Zenscheme

“You ask me: what is life?” Chekhov had written to Olga in April. “That is like asking: what is a carrot? A carrot is a carrot and that's all there is to it."

—Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out.

—Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring.

—Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is - and still not caring. —TOM ROBBINS

“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost” —J.R.R. TOLKIEN

“Not knowing is the perfect state of reality.” —SQUELLE

“I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” —WOODY ALLEN in

“To find ourselves we must first lose our way.” —from ULYSSES by JAMES JOYCE

“For what is is what must be.” —from WATERSHIP DOWN

“Those who know don't tell, and those whotell, don't know.” —ZEN PROVERB

“I remember on the trip home on Apollo 11, it suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my

“When it rains, it rains on the just, as well as the unjust.” —CHARLES KIRKWOOD, a Business Law professor, to his class before the National Guard killed 4 Kent State students

“Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.” —DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

“The Olympic commentators tell us that the gold medal winners have trained for this all their lives— ‘They’ve worked 12 hours a day. Seven days a week. For months on end’ . . . Of course, so did the losers.” —LINDA PERRET

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started... and know the place for the first time.” —T.S. ELIOT from Four Quartets

“How long will it take me to learn these things, Father?”

“A lifetime, my son, perhaps a little longer.” —KUNG FU (TV series)

“El que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho.”

—MIQUEL CERVANTEZ from Don Quixote

“The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.” —FRANCIS CRICK writing about the reason that James Watson & he are still remembered

thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” —NEIL ARMSTRONG

“Not only talking but saying something.” —S.I. HAYAKAWA

In closing, don't be an idiot who thinks you already know it all, or you will be destined to remain an idiot who thinks you already know it all. —from EXISTENTIAL COMICS

“Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop”

—LEWIS CARROLL from Alice in Wonderland

“They're all crazy. They're all crazy except you and me. Sometimes I have my doubts about you.”

—said by MARTIN the orderly to the maid toward the end of the 1931 film "Dracula"

“Life's but a walking shadow, poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more; it is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.”—WM. SHAKESPEARE from Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry. —ECCLESIASTES

"She's not as young as she once was." —from Swann's Way by MARCEL PROUST

Question: Why is the Universe here?

Answer: Where else would it be? —from Songs of Distant Earth by ARTHUR C. CLARKE

“I learned to travel, then traveled to learn.” —from Blue Highways by WILLIAM LEAST HEAT-MOON

“Cook squash any way you like, but it’s still squash.” —from This Much I Know Is True by WALLY LAMB

“So let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. Since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.” —VICTOR FRANKL

“I still can’t quite believe Western Europe had a fascist dictator in 1975. How could Abba and General Franco have overlapped?” —TIM MOORE from Travels with My Donkey

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” —BERTRAND RUSSELL

“Boy, they were big on crematoriums, weren’t they?” —GEORGE BUSH (Auschwitz, 1989)

“With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never do.” —from ULYSSES by JAMES JOYCE

“Sure he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, backwards... and in high heels.” —BOB THAVES (from a 1982 Frank and Ernest comic strip)

“We are not retreating—we are advancing in another direction.” —GEN. DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

“There’s a big difference between nothing but the truth and the whole truth.” —JAMES W. HALL from Under Cover of Daylight

“A thousand people will stop smoking today. Their funerals will be held sometime in the next three or four days.” —C. EDWARD KOOP, former Surgeon General

“In a study of schoolboys, an educator discovered a correlation between size of feet and quality of handwriting. The boys with the larger feet were, on the average, older.” —WALLIS & ROBERTS, The Nature of Statistics

“The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs.” —E. GREBENEK

“The feminista agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.” —PAT ROBERTSON, 1992 fundraising letter

“I told my kids that marijuana in moderation for medicinal, ceremonial and recreationaluse is defensible, especially in comparison with alcohol and tobacco. I also warned them that marijuana has never improved anyone’s

ability to do homework or hit a curve ball.” —TOM HAYDEN

“There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less

competition there.” —INDIRI GANDHI

"Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him?" —BLAISE PASCAL, quoted by LEO TOLSTOY in Bethink Yourselves

“The Bible says you should forgive and forget. Well, you might forgive. But boy, it’s tough to forget.” —LARRY DOBY, 1999, Hall of Fame baseball player who was the first African American in the American League, 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

“I was ignorant . . . but I could tell that if the stars were suns they had to be awfully far away, farther away than 86th Street, farther away than Manhattan, farther away, probably, than New Jersey.” —CARL SAGAN

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.” —TERRY PRATCHETT

“Ah, mon pere, ça lui fait tant de plaisir, a moi si peu de peine.” [Ah, Father, it gives him so much pleasure and me so little trouble.] —from The Brothers Karamazov by FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” —from On the Road by JACK KEROUAC

“I have had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.” —GROUCHO MARX

“If you saw two guys named Hambone and Flippy, which one would you think liked dolphins the most? I'd say Flippy, wouldn't you? You'd be wrong, though. It's

Hambone.” —JACK HANDY

“I have the heart of a little child and the brain of a genius—and I keep them in a jar under my bed.”

I always wonder about that story about the Dutch boy who stopped the flood by sticking his finger in the dyke. Didn't the dyke mind?

Calvin: People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

Hobbes: Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front?

“You never flirt with a friend’s wife or girlfriend. It can cause too much friction and there’s too many other fish in the sea . . . unless she’s really good looking. —from a radio talk show host

“Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?” —JULES FEIFFER

“Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air.” —JACK BENNY

“A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks following a big schmuck dressed like a kid.” —JACK BENNY

“Yeah, my dad was a workaholic. Mention work & he got drunk.” —RODNEY DANGERFIELD :-)

“Who put the pubic hair on my Coke can?” —Supreme Court justice CLARENCE THOMAS

Man: How do you like your eggs in the morning?

Woman: Unfertilized, thank you!

“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”

“The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if the sword is very short and the pen is very sharp.”

“My last boyfriend broke up with me because I had a phone conversation during sex. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best time for me to call him.”

“When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn't work in that way—so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!” —EMO PHILLIPS

“If marriage was outlawed only outlaws would have in-laws.”

“A good man has few enemies. A ruthless man has none.”

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” —ROBERT McCLOSKEY

A friend offered Descartes a cup of coffee.

“Roy, you're as good as a strap-on.”

Friend: Would you like cream?Descartes: I think not. & Descartes instantly vanished to nothingness

From a BATHROOM STALL circa 1976:

Graffiti artist #1: Drugs are a crutch.

Graffiti artist #2: Life is a broken leg.

If I told you that you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? —GROUCHO MARX

I want to make love in the worst way—standing up in a canoe.

Her: Have you ever eaten chicken that was two days old?

Him: Yeah, I suppose.

Her: It must have been mighty small.

Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?

When asked why she had not been at the symphony lately, Dorothy Parker once replied, “I've been too fucking busy and vice versa.”

“In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a lot better.” —WOODY ALLEN

“Was it John Searle who called Jacques Derrida the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name?” —from This Is Not a Novel by DAVID MARKSON

“A belief in invisible cats cannot be logically disproved,” although it does “tell us a good deal about those who hold it.” —from Merchants of Doubt by ERIK M. CONWAY & NAOMI ORESKES