Things that Bansai left for us

[Toeprint]

"It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. "
— Percy Bysshe Shelley

katieftw
December 30, 2009, 12:13 am
The Italian spelling of "Buonaparte" threw me off - is it more standard to use the English spelling "Bonaparte" or am I being an ignorant American (I'm willing to admit that often am quite ignorant).
Lurker
December 31, 2009, 1:35 am
If it is from a written work, they're probably copying the spelling exactly.
bansaisequoia
March 13, 2010, 8:06 pm
Buonaparte was his name at birth. When I read "War & Peace," they used this spelling. (link)
cheryljean777
May 27, 2011, 2:15 pm
Never mind the spelling. What the heck does this even mean?
pootie49
July 9, 2011, 3:37 pm
plain speaking, he is dissing bonapartes family heritage. sort of like a yo mama joke. but in ye olde language.

[Toeprint]

"The faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest. "
— Sir Walter Scott

bansaisequoia
August 29, 2009, 1:29 am
"The charms of the passing woman are generally in direct proportion to the swiftness of her passing."--Marcel Proust

[Toeprint]

"Relentless, repetitive self talk is what changes our self-image. "
— Denis Waitley

bansaisequoia
October 22, 2009, 6:45 pm
I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.

[Toeprint]

"Racism, pollution and the rest of it are themselves very close to extinction."
— R. Buckminster Fuller

bansaisequoia
February 11, 2011, 2:48 am
Hopefully, they're close to extinction, or the human race may well be so.

[Toeprint]

"Beware the pull on your heartstrings - it's often the purse strings that are actually being reached for."
— Barbara Mikkelson

silveryaspen
May 11, 2009, 1:57 pm
so is it money, not love, that really makes the world go round?
bansaisequoia
January 20, 2010, 6:36 pm
That's how the song goes. (link) [ Note: Original link doesn't work, try this instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8P80A8vy9I ]

[Toeprint]

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

bansaisequoia
April 25, 2011, 7:20 am
I'd rather chug my beer quickly, since the Earth is revolving around the sun at about 107,000 kilometers per hour. Did you have any idea you were moving so fast? Even more mind boggling, is to think that the Solar System is moving at approximately 900,000 kilometers per hour around the Milky Way Galaxy. And I won't even get into how fast the Milky Way is moving through our local cluster. Of course, it's all relative.

[Toeprint]

"People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get."
— Frederick Douglass

bansaisequoia
November 15, 2010, 5:13 am
It seems odd that this would be said by a man who escaped from enslavement. Would he not have been held in bondage by people who did not work for all they have?

[Toeprint]

"In Seattle you haven't had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it's running."
— Jeff Bezos

bansaisequoia
October 17, 2014, 3:17 pm
I drank so much coffee once, my tongue lapped the air between each flit of a hummingbird's wings. I also cleaned between the teeth of an operating radial saw at a sawmill.

[Toeprint]

"The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils. "
— Pliny the Elder

maradnu
February 15, 2009, 9:02 pm
That is depressing & cynical.
bansaisequoia
September 12, 2012, 9:29 pm
He said they weren't equal. He didn't say the enjoyments didn't exceed the evils. The glass is completely full of water and air.
themunchlet
August 18, 2013, 4:29 am
No, sorry, disagree with the interpretation above -- it truly is a depressing and cynical statement. I know this was written in Latin, not English, but the idiomatic meaning is clear: the enjoyments of this life are NOT EVEN EQUAL to its evils -- in other words, less than the evils. That's not the literal reading, true, but it is implied. And, as a rule, we understand language idiomatically, not literally. Sorry, Bansai.
CarpeLanam
October 23, 2020, 2:56 pm
"Quid, quod bona malis paria non sunt etiam pari numero, nec laetitia ulla minimo maerore pensanda? Natural History 7:41. This was part of a larger philosophical point, that the best mortals can hope for is that they are not unhappy. Even the Thracians, he said, who would deposit a white or black stone in an urn every day, and then at the end of their life count to see if happy days outnumbered the unhappy, would be better if they accepted that no amount of happiness could outweigh even a little grief. It's typical of the Stoic philosophy of the Romans. Fame and fortune and long life are illusions; we must accept our fate with a calm mind and not be prone to extremes of emotion.

[Toeprint]

"Art is Art. Everything else is everything else."
— Ad Reinhardt

CryptoBee
October 12, 2018, 2:10 am
If there is insufficient data and you set a new record, does that mean bansequoia hasn’t had a crack at it?
kahvecowgirl
March 11, 2019, 12:59 am
Bansai seems to have gone missing. I hope he's doing ok, somewhere out there in the strange universe outside this site.
crypto-yes
September 12, 2019, 5:41 pm
I noticed that too, kahvecowgirl. Wonder where he is...
LLapp
January 20, 2020, 11:53 pm
So sad to read the concerned comments above. I also was worried about him for quite a while, before we found out that he'd died on Sept. 24, 2019, at age 57. (link)

[Toeprint]

"I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches."
— Alice Roosevelt Longworth

bansaisequoia
January 12, 2010, 5:19 am
In a 60 Minutes interview in 1974, she proudly told Eric Sevareid that she was a "hedonist." [as per wikipedia] That certainly goes along with the "scratch where it itches."

[Toeprint]

"Never love anything that can't love you back."
— Bruce Williams

bansaisequoia
January 18, 2011, 10:38 pm
Not even Debussy CDs or Justice League comic books?

[Toeprint]

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Douglas Bradbury

bansaisequoia
November 9, 2012, 11:08 pm
If the writing comes from a condensed book, it's like it came from a distillery, and you get even drunker.

[Toeprint]

"The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization."
— John Kemeny

bansaisequoia
July 25, 2014, 9:13 am
John Kemeny? Wasn't he the guy who was shot from that book suppository or Grassy Moll or wherever?

[Toeprint]

"Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever. "
— Helen Rowland

bansaisequoia
April 15, 2012, 4:09 pm
But I'm working on it.