Boren commonplace

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Commonplace Book

You can never find repartee when you need it.

–Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

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There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens and what we do.

–Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

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Bad should be overcome; bad should be stopped. That’s the American model.

–Charlaine Harris, Dead to the World

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Assumptions always seem like fact to those who hold them.

Life must struggle to survive. Life is violent. Any living being who prefers nonviolence to continued life does not continue to be alive.

To exist means to exist within a context. To be defined. To be finite.

War is the context in which peace exists; That peace is not possible without it.

Facts kill; but it is myths people give their lives for.

–John C. Wright, The Phoenix Exhultant

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Crusaders do not generally see sense until they are nailed to it.

A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.

War has a soothing, simplifying effect on politics. You don’t have to dance the issues anymore, and you can justify just about anything.

All peace has been paid for somewhere, at some time, by its opposite.

–Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

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You either kill your enemies or leave them the fuck alone.

Sometimes it’s not how much power you yield, but what you are willing to do with that power.

Sometimes you can’t have love without the power to keep it safe.

–Laurell K. Hamilton, A Kiss of Shadows

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Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come
in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out
of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in
resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember,
and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the
truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

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Dissatisfaction with his lot seems to be the charactaristic of man in all
ages and climates. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first might
be supposed, it has been a great civilizer of our race; and has tended,
more than any thing else, to raise us above the condition of brutes.

–Charles Mackay - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds, Chapter on the Alchymists

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Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object
of life is happiness.

–Orwell, from his essay on Arthur Koestler.

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On the whole human beings want to be good but not too good and
not quite all the time.

–George Orwell

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I beeseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you
may be mistaken.

–Cromwell. Letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland,
3 Aug. 1650

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I would eat my own father with such a sauce.

–Grimod de la Reymiere, cited in Brillat-Savarin p. xvii.

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Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat.

–Matthew Arnold, Poor Mathias, l.40

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Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.

–Proverbs i,17

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They say a reasonable amount o’ fleas is good for a dog - keeps him
from broodin’ over bein a dog, mebbe.

–David Harum, ch. 32 - Edward Noyes Westcott.

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The world has not promised anything to anybody.

–Moroccan proverb

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A man said to the Universe:
`Sir, I exist.’
`However’, replied the Universe,
`The fact has not instilled in me a
sense of obligation’

–Stephen Crane

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Now this religion happens to prevail
Until by that one it is overthrown, -
Because men dare not live with men alone,
But always with another fairy tale.

–Al Maari, about 1040

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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh
at them in our turn?

–Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet

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The speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love.

–Bacon

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Nobody argues that the art of navigation is not founded on astronomy
because sailors cannot wait to calculate the Nautical Almanac. Being
rational creatures they go to sea with it already calculated; and all
rational creatures go out upon the sea of life with their minds made
up on the common questions of right and wrong …

–John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism.

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My father was an eminent button maker - but I had a soul above buttons -
I panted for a liberal profession.

–George Colman, Sylvester Daggerwood, I.x.

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Examinations are formidable, even to the best prepared, for the greatest
fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

–Charles Colton, Lacon vol. i, No. 322.

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Neither let her take thee with her eyelids.

–Proverbs vi,25

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The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

–J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, p. 43.

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You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases
of your complicated state of mind,
The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a
transcendental kind.
And everyone will say,
As you walk your mystic way,
If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young
man must be!

–W. S. Gilbert, Patience

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There comes a time when rebellious young people should take their
turn as adults against whom the next wave of youngsters can rebel.

–D. Sutten, (cited in Gardner book of quotations)

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Don’t put your faith in gods. But you can believe in turtles.

–Terry Pratchett

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To absent friends, lost loves, old gods and the season of mists; may
each and every one of us always give the devil his due.

–Neil Gaiman

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Live as one already dead.

–Japanese saying

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I live in fear of not being misunderstood.

–Oscar Wilde

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Let the wave of memory, the storm of desire, the fire of emotion pass
through without affecting your equanimity.

–Sri Sathya Sai Baba

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Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,
And dream about the great and their pride;
They have spoken against you everywhere,
But weigh this song with the great and their pride;
I made it out of a mouthful of air,
Their children’s children shall say they have lied.

–Yeats

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In youth, the absence of pleasure is pain. In age, the absence of pain is
pleasure.

–Unknown

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You may have success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of
life was it? What good was it - you’ve never done the thing you wanted
to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body
and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it,
and don’t let anyone throw you off.

–Joseph Campbell

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Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question.
How does it feel to be a problem?

–W.E.B. DuBois Souls of Black Folks

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Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.

–Unknown

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Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or
how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn’t care
less.

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The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts the moment you get up in the
morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

–Robert Frost

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The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same level
of thinking we were at when we created them.

–Albert Einstein

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From “On a Book Entitled Lolita” — from “Annotated Lolita” Vintage
press

Obscenity must be mated with banality because every kind of aesthetic
enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation
which demands the traditional word for the direct action upon the
patient. Old rigid rules must be followed by the pornographer in order
to have his patient feel the same security of satisfaction as, for
example, fans of detective stories feel–stories where, if you do not
watch out, the real murderer may turn out to be, to the fan’s disgust,
artistic originality (who for instance would sant a detective story
without a single dialogue in it?). Thus, in pornographic novels,
action has to be limited to the copulation of cliches. Style,
structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid
lust. . . . Moreover, the sexual scenes in the book must follow a
crescendo line, with new variations, new combinations, new sexes, and
a steady increase in the number of participants (in a Sade play they
call the gardener in), and therefore the end of the book must be more
replete with lewd lore than the first chapters. (313)

Their refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the
theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes
which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are
concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a
complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and
grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful
life, and dies in his sleep at he age of 106. (314)

Some of the reactions were very amusing: one reader suggested that his
firm might consider publication if I turned my Lolita into a
twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a
barn, amidst gaunt and arid surroundings, all this set forth in short,
strong, “realistic” sentences (”He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I
guess. I guess God acts crazy.” Etc. (314)

I presume there exist readers who find titillating the display of
mural words in those hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are
typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called “powerful”
and “stark” by the reviewing hack. There are gentle souls who would
pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything.
I am neither a reader or writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John
Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction
exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call
aesthetic bliss, thatis a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected
with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness,
ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is
either topical trash or what some call the Literature of ideas, which
very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are
carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with
a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at
Mann. (314-315)

Another charge which some readers have made is that Lolita is
anti-American. This something that pains me considerably more than the
idiotic accusation of immorality. Considerations of depth and
perspective (a suburban lawn, a mountain meadow) led me to build a
number of North American sets. I needed a certain exhilirating
milieu. Nothing is more exhilirating than philistine vulgarity. But
in regard to philistine vulgarity there is no intrinsic difference
between Palearctic manner and Nearctic manners. Any proletarian from
Chicago can be as bourgeois (in the Flaubertian sense) as a duke. I
chose American motels instead of Swiss hotels or English inns only
because I am trying to be an American writer and claim only the same
rights that other American writers enjoy. On the other hand, my
creature Humbert is a foreigner and an anarchist, and there are many
things, besides nymphets, in which I disagree with him. And all my
Russian readers know that my old worlds—Russian, British, German,
French—are just as fantastic and personal as my new one is. (315)

************After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an
American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair
with the romantic novel. The substitution “English language” for
“romantic novel” would make this elegant formula more correct. (316)

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Viewing a row of “fashionable houses” from his hotel room, Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s narrator Miles Coverdale in the _Blithedale Romance_
laments:

“Here … there was a general sameness. From the upper-story to the
first floor, they were so much alike that I could only conceive of the
inhabitants as cut out on one identical pattern … It seemed hardly
worth while for more than one of those families to be in existence;
since they all had the same glimpse of the sky, all looked into the
same area, all received just their equal share of sunshine through the
front windows, and they all listened to precisely the same noises of
the street on which they bordered” (The Bedford Cultural Studies
Edition (1996), 148).

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I and my kind do not convince by argument; we convince by our
presence.

–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

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Anonymous: New Era Community

There are two kinds of skepticism: one benevolent, as in him who seeks
confirmation; the other fainthearted, as in a proprietor resisting
innovations.

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…the particular loved one is really only a window through which that
Immortal Beloved is glimpsed…Love is therefore in its essential
nature and in the last analysis, the worship of the divine through the
human.

–Claude Bragdon, Old Lamps for New

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The Case of Patience Worth:

Each man wrappeth his thought within his own egotism and calleth
the brat a new name.

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There’s a change in the wind,
a split in the road,
You can do what is right,
or you can do what you’re told,
But the price of victory
will belong to the bold,
For these are the days of decision.

–Phil Ochs, 1965

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“Ain’t I A Woman?” by Sojourner Truth, delivered 1851 at the Women’s
Convention in Akron, Ohio

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something
out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the
women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in
a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages,
and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody
ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any
best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have
ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head
me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man
- when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a
woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to
slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it?
[member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s
that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t
hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to
let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much
rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ
come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man
had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world
upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn
it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do
it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing
more to say.

–Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I A Woman?

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Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.

–Oscar Wilde

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..And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual
human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight
for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes,
undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or
government which limits or destroys the individual.

–John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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I say that that search for God was not reasoning, but a feeling,
because that search proceeded not from the course of my thoughts–it
was even directly contrary to them–but proceeded from the heart. It
was a feeling of fear, orphanage, isolation in a strange land, and a
hope of help from someone.

–Tolstoy

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“The Very Big Stupid is a thing which breeds by eating The
Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a
good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D
department.”

–Frank Zappa, Wired Magazine 3.11, Nov. ‘95, page 136

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At night it was simply too humid to sleep, so I read tirelessly,
relishing the aftertaste of the wonderful cuisine. Four travel
tips: 1) You can’t get a paella unless there are at least two of
you. I spent a lot of time looking for spare people who wanted
paella. 2) There is a dish called *conejo al ajillo*, which
consists of whole cloves of garlic roasted with potatoes and
rabbit. It makes your urine smell of garlic for three days and
leaves you feeling so ecstatic that you don’t care that you can’t
sleep and are being gnawed to death by mosquitoes. If you don’t
like garlic, or disapporve of extreme happines on religious or
moral grounds, try the grilled sole. It will make you only very
happy. 3) If you want the very best service, including free
liqueurs and bonbons, just place a notebook at the side of your
plate and make the occasional note in it. The proprietor will
suspect that you are a restaurant critic and will act
accordingly. 4) People taking photographs of their meals are not
critics; they are from the United States.

–Louis de Bernieres, writing about La Tomatina, an annual
festival/tomato war in Bunol, Spain. Harpers Magazine, August, 1995 pg 68.

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Promises Like Pie-Crust

Promise me no promises,
So I will not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?

You, so warm, may once have been
Warmer towards another one:
I, so cold, may once have seen
Sunlight, once have felt the sun:
Who shall show us if it was
Thus indeed in time of old?
Fades the image from the glass,
And the fortune is not told.

If you promised, you might grieve
For lost liberty again:
If I promised, I believe
I should fret to break the chain.
Let us be the friends we were,
Nothing more but nothing less:
Many thrive on frugal fare
Who would perish of excess.

–1896

–Christina Rossetti, in The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
Vol. 2 published by W.W. Norton and Co. p. 1491-1492

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…
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,-
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

–Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets xi. Harper and Rowe

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Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling,
the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it
depends on the force of the current, the height and
strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows
smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being.
..Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and
its consummation.

–Huxley

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As I was saying, one must be true to Christ. I’ll explain. What you
don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is
possible not to know whether God exists, or why, and yet believe that
man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history
as we know it now began with Christ, and that Christ’s Gospel is its
foundation. Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic
explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death.
That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic
waves, that’s why they write symphonies. Now, you can’t advance in
this direction without a certain faith. You can’t make such
discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of
this equipment are in the gospels. What are they? To begin with, love
of one’s neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it
fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then
the two basic ideals of modern man–without them he is unthinkable–the
idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrifice. Mind you,
all this is still extraordinarily new. There was no history in this
sense among the ancients. They had blood and beastliness and cruelty
and pockmocked Caligulas who do not suspect how untalented every
enslaver is. They had the boastful dead eternity of bronze monuments
and marble columns. It was not until after the coming of Christ that
time and man could breathe freely. It was not until after Him that men
began to live toward the future. Man does not die in a ditch like a
dog–but at home in history, while the work toward the conquest of
death is in full swing; he dies sharing in this work. Ouf! I got
quite worked up, didn’t I? But I might as well be talking to a blank
wall.

–Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

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Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold
Her early leaf’s a flower
But only so an hour
So leaf subsides to leaf
So eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay

–Robert Frost

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Do you know how strange it is for me to sit here talking to a machine?
I feel like a TV set playing in an empty room. I’m playing to an
empty room…. The lonliness of voices stored on tape…. The machine
makes everything a message, which narrows the range of discourse and
destroys the poetry of nobody home. People are no longer home or not
home. They’re either picking up or not picking up.

–Don DeLillo, MAO II (New York: Viking, 1991) pp. 91-92.

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From, There’s A Hole in My Sidewalk, Popular Library, New York
Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
by Portia Nelson

I.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost……I am helpless
It isn’t my fault.
I takes forever to find a way out.

II.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in, again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…..it’s a habit….
but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V.
I walk down another street.

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Hostility in the universe is neither created nor destroyed but only
displaced from one place to another.

–Wasserman’s Law of the Conservation of Hostility in the Universe

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The following is a quotation from Edwin Markham’s work. It is
entitled, “Circle” and is from a larger piece entitled,
“Outwitted”. This was found in “The Pocket Book of Quotations” edited
by Henry Davidoff, published by Pocket Books, Inc., New York,
copyright 1942.

“Circle”
He drew a circle that shut me out–
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.

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What makes the efforts of hippies and all spectacular nonconformists
so fruitless is the supernatural American capacity for production.
All here is mass-produced in a flash, everything undergoes the
stupefying process of reproduction, superproduction, and
overproduction, the process of improving and multiplying every object
in hundreds of colors, classes, versions and shapes with “something”
or without. Is there a need for nonconformity on the market?
Individuality is in demand? The industry responds immediately, and
limitless kinds, sorts, and brands of nonconformity and individuality
are furnished to the deparment stores. Millions of girls wear millions
of badges with the inscription: “I am different.” The most ambitious
swinger who yesterday invented the newest and most extravagant haircut
or shirt design today sees his idea on the street, multiplied a
thousandfold by imitation, manufactured and distributed through the
night by industry, commerce, and the mass media. Of course, the same
applies to the world of thought, ideas, and the latest accomplishments
in literature and art. (40-41)

–Leopold Tyrmand, “Notes of a Dilettante”

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All bad precedents begin with justifiable measures.

–Julius Caesar

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The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364
days of the year.

–Mark Twain

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The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

–Churchill

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A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor
does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so
should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician treats a patient,
and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

–Seneca

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A poem . . . begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a
homesickness, a lovesickness. . . . It finds the thought and the
thought finds the words.

–Robert Frost

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The olive tree is surely the richest gift of heaven.

–Thomas Jefferson

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Olives, like grapes, are essential to any life worth living.

–Mort Rosenblum

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If you are not confused, you don’t understand the situation.

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The myth of eternal return, which is still basic to Oriental life,
displays an order of fixed forms that appear and disappear through all
time.

–Joseph Campbell

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I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
with low sounds by the shore
while I stand on the roadway
or on the pavement gray
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

–Yeats, the last verse of The Lake Isle of Innisfree

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Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make it wag its tail.

–Kinky Friedman

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Remember, we’re not supporting the Cuban economy, merely burning their
fields.

–Kinky Friedman

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Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

–Marie Curie

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Meditation No. 32

Many of the anxieties that harass you are superfluous: being but
creatures of your own fancy, you can rid yourself of them and
expand into an ampler region, letting your thought sweep over the
entire universe, contemplating the illimitable tracts of eternity,

marking the swiftness of change in each created thing, and
contrasting the brief span between birth and dissolution with the
endless aeons that precede the one and the infinity that follows
the other.

–Marcus Arelius, c. A.D. 167

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Necessity is the argument of tyrants and the creed of slaves.

–William Pitt, as quoted by John Ralston Saul in “The Unconscious
Civilization”; 1995 Massey Lectures; CBC Radio, 22 November, 1995

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It’s hard to hold the hand of any man who is reaching toward the sky
just to surrender.

–Leonard Cohen

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George Orwell translates Ecclesiastes (from “Politics and the English
Language” p. 169, A Collection of Essays)

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time
and chance happeneth to them all.

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the
conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no
tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a
considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into
account. (from “Politics and the English Language” p. 169, A
Collection of Essays)

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What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

–Emerson

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Is self-deception possible, even for an omniscient being?

–Charles Sheffield, “At the Eschaton” in TOR Books’ “Far Futures”
1995 collection of hard SF novellas edited by Gregory Benford

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It is obvious, when one thinks about it, that quite often a large number of
people who know nothing about a subject will all agree and all be wrong.

–Gilbert Murray, The Five Stages of Greek Religion, Doubleday,
1951(p. 124).

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Like any child, I slipped into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver
meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on
the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in
her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she
climbs rising from the pool, and ever after.

–Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

——————————————————————————-

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.

–Goethe

——————————————————————————-

There’s no limit to our happiness as long as we’re capable of playing a part.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.

–Hume

——————————————————————————-

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

–C. Northcote Parkinson

——————————————————————————-

Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going-
Two simple happenings,
That got entangled.

–Kozan Inchigyo, 14th Cent. Zen Monk in “Graceful Exits”

——————————————————————————-

For every minute you spend angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.

–Emerson

——————————————————————————-

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But,
it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of
it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who
read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of
thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the
formation of the first link on one memorable day.

–Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, Penguin Books, p. 101

——————————————————————————-

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity-the
ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of the storm, the shock of the
earthquake, the long roll of heaven’s artillery-but the most tremendous,
the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All
momovement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest
whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of
his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of
a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggot’s
life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of
all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of God, of the
universe, comes over him-the hope of the Resurrection and the Life, the
yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence-it is
then, if ever, man walks alone with God.

–Jack London, “The White Silence”

“The Collected Jack London” Steven J. Kasdin Ed. pp. 35 Marboro Book Corp
(1991) Barnes and Noble Books, New York (1992) ISBN 0-88029-596-1

——————————————————————————-

Yet the Here and Now, which brings both joy and terror, comes
but rarely - does not come even when we call it. That’s the way it is:
life includes a lot of empty space. We are one-tenth living tissue,
nine-tenths water; life is one-tenth here and now, nine-tenths a history
lesson. For most of the time the Here and Now is neither now nor here.

–Graham Swift, Waterland, Ch. 8 (p. 61). Vintage Books, 1992.

——————————————————————————-

This passage comes from the conversation of the young fisherman Gus
Orviston and his friend “Perfessor Pockets” in David James Duncan’s novel
“THE RIVER WHY?”

“I wish I knew that, too,” I said, “but why do you holler
‘excellent!’ and ‘very good!’ when I say I wish I knew? Don’t you expect me
to say ‘God does it’ or ‘My soul does it’?”
Titus looked aghast. “Gus! I’m a philosopher, not an evangelist!
It’s the ‘wish I knew’ that’s crucial. To say ‘God does it’ and leave it at
that is to abandon the search before it’s begun. To really want the truth,
to long for it desperately, is to reject every formulation and theory and
dogma and opinion right up to the time you see and touch and unite with the
Being or Thing itself! Nobody ever discovers truth by barfing up
sunday-school anwers to questions…but where were we?”

–David James Duncan, THE RIVER WHY?. Bantam Books. P.181

——————————————————————————-

“What a strange fellowship this is, the God-seekers in every land,
lifting their voices in the most disparate ways imaginable to the God of all
life. How does it sound from above? Like bedlam, or do the strains blend in
a strange, ethereal harmony? Does one faith carry the lead, or do the parts
share in counterpoint and antiphony where not in full-throated chorus?
We cannot know. All we can do is try to listen carefully and with full
attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine.”

–Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, p. 2.
HarperSanFrancisco, 1958, 1991.

——————————————————————————-

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be
stiffled. I want all the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house
as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

–Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

——————————————————————————-

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is
open to him.

–Walker Percy, from “The Last Gentleman”, 1966

——————————————————————————-

Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.
As a nation we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.”
We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except
negroes.” When the Know-Nothings, get control, it will read
“all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners
and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating
to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty- to
Russia where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base
alloy of hypocrisy.

–Lincoln, Letter to Joshua F. Speed, Aug. 24, 1855.
“Lincoln- Selected Speeches and Writings”, Vintage/Library of America,
p105.

——————————————————————————-

Those who boggle at strong language are cowards, because it is real
life which is shocking them, and weaklings like that are the very people
who cause most harm to culture and character. They would like to see
the nation grow up into a group of over-sensitive little people -
masturbators of false culture of the type of St Aloysius, of whom it is said
in the book of the monk Eustachius that when he heard a man breaking
wind with deafening noise he immediately burst into tears and could
only be consoled by prayers.

–Jaroslav Hasek, epilogue to Part I of “The Good Soldier Svejk”

——————————————————————————-

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the
government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the
government of others? Or have we found angels in the form
of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

–Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 18

——————————————————————————-

Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always
so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I
who suffers, not the state.

–Mark Twain

——————————————————————————-

The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the
laws of happiness is higher than happiness - that is what one must
contend against.

–Dostoevsky

——————————————————————————-

You don’t write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a
safe out of a vague longing to be rich.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

A week ago I understood everything. Then I solved this mystery, and
now I’m completely confused.

–George Dawes Green, The Caveman’s Valentine

——————————————————————————-

What theory can fight with darkness.

–Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

——————————————————————————-

No one grieves at the GAP.

–O.K. Werckmeister, in conversation

——————————————————————————-

When we say a thing or an event is real, never mind how suspect it
sounds, we honor it. But when a thing is made up — regardless of how
true and just it seems — we turn up our noses. That’s the age we live
in. The documentary age. As if we can never, never get enough facts.

–Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

——————————————————————————-

It is agreed by most of the people I know that Conrad is a bad writer,
just as it is agreed that T.S. Eliot is a good writer. If I knew that
by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine, dry powder and sprinkling that
powder over Mr. Conrad’s grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear,
looking very annoyed at the forced return, and commence writing I
would leave for London early tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder.

–Ernest Hemingway, “Conrad, Optimist and Moralist,” Transatlantic
Review Oct. 1924

——————————————————————————-

It was an invasive life form, devastating and promiscuous. It showed a
kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that
it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.

–Richard Preston, The Hot Zone

——————————————————————————-

No bugs, no pigs, no slugs
no things that crawl or hop
no blood without a wound
no shoes on holy ground
eight tiny reindeer on the roof
you’d better watch out, you’d better not cry
a jolly old man with a beard and a whip
and a string of frozen drool hanging from his lip.

–Thom Metzger, “All Right, Everybody on the Floor!” Semiotext(e) SF

——————————————————————————-

A prison, even though entirely surrounded by walls, is a splendidly
illuminated theater of history.

–Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

——————————————————————————-

I feel the same way about my spatial freedom as I’ve noticed men feel
about their testicles. I cradle it like a baby, and worship it like a
goddess.

–Peter Hoeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow

——————————————————————————-

Don’t think!
Thinking is the enemy of creativity.
It’s self conscious,
and anything self conscious is lousy.
You can’t try to do things;
you simply must do them.

–Ray Bradbury

——————————————————————————-

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest
and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

–H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”

——————————————————————————-

Show me a family and I’ll show you a secret story of suffering … and
of misery and disappointment and broken dreams.

–Eli Gottlieb

——————————————————————————-

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand
stars how not to dance.

–e.e. cummings

——————————————————————————-

He who has a why to live for can bear any how.

–Nietzsche

——————————————————————————-

Courage and endurance are useless if they are never tested.

–Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

——————————————————————————-

Express a life that has never found expression.

–Yeats

——————————————————————————-

Decry the prostituting of epiphany as a commercial product that turns
fiction into a pseudo-instruction manual.

——————————————————————————-

Without doubt, the only thing that makes man’s life on earth essential
and necessary is love.

–Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

——————————————————————————-

Life is like a game of cards.
The hand that is dealt you represents determinism;
the way you play it is free will.

–Jawaharlal Nehru

——————————————————————————-

Reading furnishes the mind only with material for knowledge; it is
thinking that makes what we read ours.

–John Locke

——————————————————————————-

Skepticism is the only wisdom.

–Montaigne

——————————————————————————-

… I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

–William Shakespeare

——————————————————————————-

Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good
we oft might win
by fearing to attempt.

–William Shakespeare

——————————————————————————-

We are here on earth to fart around.

–Kurt Vonnegut

——————————————————————————-

In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another
human being. We should all be thankful for those people
who rekindle the inner spirit.

–Albert Schweitzer

——————————————————————————-

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love
is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof
are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

-Song of Songs

——————————————————————————-

In the kitchen of love vice is like pepper in a good sauce; it brings
out the flavor, it is indispensable.

–Céline

——————————————————————————-

One way or another, kissing is as indispensable as scratching.

–Céline

——————————————————————————-

The unique and supreme pleasure of making love lies in the certitude
of doing evil.

–Baudelaire

——————————————————————————-

Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

–Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

——————————————————————————-

The life that does no more than maintain itself, denies itself.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

…faith in personal comfort as an end in itself is, in essence, a
denial of life.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

There are only two stories in all of literature - a man goes on a
journey, a stranger comes to town.

–Tolstoy

——————————————————————————-

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

–Tennyson

——————————————————————————-

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what
they lack.

–Harry Emerson Fosdick

——————————————————————————-

What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork.

–Pearl Bailey

——————————————————————————-

In the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what
we understand. We will understand only what we are taught.

–Baba Dioum

——————————————————————————-

Math is like love — a simple idea but it can get complicated.

–R. Drabek

——————————————————————————-

All mankind loves a lover.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

——————————————————————————-

Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real
with the ideal never goes unpunished.

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

——————————————————————————-

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

–Thomas Haynes Bayly

——————————————————————————-

Burning desire is the eternal flame.

–Doug Horton

——————————————————————————-

A man is in love when something in his head, something in his chest
and something in his pants react to a certain woman.

–Brian Hwang

——————————————————————————-

Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride
wortwhile.

–Franklin P. Jones

——————————————————————————-

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger
for bread.

–Mother Teresa

——————————————————————————-

Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the
wind blows out a candle, and blows in a fire.

–La Rochefoucauld

——————————————————————————-

There is only one happiness in life: to love and be loved.

–George Sand

——————————————————————————-

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.

–Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam

——————————————————————————-

People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.

–Douglas Yates

——————————————————————————-

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to
endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

——————————————————————————-

A man should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and
die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

–Robert A. Heinlein

——————————————————————————-

People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid.

–Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

——————————————————————————-

To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

–W.H. Auden, Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier

——————————————————————————-

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

–Henry David Thoreau

——————————————————————————-

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get
in, and those inside desperate to get out.

–Michel de Montaigne

——————————————————————————-

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

–Henry Kissinger

——————————————————————————-

Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

–Lady Caroline Lamb, on Lord Byron

——————————————————————————-

There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

–Emily Dickinson, “A Book”

——————————————————————————-

All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and
the books of all time.

–John Ruskin

——————————————————————————-

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who
shares the same books.

–Katherine Mansfield

——————————————————————————-

A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.

–Raymond Chandler

——————————————————————————-

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

–Herman Melville

——————————————————————————-

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.

–Colette

——————————————————————————-

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

–George Orwell, 1984

——————————————————————————-

The waste basket is the writer’s best friend.

–Isaac Singer

——————————————————————————-

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

–James Thurber

——————————————————————————-

Books are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ‘em, then we
grow out of ‘em and leave ‘em behind, as evidence of our earlier
stages of development.

–Dorothy L. Sayers

——————————————————————————-

Making a book is a craft, as is making a clock; it takes more than wit
to become an author.

–Jean de LaBruyère

——————————————————————————-

Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the universities stifle
writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s
many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

–Flannery O’Connor

——————————————————————————-

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to
be chewed and digested.

–Francis Bacon

——————————————————————————-

How many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be
In the atmosphere
Of a new-fallen year, -
Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of Eternity.
So many times do I love thee, dear.

How many times do I love thee, again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain.
Unravelled from the tumbling main.
And threading the eye of a silver star, -
So many times do I love thee, again!

–Thomas Lovell Beddoes

——————————————————————————-

Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care.
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet,
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.

–William Blake

——————————————————————————-

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible

worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true.

–James Branch Cabell

——————————————————————————-

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.

–Oscar Ameringer

——————————————————————————-

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

–Danny Kaye

——————————————————————————-

I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.

–John Keats

——————————————————————————-

I was happy but happy is an adult word. You don’t have to ask a
child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk
being happy because largely they are not. Talking about it is the
same as trying to catch the wind. Much easier to let it blow all over
you.

–Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

——————————————————————————-

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until
they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

–Anais Nin

——————————————————————————-

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one’s sleep
under so many lids.

–Rilke

——————————————————————————-

We accept the risk that words and ideas have wings we cannot clip and
which carry them we know not where.

–US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in free speech case Winter v.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons (938 F.2d at 1035), 1991.

——————————————————————————-

What hath night to do with sleep?

–John Milton

——————————————————————————-

The more the critical reason dominates, the more impoverished life
becomes; but the more of the unconscious and the more of myth we are
capable of making conscious, the more of life we integrate. Overvalued
reason has this in common with political absolutism: under its
dominion the individual is pauperized.

–Karl Jung

——————————————————————————-

Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough!

–P.A.C. de Beaumarchais

——————————————————————————-

Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond
the need to reason elaborately.

–Saul Bellow

——————————————————————————-

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

–Muriel Rukeyser

——————————————————————————-

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on
creating oneself endlessly.

–Henri Bergson

——————————————————————————-

Words have a longer life than deeds.

–Pindar

——————————————————————————-

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

–Voltaire

——————————————————————————-

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

——————————————————————————-

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.

–John F. Kennedy

——————————————————————————-

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you will cease to be so.

–John Stewart Mill

——————————————————————————-

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever,
then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for
knowledge, experience, and creation.

–Anaïs Nin

——————————————————————————-

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

–Arthur Schoperhauer

——————————————————————————-

Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful
impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

–Robert Louis Stevenson

——————————————————————————-

For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.

–Unknown

——————————————————————————-

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

–Howard Aiken

——————————————————————————-

Most plans are just inaccurate predictions.

–Ben Bayol

——————————————————————————-

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income.

–Samuel Butler

——————————————————————————-

Intelligence is nothing without delight.

–Paul Claudel

——————————————————————————-

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of
those we don’t like?

–Jean Cocteau

——————————————————————————-

When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

–Ralph Ellison

——————————————————————————-

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked
throughout the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient
proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the
last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given
set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

–Viktor Frankl

——————————————————————————-

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

——————————————————————————-

Prophecy is many times the principal cause of the events foretold.

–Thomas Hobbes

——————————————————————————-

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when
you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.

–Doug Hofstadter

——————————————————————————-

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that
is an idea whose time has come.

–Victor Hugo

——————————————————————————-

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

–Danny Kaye

——————————————————————————-

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot’s at the other end.

–Bert Whitney

——————————————————————————-

Make voyages! Attempt them… there’s nothing else.

–Tennessee Williams

——————————————————————————-

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree
of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek
exactness where only an approximation is possible.

–Aristotle

——————————————————————————-

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge, of things without parallel.

–Ambrose Bierce

——————————————————————————-

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be nullified on behalf of a
single petitioner, admittedly unworthy.

–Ambrose Bierce

——————————————————————————-

For my part, the longer I live the less I feel the need of any sort of
theological belief, and the more I am content to let unseen powers go
on their way with me and mine without question or distrust.

–John Burroughs

——————————————————————————-

If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that
alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go.

–John Burroughs

——————————————————————————-

It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally
affirmative.

–John Burroughs

——————————————————————————-

Ignorance is the mother of devotion.

–Robert Burton

——————————————————————————-

Logic is like the sword — those who appeal to it shall perish by it.

–Samuel Butler

——————————————————————————-

I’m still an atheist, thank God.

–Luis Buñuel

——————————————————————————-

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not crucify him. They
would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.

–Thomas Carlyle

——————————————————————————-

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the
first one was useless.

–Chamfort

——————————————————————————-

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
create him.

–Arthur C. Clarke

——————————————————————————-

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.

–Benjamin Disraeli

——————————————————————————-

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

I want to know the thoughts of God. Everything else is just details.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable
superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able
to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an
hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a
minute. That’s relativity.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

–James Feibleman

——————————————————————————-

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the
ability to function.

–F. Scott Fitzgerald

——————————————————————————-

If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?

–Art Hoppe

——————————————————————————-

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.

–Elbert Hubbard

——————————————————————————-

The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.

–Robert G. Ingersoll

——————————————————————————-

Religion is the opium of the masses.

–Karl Marx

——————————————————————————-

There’s always an easy solution to every human problem — neat,
plausible, and wrong.

–Henry Louis Mencken

——————————————————————————-

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

–Christopher Morley

——————————————————————————-

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic
depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient
is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty — I call it
the one mortal blemish of mankind.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

——————————————————————————-

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

——————————————————————————-

Nature recycles itself. History repeats itself. Religion has faith in
itself. Technology creates itself. Humanity loves itself.

–Mark Putzke

——————————————————————————-

There is only one blasphemy, and that is the refusal to experience joy.

–Paul Rudnick

——————————————————————————-

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

–Bertrand Russell

——————————————————————————-

Man is a credulous animal and must believe something. In the absence
of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

–Bertrand Russell

——————————————————————————-

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence;
it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

–Bertrand Russell

——————————————————————————-

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.

–Bertrand Russell

——————————————————————————-

Don’t remember what you can infer.

–Harry Tennant

——————————————————————————-

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

–Alan Turing

——————————————————————————-

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I
consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

–Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

——————————————————————————-

Every dogma must have its day.

–H. G. Wells

——————————————————————————-

I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

–Oscar Wilde

——————————————————————————-

A Christian is a man who feels repentance on Sunday for what he did on
Saturday and is going to do on Monday.

–Thomas Ybarra

——————————————————————————-

Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
religion; rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
Western science.

–Gary Zukav

——————————————————————————-

Given two unrelated technical terms, an internet search engine will
retrieve only resumes.

–Joshua Eli Schachter

——————————————————————————-

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never
give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.

– Abraham Lincoln

——————————————————————————-

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

– Beckett

——————————————————————————-

Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel
less responsible — but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with
the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are –”

– Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity’s Rainbow_

——————————————————————————-

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.

– Benjamin Franklin

——————————————————————————-

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get
used to the idea.

– Robert A. Heinlein

——————————————————————————-

Indeed, computer crime, as it is often called, is one of the few ways
to keep entertained in the suburbs.

– Jason Kroll, “Free Kevin, Kevin Freed”

——————————————————————————-

On a Sunday afternoon, when the shudders are down and the proletariat
possesses the street in a kind of dumb torpor, there are certain
thoroughfares which remind one of nothing less than a big chancrous
cock laid open longitudinally.

–Miller, Tropic of Cancer

——————————————————————————-

….how palatable is a polluted woman, how a change of semen can make
a woman bloom.

–Miller

——————————————————————————-

Life consists in what a man is thinking all day.

–Emerson

——————————————————————————-

In America I had a number of Hindu friends, some good, some bad, some
indifferent.

–Miller

——————————————————————————-

The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this
dung-heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

–Miller

——————————————————————————-

For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish
it he will wade through blood. –Miller

——————————————————————————-

…pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter.

–Miller

——————————————————————————-

…like a salad of despair, in a gray dressing of ash…

–Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

——————————————————————————-

Shall I project a world?

–Pynchon

——————————————————————————-

Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual
relevance to you.

–Pynchon

——————————————————————————-

All I ask of life, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch
of cunt.

–Miller

——————————————————————————-

For all things fade and quickly become legend, soon to be lost in
utter forgetting.

–Aurelius

——————————————————————————-

The safest course is to tempt fortune rarely. –Seneca

——————————————————————————-

There are so many places to go and yet so few places to stand and
relax.

–Mingus

——————————————————————————-

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

– Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

——————————————————————————-

When fate changes horses the rider is carried along.

–Byron

——————————————————————————-

Vague memories, nothing but memories.

–Yeats

——————————————————————————-

The whole content of my being shrieks in contradiction against itself.
Existence is surely a debate.

–Kierkegaard

——————————————————————————-

It’s impossible just to suffer the pain, you have to suffer its
meaning.

–Philip Roth

——————————————————————————-

The “I” of the moment dies, never to be reborn.

–Huston Smith

——————————————————————————-

To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to create life out of life.

–James Joyce

——————————————————————————-

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.

–Brillat-Savarin

——————————————————————————-

There is a God, and his name is Aristophanes.

–Heinrich Heine

——————————————————————————-

… the deep difficulty of excellence.

–Spinoza

——————————————————————————-

After the first death, there is no other.

–Dylan Thomas

——————————————————————————-

My experience is that personal philosophies have a shelf life of about
two weeks.

–Philip Roth

——————————————————————————-

We must perish, we must be reborn, the great turn has come for us.

–Hermann Hesse

——————————————————————————-

He who wishes to enjoy the protection of the herd knows nothing of the
joy of his own mind and fantasy.

–Walter Sorrell

——————————————————————————-

No fatherland and no ideals exist for me any longer. They are mere
emblems for those gentlemen preparing the next battle.

–Hermann Hesse

——————————————————————————-

I cannot believe in the improving function of killing.

–Hermann Hesse

——————————————————————————-

To live is to be condemned, but it is also to make choices; a
determinism and a freedom.

–Octavio Paz

——————————————————————————-

Olives, like grapes, are essential to any life worth living.

–Mort Rosenblum

——————————————————————————-

A man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory.

–Keats

——————————————————————————-

You can be a virgin in horror the same as in sex.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

Men are the thing to be afraid of, always, men and nothing else.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

Lying, fucking, dying. A law had been passed prohibiting all other
activity.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but
it seems to succeed almost every time.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

In the kitchen of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good
sauce; it brings out the flavor; it’s indispensable.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

Love is harder to give up than life.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

The storm shall not wake thee, no shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

–Rudyard Kipling

——————————————————————————-

There are no second acts in American life.

–F. Scott Fitzgerald

——————————————————————————-

Self-pity is just sorrow in the perjorative.

–Renata Adler

——————————————————————————-

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical; both green,
both beautiful.

–Kazantzaki

——————————————————————————-

The unique and supreme pleasure of making love lies in the certitude
of doing evil.

–Baudelaire

——————————————————————————-

When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced,
the motives supply themselves.

–Celine

——————————————————————————-

Death has such a pleading tongue in what is called its silence.

–Elizabeth Barrett Browning

——————————————————————————-

I’m a freak of the universe… a thinking animal.

–Alfred Bester

——————————————————————————-

Too many waltzes have ended.

–Wallace Stevens

——————————————————————————-

The windy sky cries out a literate despair.

–Wallace Stevens

——————————————————————————-

These days of disinheritance we feast on human heads.

–Wallace Stevens

——————————————————————————-

He who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else.

–Johnson

——————————————————————————-

America is my home. I insistent upon the right to criticize her.

–James Baldwin

——————————————————————————-

Then love was the pearl of his oyster,
And Venus rose red out of wine.

–Dolores

——————————————————————————-

There’s a whining at the threshold,
There’s a scratching at the floor.
To Work! To Work! In Heaven’s name!
The wolf is at the door.

–C.P.S Gilman

——————————————————————————-

How often when they find a sage
As sweet as Socrates or Plato
They hand him hemlock for his wage
Or bake him like a sweet potato!

–Don Marquis

——————————————————————————-

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.

–F. von Hardenberg (Novalis)

——————————————————————————-

America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

–John Quincy Adams

——————————————————————————-

Every time you find an inquisition you find editors and politicians
and preachers justifying it by saying, “We are imperiled.”

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

If your God is forgetful of your life, keep your life. Your life is
all that matters.

–Jean-Baptiste Rossi

——————————————————————————-

The life that does no more than maintain itself, denies itself.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

Americans everywhere face gunfire better than guilt.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

By packaging Success with Virtue, we make a Failure a moral defeat.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

Ugliness and beauty, the grotesque and the tragic, and even the good
and evil, go their separate ways: Americans do not like to think that
such extremes can mingle.

–Nelson Algren

——————————————————————————-

There seems to be some correlation between devotion to God and a
misguided zeal for marshmallows.

–David Sedaris

——————————————————————————-

Sweet merciful Christ on a cracker…

–David Sedaris

——————————————————————————-

Move most gently if move you must
In their lonely place

–Yeats

——————————————————————————-

…as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean…

–Coleridge

——————————————————————————-

Beauty she was statue cold.

–James Elroy Flecker

——————————————————————————-

Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to coounterfeit a gloom.

–John Milton

——————————————————————————-

One unclouded blaze of living light.

–Byron

——————————————————————————-

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

–Emerson

——————————————————————————-

And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in the aspect of her eyes.

–Byron

——————————————————————————-

Her hair as black as the raven’s wing,
Skin — honey dark and sweet as sin.

–Richard Overcombe

——————————————————————————-

His real motive was the strongest known to humanity,
the need to torment himself.

–Penelope Fitzgerald

——————————————————————————-

Absence diminishes common place passions and enhances great ones.

–

——————————————————————————-

He who lives upon hope will die fasting.

–

——————————————————————————-

Catastrophes have a funny way of sorting things out.

–Victor Hugo

——————————————————————————-

The things I know, anyone can know –
but my heart is mine and mine alone.

–Vonnegut

——————————————————————————-

Mean are jerks. Women are psychotic.
The world is held together by dirt.

–Vonnegut

——————————————————————————-

What a nonsense we make of our hatreds when we can only recognize them
in the most obvious of circumstances.

–

——————————————————————————-

Numbers win. Not righteousness.

——————————————————————————-

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

–Emerson

——————————————————————————-

What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love
unworthy.

–Martin Amis

——————————————————————————-

There’s nothing more boring than someone vacillating over something
you know they’re going to do.

–Martin Amis

——————————————————————————-

Insects and death always turn toward you.

–Martin Amis

——————————————————————————-

Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely,
he mutely craved to adore.

–Joyce

——————————————————————————-

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.

–Mark Twain

——————————————————————————-

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers
that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

–Alexis de Tocqueville

——————————————————————————-

The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at
some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will
torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their
consciences.

–C.S. Lewis

——————————————————————————-

Jazz is the teacher. Funk is the preacher.

——————————————————————————-

If I can’t dance, I want no part in your revolution.

–Emma Goldman

——————————————————————————-

History is the sensibility of one time, assessing another time, that it
cannot possibly know.

–Bruce Sterling

——————————————————————————-

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

–George Bernard Shaw

——————————————————————————-

Every new law is a new opportunity for graft.

–Robert Heinlein, Red Planet

——————————————————————————-

Life is a sexually transmitted terminal illness.

——————————————————————————-

One must be silent, if one can’t give any help.

–Kafka

——————————————————————————-

“…the blissful security of the moment.”

–Kierkegaard

——————————————————————————-

Down with love and all its theatrics.

–Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

——————————————————————————-

I am a sober man, and the state trooper wrote me a ticket to confirm
my sober crime.

–Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

——————————————————————————-

I am pleased to have an enemy who is not symbolic.

–Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

——————————————————————————-

Our life is no dream, but ought to be and perhaps will become sex.

–Novalis

——————————————————————————-

Love makes those young whom age doth chill,
And whom he finds young, keeps young still.

——————————————————————————-

Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers–all depending on what
you are looking for.

–Roger von Oech

——————————————————————————-

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by
boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

–Saul Steinberg

——————————————————————————-

Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.

–Lazarus Long

——————————————————————————-

There’s no fundamental conflict between evolution science and
religious belief, but there is a fundamental conflict between
evolution and “creation science” which is, in my opinion, largely a
scam.

–rodii at mefi

——————————————————————————-

If one truly believes in an all-powerful deity, and one looks around
at the condition of the universe, one is drawn inescapably to the
conclusion that God is a malign thug.

–Mark Twain

——————————————————————————-

On naked women glasses work for me the way spike heels or a snake
tattoo or an ankle bracelet or a fake beauty spot work for some men –
they make the nudity pop out at me; they make the woman seem more
naked than she would have seemed if she were completely naked.

I have no sympathy for compulsions other than my own.

The idea of trying to commit suicide over a box of vibrating dildos
with a tape gun held at my temple struck me as almost comic.

I couldn’t help noting to myself with some satisfaction how
suprisingly spermatious the ballhairs themselves appeared, with their
long wispy tails and their ovoid follicle heads: hair-sperms
surrounding the egg-like testicles, trying to fertilize them, as if my
body were offering to anyone who cared to look its own magnified,
three-dimensional representation of the task that my gonads were
programming their product to perform.

I fanned the coals so strenuously and rapidly with the Arts section of
the Globe that my balls started flapping backwad and forward in
exactly the same rhythym as my arms. It was a unique experience, to
be able to feel those cocktail onions to-ing and fro-ing with such
gusto. … “My balls are actually flapping. It’s a new experience.”

There is nothing as sexy as seeing a solid young dyke coming with her
legs bent in a diamond shape, feet together, and one of those Hitachi
camping flashlights, those Hitachi huge-eyed deep-sea exotic fishes,
doing its blunt tireless thing in her Marianas Trench.

Though not a devotee of food-sex mixtures as a general rule (not
whipped cream, not peanut butter, not champagne), I do think avocado
flesh is so extremely similar in its slippery bland softness to the
labial rheology that it makes sense for a woman to cup half of one in
her hand and press it against herself so that the big nub of the seed
noses into her natcho.

I invariably feel lucid and pleased with life after a shower anyway
(there is an illusion of mental acuity that accompanies a thoroughly
moistened and rejuvenated sinus-system and the sensation of wet
hair-ends on the base of the neck).

There was, after all, an infinitude of complicated and intellectually
rewarding ideas in the world that I might use my morning of otium
liberale to consider, helped toward states of scholarly attentiveness
by the intrinsic good of the blue sky, and if I gave my hindbrain the
slightest opportunity to work up a comely sexual shape, my meditative
range would inevitably narrow, the sex-thoughts would replicate
busily, they would begin to polymerize, forming short, slippery
narrative chains which would bind with other formerly innocent images
and voluptualize them, contorting themselves like lipoproteins into
self-contained masturbatory sub-realities, and from there into fully
realized frigments of my invagination.

I began to write a story that I hoped would interest her on some more
or less debased level.

Every time I typed the word “she” or “her” I slowed way down to press
the component letters, overcome in the act of placing a feminine
pronoun on the page by an almost irrestible need to whale on my bone.

I discovered that the sensation of the halves of my upraised ass being
out of contact with each other — the sensation of a sligt evaporative
coolness on my very asshole, and on the usually damp stretched skin
high up on the sides of my balls — was most interesting. I didn’t
want anything to go in my asshole, no, no, I just wanted it out in the
open, sunlit for once, flaunting wavewards its showered cleanness,
exposed in a way that was both lewd and vulnerable.

Her clit looked as if it were ready to jump up and propose a toast to
old friends.

Just before a woman takes a bath, as the water is running, her nudity
suddenly releases all of its charged ions of lewdness and becomes
wholly artistique: she is naked in order to bathe herself, and bathe
is such as smooth-surfaced, wide-voweled, modest word that you can
appreciate the particulars of her beauty without any of your own
erectile fierceness getting in the way.

No expression is as impassive as a woman’s seen in a rear-view mirror:
it has an impassiveness so impartial and comprehensive that it cries
out to be surprised.

I love modesty, or Modesty; I love to see and kiss Modesty and suck
Modesty’s nipples and whisper to Modesty how arrestingly modest she
is.

Lovers are the only people who will put up with hearing your dreams.

There is no satisfactory autoerotic substitute for a kiss.

–Nicholson Baker, The Fermata

——————————————————————————-

I don’t get choked up about a bunch of yellow ribbons and American
flags. I consider them symbols and I leave symbols to the ‘Symbol
Minded’.

–George Carlin

——————————————————————————-

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

——————————————————————————-

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

–Andre Gide

——————————————————————————-

Bring me into the company of those who seek the truth, and deliver me
from those who have found it.

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge
is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

–Albert Einstein

——————————————————————————-

For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor
to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it.

– Thomas Jefferson

——————————————————————————-

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and
the messenger will be rejected.

–Gandhi

——————————————————————————-

Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel
that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.

–Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

——————————————————————————-

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

–Oscar Wilde

——————————————————————————-

As Hillel famously put it: “What is hateful to you do not do to your
neighbor. That is the whole Torah: The rest is commentary. Now go and
study.”

The fewer dogmas, the fewer disputes; the fewer disputes, the fewer
miseries: if this is not true, then I’m wrong.

–Voltaire, A Treatise on Toleration

——————————————————————————-

American relativism as defined in Federalist Paper no. 1:

“So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give
a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise
and good men on the wrong as well as the on the right side of
questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if
duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who
are ever so thoroughly persuaded of their being in the right in any
controversy.”

–Publius (Alexander Hamilton)

——————————————————————————-

The circumstances of the world are so variable, that an irrevocable
purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.

–W.H. Seward

——————————————————————————-

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by
many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in
your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the
authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions
because they have been handed down for many generations. But after
observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with
reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then
accept it and live up to it.

–Buddha

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of
urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

–Justice Thurgood Marshall, 1989

“My country, right or wrong” is a thing that no patriot would think of
saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying “My mother,
drunk or sober.”

–G.K. Chesterton, “The Defendant”

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all
others because you were born in it.

–George Bernard Shaw

The duty of all things is to give joy; if they do not give joy they
are either useless or harmful.

– Jorge Luis Borges

No cause, no God, no abstract idea can justify the mass slaughter of
innocents.

– Edward Said

A friend might well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.

–Blaise Pascal

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

–George Bernard Shaw

Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.

–Frederick Brooks Jr., “The Mythical Man Month”

Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.

–Marshall McLuhan

An intellectual is a person knowledgable in one field who speaks out only
in others.

–Unknown

That’s the good thing about the Dark Side.

Eventually, your eyes adjust.

–James Lileks

Americans, for the most part, don’t share in the reflexive hostility to religion found in the upper reaches of journalism and the academy. On the other hand, Americans don’t like self-righteous busybodies — whether of the PC left or the religious right — telling them how to live, either.

–Glenn Reynolds

“Today’s Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.”
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality.”
–Orwell