
“To be pathetic when we cry, we must cry without wanting to and without knowing it.”
The Guardian
Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall (2001)
“To be pathetic when we cry, we must cry without wanting to and without knowing it.”
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: In the human form, as nature tries to make it, every feature is useful and every feature is beautiful. Each member is perfectly adapted to the function it has to perform; nothing is superfluous, yet the whole and every part is supremely decorative.<!-- Introduction
How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)
Source: A Dream of John Ball (1886), Ch. 4: The Voice of John Ball
Context: Forsooth, he that waketh in hell and feeleth his heart fail him, shall have memory of the merry days of earth, and how that when his heart failed him there, he cried on his fellow, were it his wife or his son or his brother or his gossip or his brother sworn in arms, and how that his fellow heard him and came and they mourned together under the sun, till again they laughed together and were but half sorry between them. This shall he think on in hell, and cry on his fellow to help him, and shall find that therein is no help because there is no fellowship, but every man for himself.
His reaction to a baby announcement on a SFBA social mailing list (21 February 1993), as quoted in "RMS -vs- Doctor, on the evils of Natalism" at Art.net http://www.art.net/Studios/Hackers/Hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html
1990s
Context: Hundreds of thousands of babies are born every day. While the whole phenomenon is menacing, one of them by itself is not newsworthy. Nor is it a difficult achievement — even some fish can do it. (Now, if you were a seahorse, it would be more interesting, since it would be the male that gave birth.)... These birth announcements also spread the myth that having a baby is something to be proud of, which fuels natalist pressure, which leads to pollution, extinction of wildlife, poverty, and ultimately mass starvation.
Quotations:Rukmini Devi Arundale, 1 December 2013, publisher-All Creatures Organization http://www.all-creatures.org/aro/q-arundale-rukminidevi.html,
Said to his men at Shiloh, 1862. As quoted in May I Quote You, General Forrest? by Randall Bedwell.
1860s
“The key to meditation is to exist one hundred percent in the here and now.”
Source: Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living