Linux Wisdom

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
                -- Euripides

We can embody the truth, but we cannot know it.
                -- Yates

We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.
                -- Margaret Mead

We have only two things to worry about:  That things will never get
back to normal, and that they already have.

We have reason to be afraid.  This is a terrible place.
                -- John Berryman

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who,
content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.
                -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)

We're all in this alone.
                -- Lily Tomlin

We're mortal -- which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful --
but those are only handicaps.  Our pride is that nevertheless, now and
then, we do our best.  A few times we succeed.  What more dare we ask for?
                -- Ensign Flandry

"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is
weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me
the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious,
unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept
responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous
desert, in this marvelous time.  I wanted to convince you that you must
learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a
short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
                -- Don Juan

        Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines
of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
        Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced
only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen.  In it his mind floated freely,
able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,
undistracted by any outside disturbances.  Logical structures no longer
inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.
All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,
became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships
not evident to ordinary vision.  Like beads strung on a string of their own
meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by
all.  Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming
all others.  And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,
destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
        Time passed, unheeded.
        Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and
Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
                -- Wayfarer