Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

What did he have against Canada?

BOb

"The tragedy of Canada is that it could have had British culture, French cuisine and American technology. Instead it got American culture, British cuisine and French technology."

~Oscar Wilde

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"The tragedy of Canada is that it could have had British culture, French cuisine and American technology. Instead it got American culture, British cuisine and French technology."

~Oscar Wilde

[covingtoncat73]

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

— Douglas Adams

And a couple from my current read, Galore, by Michael Crummey:

”Father Phelan claimed she was the only person in the new world he lived in fear of, which she dismissed as base flattery. 'You’d be a half-decent priest if you gave up the drinking and whoring, she told him.' 'Half-decent,' he said, 'wouldn’t be worth the sacrifice.'”

“They came finally to the consensus that life was a mystery and a wonder beyond human understanding, a conclusion they were comfortable with though there was little comfort in the thought.”

[WT Sharpe]

.....This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
..........— Walter "Walt" Whitman (1819 – 1892), American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. From Whitman's Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.

[covingtoncat73]

WT that is beautiful. I have a real hard time doing the "patience and indulgence toward people" part.

Here are a couple of funnies from The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore.

"You can't Nuh-uh death! That's sloppy debating!"

"I can't believe you ate all the brains! Those were supposed to be for everybody!"

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
..........— Walter "Walt" Whitman (1819 – 1892), American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. From Whitman's Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.

[BenG]

Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same.
--Erica Jong, ‘Fear of Flying’ (1973) ch. 1 (epigraph)

[WT Sharpe]

.....The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents.
..........— H.P. Lovecraft (1890 –1937), American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. The Call of the Cthulhu (novella written in 1926, first published in 1928).

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all it's contents.
..........— H.P. Lovecraft (1890 –1937), American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. The Call of the Cthulhu (novella written in 1926, first published in 1928).

So true. Also, a good memory is a terrible thing.

Alright, from my current read, Galore by Michael Crummey...

"-Do you know the Bible well, Doctor? -Enough to dislike it"

[BenG]

How do you like Galore? I've been thinking about reading it.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by BenG

How do you like Galore? I've been thinking about reading it.

Oh, it is a worthy read and very well-written, not quite as good as The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, though.

[covingtoncat73]

Here is one of my all-time favorite movie quotes, from the 1982 Conan the Barbarian.

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
Mongol General: That is good! That is good.

[TenaciousBadger]

All you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.

--Pink Floyd, Breathe (Dark Side of the Moon)


and one more....

We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fishbowl
Year after year.

--Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here (eponymous album)

[straygator]

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
-- Ernest Hemingway

[TenaciousBadger]

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

--C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves