The Yellowstone Park is something absolutely unique in the world, so far as I know. This park was created and is now administered for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. The scheme of its preservation is noteworthy in its essential democracy. The only way that the people as a whole can secure to themselves and their children the enjoyment in perpetuity of what the Yellowstone Park has to give is by assuming the ownership in the name of the nation and by jealously safeguarding and pre serving the scenery, the forests, and the wild creatures
Theodore Roosavelt at laying of cornerstone of gateway to Yellowstone national park, 1903
May 2012
You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl
And I can't be holding on
To what you got
When all you got is hurt
One by U2
February 2012
Hey gato!
Dedicated to my little buddy Tigger. Siempre te recordaremos.
September 28, 2011
Magic does not exist.
An aging magician at the end of his career in the film The Illusionist
August 2011
Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.
Homer, excerpt from The Iliad
August 2011
Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly.
But I can't see too good, I got tears in my eyes.
I'm leaving tomorrow but I don't wanna go.
I love you, my town, you'll always live in my soul.
But I can see the sun's settin' fast,
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts.
Well, go on, I gotta kiss you goodbye,
But I'll hold to my lover,
'Cause my heart's 'bout to die.
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town.
I can see the sun has gone down on my town, on my town.
Goodnight.
Our Town by Iris DeMent
July 2011
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
Mahatma Gandhi
December 2010
As we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.
Nicholas Carr. The Shallows. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010
August 2010
To regard states of distress in general as an objection, as something that must be abolished, is the supreme idiocy, in a general sense a real disaster in its consequences... almost as stupid as the will to abolish bad weather.
Friedrich Nietzsche
July 2010
If life and existence were an enjoyable state, then everyone would reluctantly approach the unconscious state of sleep and would gladly rise from it again. But the very opposite is the case, for everyone very willingly goes to sleep and unwillingly gets up again.
Arthur Schopenhauer
July 2010
Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses.
Michel de Montaigne
April 2010
The office is to the modern world what the cloister was to the medieval Christendom; a chaste arena with an unrivalled capacity to excite desire.
Alain de Bottom. The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.
January 2010
...Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead, and lives again.
About the trees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky...
Edna St. Vincent Millay, excerpt from "Renascence".
March 2010
Today, I'm asked to fight a war where the shovel outweighs the rifle. In which people swap addresses with the enemy to meet when it's all over. Plus the cat we found with a note from the Germans, "Good luck, comrades!" I was ordered to arrest the cat for high treason...
Bernard Le Coq in the film Joyeux Noël.
January 2010
I wonder if leafs feel lonely when they see their neighbors falling?
John Muir
September 2009
I can't accept the world the way it is. It's too horrible, but I have to try to change it. My choice is either take it or do something about it — or try to do something about it. I think we have an obligation to those who have died and to those have survived. To try, never to stop trying to make it a more humane world. And that's what I do and I ask others to do the best they can — try. And if we try hard enough and long enough, I'm confident it will come about.
Ben Ferencz, Nuremberg Trials prosecutor and lifetime activist, in the film The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court
July 2009
You know a lot when you loose something. When you got it, you don't know it.
Isaiah Zagar from the film "In A Dream". Para mi viejo Moises, que siempre te estaré recordando.
April 2009
Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky
Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
"Daniel", by Elton John
February 2009
As conditional love begins to lose its interest for us, so, too, may a number of the things we pursue in order to secure that love. If wealth, esteem and power buy us a kind of regard that will last only so long as our status holds, but conversely we are destined to end our lives defenseless and disheveled, longing to be comforted like small children, then we have an unusually clear reason to concentrate our energies on those relationships which will best survive the erosion of our standing.
Alain de Botton, from his book "Status Anxiety"
February 2009
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
January 2009
Culture is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.
Alain de Botton, from his book "The Architecture Of Happiness".
January 2009
Much of the vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities.
James L. Fredericks from his ecumenical study titled "Inter-religious Friendship: A New Theological Virtue"
December 2008
Poetry belongs not to those who write it, but to those who need it.
Mario Ruoppolo as played by Massimo Troisi in the film Il Postino
December 2008
The end is nothing. The road is all.
Willa Cather
September 2008
The best thing about being a shepherd... is that you can reason with the stars. City people never look at the stars. But shepherds, in the country, at night, it's different. Sometimes I look at the stars and reason. Does the world really exist? I don't think the world exists, it's just pretend. I think that when I look at a dead rabbit, too... the eyes always look alive... and they watch me, like when I look at a picture. I saw a picture once. And wherever I went... the picture was always looking at me.
D'Azzo the shepherd in the film L'Uomo delle stelle
August 2008
The idea that you, and only you, can do your job is a delusion of grandeur rather than a reflection of reality
Bruce Weinstein, from his article "The Ethics of Taking Vacations".
August 2008
All I wanted is the best for our lives, my dear
And you know my wishes are sincere
What's to say for the days I cannot bare
A Sunday Smile by Beirut
July 2008
Under conditions of peace, the warlike man attacks himself.
Friedrich Nietzsche. From P.O.V.'s film "The Ballad Of Esequiel Hernandez"
July 2008
Through the years you've always loved me
And my life you've tried to save
But now I shall slumber sweetly
In a deep and lonely grave
Kiss me mother kiss your darlin'
Lay my head upon your breast
Throw your loving arms around me
I am weary let me rest
"I Am Weary Let Me Rest", as performed by the Cox Family
June 2008
As you see yourself today, I was once seen. As you see me today, one day, you too will see yourself.
Adela Escoto. Que aquellos angeles de que tanto me hablabas te reciban con brazos abiertos.
June 2008
I think Alfred Stieglitz's epitaph, he told me he wanted, that ought to be ideal it said; "Here lies Alfred Stieglitz. He lived for better or forworse, but he is dead for good."
Ansel Adams remembering Alfred Stieglitz.
April 2008
Acts of men are better than acts of God. Tell me how to stop that thing!
Misato Katsuragi on an incoming Angel attack from the animated series Neon Genesis Evangelion.
March 2008
You know what Lenin said about Beethoven's Appasionata? "If I keep listening to it, I won't finish the revolution." Can anyone who heard this music, I mean truly heard it, really be a bad person?
Georg Dreyman played by Sebastian Koch in the film The Lives Of Others.
March 2008
Bid me discourse. I will enchant thine ear.
William Shakespeare in the film Shall We Dance.
January 2008
Voy calle abajo,voy calle arriba,
no me rebajo ni por la vida.
Me llaman calle y ese es mi orgullo,
yo sé que un día llegará,
yo sé que un día vendrá mi suerte,
un día me vendrá a buscar
a la salida un hombre bueno
pa to la vida y sin pagar
mi corazón no es de alquila.
"Me Llaman Calle" by Manu Chao.
January 2008
Do you remember, the letter that Mike Ranney wrote me? You do? You remember how I ended it? "I cherish the memories of a question my grandson asked me the other day, when he said, 'Grandpa were you a hero in a war?'. Grandpa said no. But I served in a company of heroes."
Major Richard Winters from the506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, U.S. 101st Airborne Division, "Easy Company"] from the television series Band Of Brothers
October 2007
Lord Almighty,
I feel my temperature rising
Higher higher
It's burning through to my soul
Girl, girl, girl
You gonna set me on fire
My brain is flaming
I don't know which way to go
Burning Love by Elvis Presley.
August 2007
If there's magic in boxing, it's the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but
you.
Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris played by Morgan Freeman in the film Million Dollar Baby).
August 2007
I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.
Homer Simpson, seeking help from "above".
July 2007
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.
Frida Kahlo
July 2007
One day, my mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you will be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope." However, I became a painter and now I am Picasso.
Pablo Picasso
July 2007
Whether you think you can or you can't, either way you are right.
Henry Ford
June 2007
Para odiar hay que querer
para destruir hay que hacer
y estoy orgulloso de quererte romper
la cabeza contra la pared
Para dejar hay que beber
para morir primero hay que nacer
siento ganas nuevamente de tirarme a tus pies
y llevarte a mi morada otra vez
Si lo sembrás lo recogés
y si esperás vas a entender
cuando las cosas salen como no las espero
la vida me hace más guerrero
"Nunca Quise" by Los Intoxicados
June 2007
A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.
Maude played by Ruth Gordon in the film Harold and Maude
June 2007
Ideas do not need weapons, if they can convince the great masses.
Fidel Castro
April 2007
En Septembre '63
kids are gone, and so is Louise.
Ontario, they did go
near la ville de Toronto
Now my tears, they roll down, tous les jours
And I remember the days, and the promises that we made
Oh Louise, ma jolie Louise, ma jolie Louise
"Jolie Louise" by Daniel Lanois
2007
What's a house? It's a metaphor, right... for the mind? Isn't that what's all about? You've got to tear down the old before you build the new. You've got to loose your mind before you find it. The universe whacked my
house, but it was really whacking my mind. Let go. Give Up. Throw out all those old plans and stick your face in the here and now. Whether this works out, or it doesn't. I'm a free man.
Chris Stevens played by John Corbett in Northern Exposure
2007
So little? So little did you say? Oh,... why there is nothing else if there's applause. I've listened back stage to people applaud. Its like,... like waves of love coming over the foot lights and wrapping you up. Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you. They smile. Their eyes shine. You please them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.
Eve Harrington played by Anne Baxter in All About Eve.
2007
When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created.
Karl Marx with Friedrich Engels from Das Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
2007
Ah yeah, can you see them?
Out on the porch.
Yeah, but they don't wave.
But I see them, round the front way. Yeah.
And I know, and I know. I don't want to stay.
Make me cry...
"Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam
2006
Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky.
Ojibwe Saying
2006
...And music finished as no music is ever finished. Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase, and the structure would fall. It was clear to me. That sound I had heard in the Archbishop's palace had been no accident. Here again was the very voice of God! I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink-strokes at an absolute, inimitable beauty.
Antonio Salieri (played by F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus).
2006
It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have.
Will Munny (played by Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven).
2006
In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
Aeschylus
2006
I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.
Yasser Arafat
2005
Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.
Paul Rand
2005
