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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
        The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
        Redwood Forest.

7:30, Channel 8: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
        The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
        Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
        The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
forest, hunting bear.  They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
their backpacks off and put them inside.  At which point the salesman turned
to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
        Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
on the porch.  Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest.  The noises
got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
        "Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
        The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
suddenly stopped, and stepped aside.  The bear, unable to stop, continued
through the door and into the cabin.  The salesman slammed the door closed
and grinned at his friend.  "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
one and I'll go rustle us up another!"
When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, "The handle is one of us!"
                -- Turkish proverb
New York is a jungle, they tell you.  You could go further, and say that
New York is a jungle.  New York *is a jungle.*  Beneath the columns of
the old rain forest, made of melting macadam, the mean Limpopo of swamped
Ninth Avenue bears an angry argosy of crocs and dragons, tiger fish, noise
machines, sweating rainmakers.  On the corners stand witchdoctors and
headhunters, babbling voodoo-men -- the natives, the jungle-smart natives.
And at night, under the equatorial overgrowth and heat-holding cloud
cover, you hear the ragged parrot-hoot and monkeysqueak of the sirens,
and then fires flower to ward off monsters.  Careful: the streets are
sprung with pits and nets and traps.  Hire a guide.  Pack your snakebite
gook and your blowdart serum.  Take it seriously.  You have to get a
bit jungle-wise.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
"An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful
if there is none in the forest to admire her. He hid
in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise
but made him happy.
Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation."
-- Sam Weber
QOTD:
        The forest may be quiet, but that doesn't mean
        the snakes have gone away.
Forest fires cause Smokey Bears.
"It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot."
Q:        Why do ducks have big flat feet?
A:        To stamp out forest fires.

Q:        Why do elephants have big flat feet?
A:        To stamp out flaming ducks.
        In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
Junior, what are you up to?"
        "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
        "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!  No one
will publish such rubbish!"
        "Well, follow me and I'll show you."
        They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the
rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face.  Comes along a
wolf.  "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
        "I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour
wolves."
        "Are you crazy?  Where's your academic honesty?"
        "Come with me and I'll show you."
        As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
and a diploma in his paw.  Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave
and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge
lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody
remnants of the wolf and the fox.

        The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are
important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
                -- John Muir
Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tin'uviel!  Tin'uviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came
And doom fell on Tin'uviel
That in his arms lay glistening.

As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tin'uviel the elven-fair,
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.

Long was the way that fate them bore,
O'er stony mountains cold and grey,
Through halls of iron and darkling door,
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And long ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless."
Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess.
That was long, long ago, and each day since that day,
I've worried and worried and worried away.
Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart,
I've worried about it with all of my heart.

"BUT," says the Oncler, "now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear!
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better - it's not.
So... CATCH!" cries the Oncler.  He lets something fall.
"It's a truffula seed.  It's the last one of all!

"You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds.
And truffula trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care.
Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!"
Gibson's Springtime Song (to the tune of "Deck the Halls"):

'Tis the season to chase mousies (Fa la la la la, la la la la)
Snatch them from their little housies (...)
First we chase them 'round the field (...)
Then we have them for a meal (...)

Toss them here and catch them there (...)
See them flying through the air (...)
Watch them fly and hear them squeal (...)
Falling mice have great appeal (...)

See the hunter stretched before us (...)
He's chased the mice in field and forest (...)
Watch him clean his long white whiskers (...)
Of the blood of little critters (...)
I had an errand there: gathering water-lilies,
green leaves and lilies white to please my pretty lady,
the last ere the year's end to keep them from the winter,
to flower by her pretty feet till the snows are melted.

Each year at summer's end I go to find them for her,
in a wide pool, deep and clear, far down Withywindle;
there they open first in spring and there they linger latest.

By that pool long ago I found the River-daughter,
fair young Goldberry sitting in the rushes.
Sweet was her singing then, and her heart was beating!

And that proved well for you--for now I shall no longer
go down deep again along the forest-water,
no while the year is old.  Nor shall I be passing
Old Man Willow's house this side of spring-time,
not till the merry spring, when the River-daughter
dances down the withy-path to bathe in the water.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forest ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
                -- S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn"
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tin'uviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.

There Beren came from mountains colds,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.

Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
        A ranger was walking through the forest and encountered a hunter
carrying a shotgun and a dead loon.  "What in the world do you think you're
doing?  Don't you know that the loon is on the endagered species list?"
        Instead of answering, the hunter showed the ranger his game bag,
which contained twelve more loons.
        "Why would you shoot loons?", the ranger asked.
        "Well, my family eats them and I sell the plumage."
        "What's so special about a loon?  What does it taste like?"
        "Oh, somewhere between an American Bald Eagle and a Trumpeter Swan."
        "Many have seen Topaxci, God of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the
name of shaman," he said.  Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and
they are called sorcerers.  A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the
soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters.  But none have
seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they
are known as idio--"
        The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry
of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief
blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the
apparition vanished.
        There was a long silence.  Then a slightly shorter silence.  Then
the old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through
upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?"
        The boy looked at him levelly.  "Certainly not," he said.
        The old man heaved a sigh of relief.  "Thank goodness for that," he
said.  "Neither did I."
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
Brief History Of Linux (#4)
Walls & Windows

Most people don't realize that many of the technological innovations taken
for granted in the 20th Century date back centuries ago. The concept of a
network "firewall", for instance, is a product of the Great Wall of China,
a crude attempt to keep raging forest fires out of Chinese territory. It
was soon discovered that the Wall also kept Asian intruders ("steppe
kiddies") out, just as modern-day firewalls keep network intruders
("script kiddies") out.

Meanwhile, modern terminology for graphical user interfaces originated
from Pre-Columbian peoples in Central and South America. These natives
would drag-and-drop icons (sculptures of the gods) into vast pits of
certain gooey substances during a ritual in which "mice" (musical
instruments that made a strange clicking sound) were played to an eerie
beat.
The forest is safe because a lion lives therein and the lion is safe because
it lives in a forest.  Likewise the friendship of persons rests on mutual help.
                -- Laukikanyay.
A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing
into trees.  At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same
forest, with identical results.  They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing.
        "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally,"
apologized the rabbit.
        "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same
problem!"
        "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do
you think you could help me find out?"
        "I'll try," said the snake.  He gently coiled himself around the
rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail
and long ears.  You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!"
        "Great!" said the rabbit.  "Thanks, I really owe you one!"
        "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either.  Do you
suppose you could try and tell me?"
        The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake.  "Well, you're low, cold
and slimey..."  And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have
no balls.  You must be an attorney!"
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect
that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers
and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the
essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged.  The natural
inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued
forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
                -- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William
If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he really a
guru at all?
                -- Strange de Jim, "The Metasexuals"
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere.  A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit.  The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting.  Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years.  Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw.  This, when found, will get thrown away.  No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this.  Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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