Orts #677

There are in Life Evils enough, and it is a Folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones.
     — Benjamin Franklin, in a letter to his sister Jane Franklin Mecom, Novermber 26, 1788

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. . . . A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

     — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)

  Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

     — Rebecca West, in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Many sensations come, many thoughts or images arise, but they are just waves of your own mind. Nothing comes from outside your mind.

     — Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning.

     — Winston Churchill (November 1942)