Fjarilshuset on Haga - Butterfly house, bird house and botanical gardens in Stockholm.
Nilsson, Stefan - Magician, artist, lecturer and speaker. [Swedish/English]
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be
sacrificed to expediency.
-- W. Somerset Maugham "Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger." (Franklin P. Jones) Church is only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.
-- William Temple I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but
all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
- Bill Hirst "Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad." (Anonymous) Solna He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.
-- Bertolt Brecht Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
-- Gloria Steinem In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the
unreflective creation, the truth of immortality....The most ideal human passion is love, which is
also the m Solna
"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945, 32nd U.S. President) With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly good I thee endow.
-- Wedding Vow, Book of Common Prayer This book fills a much-needed gap.
- Moses Hadas in a review Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable. -- Oscar Wilde "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his." (Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest) Solna "... and then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." (Anais Nin) True thinkers are characterised by a blending of clearness and mystery.
-- Victor Hugo If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly.
-- Gustav Holst, on amateur music-making Solna
When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is
when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.
-- Marcel Achard Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep
up with software demands Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
-- Fred Allen Thomas Jefferson--still surv...
-- John Adams, dying words Marry not a tennis player. For love means nothing to them. Solna The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
- Henry Kissinger Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.
-- J. Heller Solna
Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate
chastisement.
-- Ernest Dimnet "What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage." It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
-- Jane Austen The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.
-- Kin Hubbard "To err is human; to forgive, divine." (Alexander Pope) Solna "Beauty awakens the soul to act." (Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321) "You make 'em, I amuse 'em." (Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, 1904-1991, on children) Harpo, she's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.
-- Oscar Levant, to Harpo Marx upon meeting Harpo's fiancee Solna
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a
brand new ending.
-- Anonymous Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.
-- Robert Browning "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." (George Orwell) "Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details." (Andy Warhol, America, 1985) Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
-- Samuel Johnson Solna Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together....
-- Carl Zwanzig If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from
ourselves.
-- Tom Robbins Solna
Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
-- Yogi Berra I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
-- Oscar Wilde Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do
what he was afraid he couldn't do.
-- Henry Ford "The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter." (Sir Winston Churchill, 1874-1965) Solna At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in
every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and "What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature." (Francois Marie Ar Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature
machine gun.
-- Matt Groening, Love is Hell Solna
The Church is an organism that grows best in an alien society.
-- C. Stacey Woods "By seeing the seed of failure in every success, we remain humble. By seeing the seed of success in every failure we remain hopeful." (Mel Ziegler, founder of Banana Republic) Good hours, excellent pay, fun place to work, paid training, mean boss. Oh well, four out of five
isn't bad.
-- Help Wanted Ad, PA newspaper, 1994 Question: If you could live forever, would you and why? Answer: I would not live forever, because
we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live
forever, All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
-- Aristotle Solna The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.
- George Bernard Shaw May you learn to perform miracles: earn a living and marry off your daughters. "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." (Raymonde Uy) Solna
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." (Herman Melville, Moby Dick) Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than
yourself.
-- William Faulkner If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how
many can get through to you.
-- Mortimer J. Adler I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me
is another matter.
- Sir Winston Churchill Solna Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "We're all proud of making little mistakes. It gives us the feeling we don't make any big ones." (Andrew A. Rooney) In the end, everything is a gag.
-- Charlie Chaplin Solna
"If you light a man a fire, he will be warm for a day; if you light a man on fire, he will be warm for the rest of his life." (Anonymous) "I think all great innovations are built on rejections." (Louis-Ferdinand Céline) It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes out well in it.
-- Virginia Woolf "If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1888) Solna Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil
underneath.
-- Jacob Braude To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.
-- Tom Robbins "Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man's?" (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Solna
Before marraige a man will like awake all night thinking about something you said. After marriage
he will fall asleep before you have finished saying it.
-- Anon. Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich!
-- Chuck Jones-directed cartoon Marriage still confers one very special privilege - only a married person can get divorced. "Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one." (Theodore Roosevelt) It is not good enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-- Rene Descartes Solna Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children.
-- Miriam Robbins Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.
-- Robert A. Heinlein _The Rolling Stones_ "Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world." (Oscar Wilde) Solna
Although the course may change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea.
-- Led Zeppelin, Ten Years Gone Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner.
-- Lord Byron The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one
is.
-- Arnold Bennett Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
-- Igor Stravinsky People only see what they are prepared to see.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson Solna "The bite of conscience, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) "I was lousy in school. Real screwed-up. A moron. I was antisocial and didn't bother with the other kids. A really bad student. I didn't have any brains. I didn't know what I was doing there. That's w Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwile careers in the
street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack
of u Solna
