Quotes and Literature

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Lately I've gotten really heavy into reading again (Had the time with all these damn server maintenances), anyway, I just finished Neil Gaiman's "American God's" again, in preperation for the sequel "Anansi Boy's", both of which were amazing reads.

So now I've gone back to the well of older books I really really enjoyed. It was a tossup between J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" or Aleister Crowley's "Diary of a Drug Fiend".

Crowley won out in the end as I've read Catcher more recently. Anyway, this book is full of amazing quotes. I love quotes so Ill post some of my favorites here. Not everyones cup of tea, but servers are down and I think its interesting.

"There are no things as human companions. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease- that of thinking."

I'll update as I hit them, some may spark interesting conversation at least >.>

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[flyingsnow]

<-- BA in Comparative Literature.... i'll have to see what i can come up with ;D

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OH! Just remembered Hunter S. Thompson (Another Dead Hero).

Some of his more memorable quotes

"There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge. "

"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. "


"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

"I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them."


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[tarick]

Well, I wracked my brain trying to think of books I have read and quotes that I liked. Unfortunately, the quotes that seem to stick in my head are all the more romantic ones, rather than something as overtly cool as drug abuse and insanity. What can I say, I was taught to read by my sister from the complete works of Shakespeare ><.

Two from On Walden Pond that meant something (Thoreau)

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

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I've read Thoreau, I think as an assignment, and I remember thinking his writing was extrememly thick at the time, tho that was a long time ago.

Hit another one I Crowley's "Diary of a Drug Fiend"

"I boasted of having a first class memory, its onlyl defect being it isn't reliable"


"Stab your demoniac smile into my brain,
Soak me in cognac, love, and cocaine"

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"The love of knowledge is the hate of life"

-Crowley

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[isabo]

Here are some quotes I've been hanging onto for a while.

“Success does not come through spontaneous combustion, first you must set yourself on fire.”

“A kiss makes less noise than a gunshot, but it has a much longer echo.”
Original Italian: “Un bacio fa molto meno rumore di un colpo di cannone, ma ha un eco piu lunga.”

“I possess every good quality, but the one that distinguishes me above all is modesty.”
--Charles Richet

“Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all.”
--Arthur Balfour

"A liar should have a good memory."
--Quintilian

“ I think-therefore I'm single.”
--Lizz Winstead

“ Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.”
--Maryon Pearson

Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.
- -- Phillips Brooks

[isabo]

Here's a poem I wrote about one of my favorite places in Maine. I don't usually show my writing so this is a big step...please be kind.

The Edge of the Earth

I sit in a nook in the Giant’s Staircase
and strain my eyes to see beyond the vast waters.
I sip my coffee and read my book
as the waves wash over me and the sun warms my skin.
Alone at the edge of the earth
before the world wakes up.

There, do you hear it?
Blending with the liquid joy of the waves
spilling on the shore.
A child’s sweet laughter.
There, beyond the rocks
she glides through the high grass,
a Labrador retriever at her heels.

A flash of pure light,
the boat winks its greeting to the shore.
Too far away to hear
but one can imagine the tunes of Jimmy Buffett
playing on the small radio tied to the rail.
Waders and dirty white hats
adorn the rough, weathered bodies of the fishermen.

Patagonia fleece, Timberland boots,
The young couple arrives with their tourist guides in hand.
Cameras flashing and voices erupting
above the sounds of the water.
The big city invades the quiet wilderness
as the world wakes up.

I pick up my coffee mug and my book,
say goodbye to my nook for another day.
I drive back along the dead-end dirt road
Until I reach the highway again.
As the blacktop passes beneath the wheels of the Jeep
I listen to the sound of the waves, the little girl,
Feel the warmth of the sun
and see the glint of the little fishing boat.

I still see them today, so many miles away,
but so close to my heart.

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isabo said:

Here are some quotes I've been hanging onto for a while.

“Success does not come through spontaneous combustion, first you must set yourself on fire.”

Love that one! Good job. Exactly the Idea I was going for.

isabo said:

"A liar should have a good memory."
--Quintilian

My grandmother used to say something to this effect, I thought it was a West Virginia thing. hehe

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal"

-Albert Camus

[yaio]

"He who wish to secure the good of other, has already secured his own"

[tempus]

• Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
  
  
• What a wonderful world it is that has girls in it!
  
  
• Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing -- with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
  
  
• It is better to copulate than never.
  
  
• Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
  
  
• Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?
  
  
• Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
  
  
• Masturbation is cheap, clean, convenient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing -- and you don't have to go home in the cold. But it's lonely.
  
  
• The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
  
  
• The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.
  
  
• Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
  
  
• Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
  

L.L. for R.A.H.


-t

[tarick]

isabo said:

Here's a poem I wrote about one of my favorite places in Maine. I don't usually show my writing so this is a big step...please be kind.

{/praise} Isabo
Very, very nice. The words you choose to describe the setting are beautiful. It was very easy to find myself transported there.


/em recovers his masculinity
*cough* so, uh, who wants to watch some football?

[isabo]

/blush. Thanks Tarick^^

[flyingsnow]

yes, isabo, very nicely done. i too write, but i will spare you. besides, when it comes to my writing i'm horribly shy (and quite guarded).

procrastinating on a monday.... here are some quotations that i truly like:

"I am the outskirts of a nonexistent town, a prolix commentary on an unwritten book. I am no one, no one. I don't know how to feel, how to think, how to love. I am a character in an unwritten novel, passing by, airy and unmade, without having existed, amid the dreams of whoever it is who didn't know how to complete me."
-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Fragment 18

"When summer begins, I become sad. It would seem that the luminosity, even if it is acrid, of summer hours should delight someoen who doesn't know who he is. But it doesn't delight me. There is too sharp a contrast between external life, which overflows, and what I feel and think, without knowing how to feel or think - the perennially unburied budy of my sensation. I have the impression that i live, in this formless homeland called the universe, under some political tyranny that, even if it doesn't oppress me directly, still offends all the hidden principles of my soul. And the anticipated nostalgia for the impossible exile descends quietly, softly onto me."
-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Fragment 117

"Everything I am or was or everything I think about what I am or was, all of it sunddenly loses - in these thoughts of mine and in the sudden loss of light because of the high cloud - the secret, the truth, the good fortune there might perhaps be in the mystery life has below it. All this, like a missing sun, is what remains to me. In a different way the light lets its waterfall hands flow over the high rooftops, and the intimate shadow of all comes into view in the unity of the roofs."
-Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Fragment 141

The Suicide's Room by Wistawa Szymborska
"I'll bet you think the room was empty.
Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers.
A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ.
Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren't in it?

No books, no pictures, no records, you guess?
Wrong. A comforting trumpet poised in black hands.
Saskia and her cordial little flower.
Joy the spark of gods.
Odysseus stretched on the shelf in life-giving sleep
after the labors of Book Five.
The moralists
with the golden syllables of their names
inscribed on finely tanned spines.
Next to them, the politicians braced their backs.

No way out? But what about the door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His glasses
lay on the windowsill.
And one fly buzzed - that is, was still alive.

You think at least the note must tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note -
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup."
-Poems New and Collected

"it may be that we shall be captured at the end of our itenerary, vanquished by our adventure itself. It suddenly occurs to us that, all along our road, we have not ceased to metamorphose ourselves, and we see ourselves as other than what we were. Sometimes the metamorphosis is not even finished. We have turned ourselves into hybrids, and there we are left. Then we hide ourselves, filled with shame."
-Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ambiguous Adventure

i have more favorite quotations to share, but sadly i have to get some work done (and the others are far too difficult to find in such a brief inquiry into my library). that being said, i'll modify if i find time to look for more. hope you like them...

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"Time Destroy's Everything"

Gasper Noe
Irreversible'

Didn't know the actual writer of the movie, so I just listed the Director. AWESOME movie, but be warned if you go looking for it, its not easy to take by any means. Alot of people walked out of it at Cannes, and I'm pretty impervious to most visuals and this movie even got me at some points. I'm Shocked Angelita watched it the whole way through.

Before you check out the movie, check out the forums regarding this movie. But its worth watching, you just need to look alittle closer at it then a regular movie watcher would.

Forum

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