And so to bed…

And so to bed…

As regular readers will know, and my Facebook friends and followers are aware, I sign off each day on Facebook with a quote, prefixed by the expression “And so to bed…”. That phrase of course is a direct steal from the diaries of Samuel Pepys!

I try to vary the quote, and also to avoid where possible either having something too long, or a mere “on liner”. Rather like “Thought for the Day”, they vary in content. Some are to think about, others are inspirational (or at least I have found them so).

“Thought for the Day” is however religious. While some of mine may be religious, I try to be more varied, and to paraphrase Steven Jay Gould, the world is too complex and interesting for merely a religious “Thought for the Day” to be the sole voice spoken.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Stephen Jay Gould:

Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Fidel Castro:

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from John Stuart Mill:

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from C.S. Lewis:

We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Stephen Hawking:

One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Tolkien:

“Have you thought of an ending?"
"Yes, several, and all are dark and unpleasant."
"Oh, that won't do! Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?"
"It will do well, if it ever came to that."
"Ah! And where will they live? That's what I often wonder.”

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Eleanor Farjeon:

Cats sleep, anywhere,
Any table, any chair
Top of piano, window-ledge,
In the middle, on the edge,
Open drawer, empty shoe,
Anybody's lap will do,
Fitted in a cardboard box,
In the cupboard, with your frocks-
Anywhere! They don't care!
Cats sleep anywhere.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from John V. Taylor:

Annunciation

Now she will always sit alone
on her high throne demure, becalmed
as a chit on the dunce's stool, or framed
in her own architectural space
who for our peace is now made icon,
captive child for goddess taken.

Yet fingertips cannot forget
textures of food, the spindle's weight
or furrowed grain of the scrubbed wood;
and eyes go searching for some other
wild girl whom the void calls mother .

while the world turns within her womb.