#bee

So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living? We have no idea – or actually, we have lots of ideas, but we don’t know if any of them are right. According to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, at least thirty-eight theories have been put forward to explain why people took to living in communities: that they were driven to it by climatic change, or by a wish to stay near their dead, or by a powerful desire to brew and drink beer, which could only be indulged by staying in one place. ↗

— Bill Bryson

#humor #life #sedentary #change

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#been #born #business #dying #found

Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through… ↗

— Harriet Beecher Stowe

#cabin #death #harriet #stowe #tom

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined. If beef is your idea of "real food for real people" you'd better live real close to a real good hospital. ↗

— Neal D. Barnard

#vegetarianism #death

Now that part of his head which nature designed for the reservoir of drink being very shallow, a small quantity of liquor overflowed it and opened the sluices of his heart, so that all the secrets there deposited run out. ↗

— Henry Fielding

#design

Having beef with someone is unnecessary and avoidable. Whatever the issue, if not positive, it is an opportunity to cut the excess fat from an unhealthy dietary network. Simply excuse yourself from the table of negativity and lean forward in peace. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#confrontation #diet #excess #issues #negativity

I dreamt -- marvellous error! -- that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures. ↗

— Antonio Machado

#dream #failure #honey #success #dreams

That Beethoven was capable of producing the ultimate musical definition of heroism in this context is itself extraordinary, for he was able to evoke a dream of heroism that neither he nor his native Germany nor his adopted Vienna could express in reality. Perhaps we can only measure the heroism of the Eroica by the depth of fear and uncertainty from with it emerged. ↗

— Maynard Solomon

#dreams

The Moonlight sonata is a strange piece of music. It's been called a Lamentation. You can feel that when you play it, can feel the sorrow and the endless repetitions. It's simple to play but maddeningly difficult to play well. The arpeggios allow great freedom of expression. Too much freedom in untutored, unskilled hands. They say Beethovan wrote it for a seventeen-year-old countess, the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi. He may have loved her. ↗

— Tiffany Reisz

#the-moonlight-sonata #freedom

The confounding Political Economy with the Sciences and Arts to which it is subservient, has been one of the principal obstacles to its improvement. ↗

— Nassau William Senior

#been #confounding #economy #improvement #obstacles