Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

.....The more corrupt the State the more numerous the laws.
..........— Cornelius Tacitus (c. 55-117 CE), Roman historian. Annals (c. 115-117), ch. III.

[kennyc]

I love Langston Hughes! Thank you TB!



The Negro Speaks of Rivers
by Langston Hughes


I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Originally Posted by kennyc

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
- Winston Churchill.

Made me think of this. I had to look it up to make sure I was correct (taken from Civilisation by Kenneth Clark):

Erasmus speaking of Protestants at the time of the Reformation:

“I have seen them return from hearing a sermon as if inspired by an evil spirit. The faces of all showed a curious wrath and ferocity”

A taste of Kafka:

“I stand on the end platform of the tram and am completely unsure of my footing in this world, in this town, in my family. Not even casually could I indicate any claims that I might rightly advance in any direction. I have not even any defense to offer for standing on this platform, holding on to this strap, letting myself be carried along by this tram, nor for the people who give way to the tram or walk quietly along or stand gazing into shop windows. Nobody asks me to put up a defense, indeed, but that is irrelevant.”

And of my other favorite author, Junchiro Tanizaki:

“Thus Sasuke spent his later years without wife or children, and died, attended only by his pupils, on the fourteenth of October (the anniversary of Shunkin's death) in 1907, at the advanced age of eighty-two. I suppose that during the two decades in which he lived alone he created a Shunkin quite remote from the actual woman, yet more and more vivid in his mind.

It seems that when the priest Gazan of the Tenryu Temple heard the story of Sasuke's self-immolation, he praised him for the Zen spirit with which he changed his whole life in an instant, turning the ugly into the beautiful, and said that it was very nearly the act of a saint. I wonder how many of us would agree with him.”

And

“On reading the last chapter of The Tale of Genji:
Today when the summer thrush
Came to sing at Heron's Nest
I crossed the Bridge of Dreams.”

[maianhvk]

"[...] The abbot told me once that lying was a betrayal to one's self. It's evidence of self-loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you. It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of as a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?"

Myron Lanaklin, in The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J. Sullivan.

[8annika.yael]

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic,
grace, and power in it.
-no clue, read it in a book

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by 8annika.yael

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic,
grace, and power in it.
-no clue, read it in a book

This is one of my all time favorite quotes. I kept it on the cover of my writing journals for years and years...

-Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

http://www.searchquotes.com/quotatio...wer_in_/16919/

[kennyc]

And here is one I have stuck to my monitor stand (an old box ):


It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
- William Carlos Williams

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

And here is one I have stuck to my monitor stand (an old box ):


It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
- William Carlos Williams

That's fantastic. I suppose the same could be said of literature and philosophy as well, and possibly art and music.

[WT Sharpe]

.....If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
..........— Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996), American astronomer, astrophysicist, author, cosmologist. From the TV series, Cosmos (1980).

[gmw]

Originally Posted by 8annika.yael

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic,
grace, and power in it.
-no clue, read it in a book

"Action is magic" : this is something that you don't really understand until you have done it. Yes! Thank you.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
..........— Carl Edward Sagan (1934 – 1996), American astronomer, astrophysicist, author, cosmologist. From the TV series, Cosmos (1980).

[BenG]

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
--Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind

Originally Posted by BenG

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
--Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind

That seems to fit nicely with:

"Condoms are a bulwark against pleasure, but a cobweb against danger" = Marquise de Sévigné

Or the wealthy will always get a way with screwing us.

So the discussion, on a different forum category, of whether high school students should be required to read Shakespeare generated a lot of vigorous discussion. I feel that there has always been two views of education, that it is worthwhile in and of itself or as vocational training. It seems to me that over the last ten years or so, at least here in America, the balance has shifted too far towards the latter. This as an introduction to this quote found in the latest issue of Scientific American.

“Science unleavened by the human heart and the human spirit is sterile, cold, and self-adsorbed” - Brandeis University biochemist Gregory A. Petsko