Judging a Book

Certainly the truth is laid bare once we start reading (just as the truth about a company's quality is laid bare soon after we hire them), but if anyone doubts how their expectations for a book they're about to read are affected by its presentation, I'd challenge them to examine their initial reaction to a book not with an unattractive cover but with an amateurish one.

~ Alex Lickerman ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat is a lion in a jungle of small bushes.

~ Indian proverb ~
Photo by Ant Smith.

Destiny

Give destiny a destination.

~ Tomi Ungerer ~
Photo © tomiungerer.com.

Poetry Friday

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

~ Edmond de Goncourt ~
This begs to be illustrated with a Marc Chagall painting, doesn't it?

Have an Adventure

Pick up your adventures with Stanley where ours ended. Put him in your wallet.

~ Brian Owens ~

Dogs

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

How Is That Fair?

One of the mistakes I made was thinking chickens and penguins could sing, just like all the other animals in the "Muppets." But it turns out those animals are not allowed to sing words.

~ Bret McKenzie ~
Photo courtesy Spinoff Online.

On a Merry-Go-Round

When you're on a merry-go-round, you miss a lot of the scenery.

~ Neil Diamond ~
Photo by Russell Lee, courtesy Library of Congress.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat owes man nothing. Some experts estimate that there is one homeless cat managing on its own for every one with a home, which makes a total cat population in the U.S. of more than fifty million. That means the largest nonhuman animal population in the nation, short of rodents, whose number is beyond estimate. Eliminate cats from our ecology and, in a matter of weeks, we would be overrun by rodents.

~ Paul Corey ~
[Note: the cats in the image above are from 1642!}

Stupidity

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

~ Friedrich Schiller ~

Poetry Friday

Since I was a boy I have always longed to hear poems spoken to a harp, as I imagined Homer to have spoken his, for it is not natural to enjoy an art only when one is by oneself. Whenever one finds a fine verse one wants to read it to somebody, and it would be much less trouble and much pleasanter if we could all listen, friend by friend, lover by beloved.

~ W. B. Yeats ~

Color

With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.

~ Henri Matisse ~
"Dishes and Fruit" (circa 1901), courtesy The Athenaeum.

Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

Doesn't the east coast of South America fit exactly against the west coast of Africa, as if they had once been joined? This is an idea I'll have to pursue.

~ Alfred Wegener ~

Show Don't Tell

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.

~ Kate DiCamillo ~

St. Patrick

There was no formal canonization process in the Church during its first millennium. In the early years of the Church the title Saint was bestowed first upon martyrs, and then upon individuals recognized by tradition as being exceptionally holy during their lifetimes.

Consequently these Irish saints, including St. Patrick, were never actually formally canonized...

~ Ken Concannon ~

What Should I Be?

What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay from "The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge" ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The two grey Kits,
And the grey Kits’ mother,
All went over
The bridge together.
The bridge broke down.
They all fell in,
May the rats go with you,
Says Tom Bolin.

~ from The Only True Mother Goose Melodies [1833] ~

March is Women's History Month

Poetry Friday

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colors or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.

I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

~ G. H. Hardy ~
Happy Pi Day!

Tomorrow is Pi Day!

Available for purchase here.

Downton Abbey Subtlety

I don’t dislike him, I just don’t like him. Which is quite different.

~ Dowager Countess Violet a.k.a. Granny ~

Books

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón from The Shadow of the Wind ~

When Have Triangles Made You Smile?

I don't know why my brain has kept all the words to the Gilligan's Island theme song and has deleted everything about triangles.

~ Jeff Foxworthy ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The politest musician that ever was seen
Was Montague Meyerbeer Mendelssohn Green
So extremely polite he would take off his hat
Whenever he happened to meet with a cat.

~ Oliver Herford from "The Music of the Future"~

Beauty

Poetry Friday

In composing poetry you need no teacher.

~ Japanese proverb ~
"Eight great Kyōka poets" woodprint by Gogaku Yajima, courtesy Library of Congress.

Yes, Do!

You're a human being, you live once and life is wonderful, so eat the damn red velvet cupcake.

~ Emma Stone ~
Photo by thehoneybunny.

Two Tools in One

The woodpecker's strong, pointed beak acts as both a chisel and a crowbar to remove bark and find hiding insects.

~ Defenders of Wildlife from "Basic Facts About Woodpeckers" ~
Photo by acodring.

Anne Frank

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

~ Anne Frank ~



Image courtesy Wikipedia.

Bad Genes

Though women are no longer barred from university laboratories and scientific societies, the idea that they are innately less suited to mathematical science is deeply ingrained in our cultural genes.

~ Margaret Wertheim ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A cat is apt to sing upon a major scale:
This concert is for everybody, this
Is wholesale.
For a baton, he wields a tail.

~ Rosalie Moore from "Catalog" ~

American Lunacy

The past two weeks have shown us the lunatic fringe is still out there.

I think we got off that track when we allowed our government to become a secular government, when we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that He wrote the constitution that’s based on biblical principles.

~ Tom DeLay ~
[I looked and looked at the signatories and I didn't see God's name anywhere! --KK]

Should a devout baker be required to create a cake for a homosexual wedding that has a giant phallic symbol on it or should a baker be required to create pastries for a homosexual wedding in the shape of genitallia? Or should a photographer be required to photograph a homosexual wedding where the participants decide they want to be nude or engage in sexual behavior? Would they force a Jewish photographer to work a Klan or Nazi event? How about forcing a Muslim caterer to work a pork barbeque dinner?

~ Judson Phillips ~
[What's this sudden interest in the rights of Jews and Muslims? --KK]