The year in quotes

Though I am having some trouble finding any evidence of it, I am under the impression that I memorialize each year here with a selection of quotes from out of the past 364 of my daily blogposts. This serves as a rough way of looking back on this ending year as we wandered through it on clerkmanifesto.

For some of these quotes you will have to infer a bit of the context. Some of the quotes stand freely on their own. And some quotes I'm still trying to work out and so hardly can expect you to do any better with. But whichever of these apply, I present these quotes as is and without explanation.

And so without further ado:

The Year in Quotes, 2020

For every moment we dwell on the flaws of other, we will equally burn with our own.

When one wants to treat everything like a nail, one surrounds oneself with a lot of hammers.

I have my moments. And then I have a lot of other moments.

Time is just whatever happens in between washing our hands.

Every day we know generally speaking what will happen tomorrow. We are accurate enough 99 times out of a hundred. That is an amazing level of accuracy! But fucking hell that one time...

If we can get one book to one person we don't care how many people have to die!

I like to keep my jokes around here at a "modestly funny" level because I can't figure out the trick of making them "very funny"

Pandemic lockdown t-shirt: If you're reading this, one of us is probably in the wrong place

Sometimes people read Clerkmanifesto and mistakenly think I am very critical because I am very critical. So they give up before they understand that I like everything.

The Internet is a place where all human knowledge and all human ignorance are gathered together unsorted in one convenient location.

People die all the time, but almost never the right ones.

A daily library blog so witty, insightful, daring, wide ranging, and brilliant that you will soon tire of it.

When you're close enough, everything is beautiful.

Actually, I know of one, and only one virus in all the great wide world that does not kill. Love. Alas that it is a reluctant spreader.

We should just leave existence alone. It seems to like taking care of itself.

There are almost too many portents!
So if you get a dark portent, hold on. A brand new portent should be coming along just about... now.

I believe we can all learn to accept death, provided it keeps a polite distance.

If something evil is in power its opposite, its opposition, is only in one sense "good".
In another sense the opposite of evil is the incompetence that allows for it.

If the tides go far out, they must come far in.

Just because you crack the code doesn't mean it will do you any good.

One of the great and melancholic surprises of this world is how often nothing can be better than something.

Much like my childhood dog Cashew, promises abhor a vacuum.

Sometimes saying nothing is the most eloquent thing to say. But usually saying something is better.