling down, it would be even more wonderful to see all that water tumbling up.
Mark Twain

Entry 147

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
George Bernard Shaw

The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
Woody Allen

The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him.
William Shakespeare

Entry 146

During one of my treks through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew. We were compelled to live on food and water for several days.
W.C. Fields

How are you? You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.
Arthur Conan Doyle

Whatever countries I conquer in the world, I would never forget your beautiful gardens. When I remember the summits of your beautiful mountains, I forget the greatness of the Delhi throne.

Ahmad Shah Durrani
Founder of the Afghan Empire, (1747-1773).
Many Afghan historians consider Ahmad Shah as the
true founder of modern Afghanistan.

Entry 145

The merry year is born
Like the bright berry from the naked thorn.
Hartley Coleridge


New Year's Eve, where auld acquaintance be forgot. Unless, of course, those tests come back positive.
Jay Leno

Why won't they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, can't they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum. The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping - rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year's and Easter and Christmas - But, goodness, why need they do it?
John Dos Passos