"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

- Shakespeare in Hamlet Act 1, Scene 2

axiom

"Winners never quit and quitters never win."
- Ted Turner who lost $10 million per day over three years, but who now owns about two million acres of land, which is greater than the land areas of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Turner's land has a higher GDP than Belize.  

"I know when I’m picking up momentum. I just know it. I just know when I’m around the right people, that things are going to start to work for me."

- Kevin Costner

"I love London; it's like Europe but in English."
- Matt LeBlanc quoting his producer

"Most history is made by young people."
- Niall Ferguson

In 1644 the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, hanged himself in shame. 

"Rejoice when people die; mourn when they're born."
- Gregg Allman's Bible interpretation

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-Ernest Hemingway

a place to eat in D.C.

http://www.benschilibowl.com

advice

"Stay focused and do what you do well."
- Steve Jobs to Larry Page

modus operandi

"All standups are innately insecure. Who would stand on a stage by themselves and say: 'Laugh!' 'Laugh with me!' 'Laugh at me!' 'I don't care: Just laugh!' They're all very damaged. They need that reassurance; it's all a cover."
- Melissa Rivers

"The wider world perceives fashion sometimes as frivolity that should be done away with in the face of social upheavals. The problems are enormous. The point is in fact that fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life. I don't think you could do away with it. It'd be like doing away with civilization."
- Bill Cunningham, octogenarian New York Times photographer

crackleure

Photo source here.

"He was forty years older than me, but he exuded life."
- Françoise Gilot who married Picasso when she was twenty-two and he was sixty-two

Portrait by Henry Lamb

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
- L. P. Hartley

“Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it. Myself included.”

- Pablo Picasso

portrait of an unknown man

Diego Velázquez, 17th Century

Image source here.

"O, I could weep. My spirit from mine eyes!"
- Shakespeare 

a place to buy shoes in London

http://www.gjcleverley.co.uk

How to make a Black Velvet here.

Johnny Carson's diet included Vodka and unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes; he lived to the age of 79.

"All Scotland needs is a good roof."
- Sean Connery

love your enemies

“Critics are our friends, they show us our faults.” 
- Benjamin Franklin

reality

"[To believe that is to think that] a bull won't attack you because you're a vegetarian."
- Daymond John

fear

"People with serious mental health problems are more of a risk to themselves and more of a risk of being victimized than being a danger to anyone else."
- Dr. Kwame McKenzie, Centre for Addition and Mental Health

cortisone

"Soon the pain felt wonderful, almost sweet, because it was the kind that you can tell precedes relief. But maybe all pain is like that."
- Andre Agassi in Open, p. 5

"Sweet are the uses of adversity"
- Shakespeare

"Don't think about being perfect, because whenever a quarterback thinks of being perfect something [negative] changes in his mechanism."
- Baltimore Ravens coach to rookie 

"Don't be nervous."
- The advice Don Rickles received from his wife in the wings minutes before his first Tonight Show appearance in 1965

"Fear causes hesitation ... and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true."
- Patrick Swayze in Point Break

Orioles like oranges

Photo credit here.

Orioles often eat fruit and can be attracted with orange halves placed on platform feeders, a deck railing, or nailed to a tree.

Text credit here. 

"the process is an unsolved problem"

"These mountains were not magnificent, which is what I liked about them."
- Rackstraw Downes

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
- Honore de Balzac

From failure to success:

"Not a man's man."
- LBJ's assessment of JFK as reported by historian Robert Caro

a place to stay in Miami

http://www.raleighhotel.com

"I've had enough success that if I was driven by success I'd be happy."
- Garry Shandling

sounds reasonable

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

- George Bernard Shaw

success, sinner, comeback

Q: How many second chances does anyone deserve?

A: Isn't history loaded with people who have fallen and gotten up, fallen and gotten up, fallen and gotten up? As many chances as anyone is willing to take.

I can't read, I don't know how to write

Guy & Clapton

"Everybody want to go to Heaven, but don't nobody want to die."
- Buddy Guy quoting Albert King

A place to stay in Copenhagen

Details here.

charity

"To give and not count the cost"
- Saint Ignatius of Loyola

'Ruffalo-ed'

When what first appears to be bad luck turns out to be good luck.

Axiom

"The toughest paths lead to the best destinations."

wit

"You'll be fossilized before I forgive you."
- Kirstie Allsopp

a place to eat in Norland

http://www.riverside-inn.ca/

"As much as 30% of us will experience mental illness at some point in our lives."
- Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist

A "perfect game" in bowling is 12 strikes in a row, resulting in a score of 300.

Waitress: Tanqueray and Tab.
Ernie McCracken: Keep 'em comin', sweets, I got a long drive. Do me a favor, will you? Would you mind washing off that perfume before you come back to our table?

- 1996's "Kingpin"

a taste of other lives

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

"[The sculptures depict] the shadows that people cast."
- Alberto Giacometti [1901-1966]

replacements

One person dies every six minutes on Indian roads, while one child is born every second [in India].

1926

Beggars, Havana, Cuba

"Everybody wants everything. It's just that they have to get practical and they settle."

- Alice Neel