8 Ways to Sunday

Today’s quote was inspired by the yard work I did early this afternoon:

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

— Henry David Thoreau

When it comes to weeds, I have to admit that I’m a branch-hacker rather than a root-striker. It’s just too much trouble to pull the weeds out by the root when they make up about 60% of my yard. Besides, if you mow the lawn down close enough it’s hard to tell the difference between the grass and the weeds.

No doubt Thoreau and his transcendentalist cohorts would find my approach lacking in moral and intellectual rigor.

“A camel is a horse designed by a committee.”

– Sir Alec Issigonis, designer of the Austin Mini

“God has no religion.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“There is a geography of the soul. And in that world that exists inside you, you begin with no sense of direction. God, or the gods, is up. Earth, the cool mother, is down. You hang, suspended by a desire for each, between the two. This is the simplest of all things; all we can know is the stretch.”

— Ten Crows the Elder

The more one relents one’s self to inaction, the less apt one is liable to be when the opportunity for action is ripe. The more one practices constant reaction in response to one’s environment, the more ready and willing one will be to act upon one’s opportunities.

— Kev Burns (from the TextDrive forum)

In the quest for self-improvement, the ability to smell your own bullshit is half the battle.

— Me

Kev’s words were just the thing I needed to read at the beginning of this particular week. As for my own aphorism — concocted earlier this month — I like to think that it makes up in pithiness what it lacks in eloquence. Maybe.