"Well, if you’re so smart, how come I’m so dumb?"
--_A Lion in Winter_


"However young, The seeker who sets out upon the way Shines bright over the world. But day and night the man who is awake Shines in the radiance of the spirit. Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work, with mastery. Like the moon, Come out from behind the clouds! Shine."
--from the Dhammapada, translated by Thomas Byrom


"Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much."
--G. K. Chesterton


"Walking large as trees."
--Charles de Lint _Trader_


As a rule,
Man’s a fool.
When it’s hot
He wants it cool;
When its cool
He wants it hot.
Always wanting
What is not.
--?


"There are three kinds of people:
those who make things happen,
those who watch things happen, and
those who wonder, ‘What happened?’"
--message found inside a Christmas cracker


"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a bannana."
--Groucho Marx


"Talking comes by nature, silence by wisdom."
--Anonymous


If thine enemy offend thee, give his child a drum.
--Grouch Marx


"The past scampers like an alleycat though the present, leaving the pawprints of memories scattered helterskelter—here ink is smeared on a page, there lies an old photograph with a chewed corner, elsewhere still, a nest has been made of old newspapers, the headlines running one into the other to make strange declarations. There is no order to what we recall, the wheel of time follows no straight line as it turns in our heads. In the dark attics of our minds, all times mingle, sometimes literally."
--Charles de Lint _Dreams Underfoot_ "In the House of my Enemy"


Speechless before these budding green spring leaves in blazing sunlight
--Matsuo Basho, translated by Sam Hamill


To discover who you are, first learn who everybody else is—and you’re what’s left
--Ashleigh Brilliant


Oh, what a goofy work is man!
--The Tick’s Mind "The Tick vs. Protoclown"


The First People will come back and the sun will grow dimmer and the moon brighter, until there is no difference. All will then be one. Until then, we stand between the world of the sun and the dreams of the moon. Remember that, Pasquale.
--Paul McAuley _Pasquale’s Angel_ p. 372-373


You’re dumber than you think I think you are.
--Jack Nicholson in _Chinatown_


"Life’s an act of magic, too. Claire Hamill sings a line in one of her songs that really sums it up for me: ‘If there’s no magic, there’s no meaning.’ Without magic—or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom—nothing has any depth. It’s all just surface."
--Charles de Lint _Dreams Underfoot_ "In the House of My Enemy"


"Si hoc legere scis, nimium eruditionis habes."
--? (I was given this along with the translation by a friend)


"If you’re in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it’ll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they’re thinking, you can throw a real grenade."
--Jack Handey


When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand peices and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
--Sir James M. Barrie _Peter Pan_


"It’s the happy ending, father," Prince Phillip explained. "The happy ending to a story that started once upon a dream."
--Told by Jane Watson "The Sleeping Beauty"


Prayer begins where expression ends. The words that reach our lips are often but waves of an overflowing stream touching the shore.
--Abraham Joshua Heschel


"’...Don’t you ever watch TV?’
Jilly shook her head. ‘What? And let the aliens monitor my brainwaves?’"
--Charles de Lint _Dreams Underfoot_ "Freewheeling"


"’What scares me,’ Sue muttered as they left the loft and started down the stairs, ‘is that sometimes I don’t think you’re kidding.’
‘Who says I am?’ Jilly asked."
--Charles de Lint _Dreams Underfoot_ "Freewheeling"


And as the walls come down and
As I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It’s all right,
I don’t mind.
--? (possibly Mike Stevens)


Natural resources are like air—of no great importance until you are not getting any.
--Anonymous


"Thorn trees on a hill are a strong indication that faeries might abide there."
--Brian Froud and Alan Lee _Faeries_


Things are changing
But nothing changes
And still there are changes
--Enigma3


"I don’t need nobody staring at me,
stripping me down with their 1-2-3,
I got a rigtht to my own dignity
--who needs pornography?"
--Charles de Lint from a song in the story "Romano Drom"


"Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees."
--The Holy Bible, The New Testament
The Revelation of St. John the Divine
Chapter 7 verse 3


The Land of Faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tounge.
--William B. Yeats The Land of Heart’s Desire


"The Green Lady of Caerphilly takes on the appearance of Ivy when she is not walking through the ruined castles she hounts"
--Brian Froud and Alan Lee _Faeries_


Somniis sepultus caveai
Let he who is lost in the dreams beware.
--James C. Christensen (from a picture—graffiti on a boat)


"we cannot dwell in the time that is to come, lest we lose our now for a phantom of our own design."
--J. R. R. Tolkien _Unfinished Tales_ II:II pl 192


"I think, therefore I am."
--Descartes


"She had the strangest way of looking at things; everything had a soul for her, be it the majestic old oak tree that stood in her parents’ back yard, or the old black iron kettle that she kept filled with dried weeds on the sill of her bedroom window."
--Charles de Lint _Dreams Underfoot_ "Tallulah"


"He who wants a rose must respect the thorn."
--Persian Proverb

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