Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

And he wasn't even American.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

Great Ulysses quote.

[Rizla]

Dreaming when Dawn's Left Hand was in the Sky
I heard a voice within the Tavern cry,
"Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup
Before Life's Liquor in its Cup be dry."

- The Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam, Edward FitzGerald

[WT Sharpe]

And then Donovan stiffened. The robots, dwarfed by the mighty L-tube, lined up before it, heads bowed at a stiff angle, while Cutie walked up and down the line slowly. Fifteen seconds passed, and then, with a clank heard above the clamorous purring all about, they fell to their knees. Donovan squawked and raced down the narrow staircase. He came charging down upon them, complexion matching his hair and clenched fists beating the air furiously. “What the devil is this, you brainless lumps? Come on! Get busy with that L-tube! If you don’t have it apart, cleaned, and together again before the day is out, I’ll coagulate your brains with alternating current.” Not a robot moved! Even Cutie at the far end—the only one on his feet—remained silent, eyes fixed upon the gloomy recesses of the vast machine before him. Donovan shoved hard against the nearest robot. “Stand up!” he roared. Slowly, the robot obeyed. His photoelectric eyes focused reproachfully upon the Earthman. “There is no Master but the Master,” he said, “and QT-1 is his prophet.”

— Isaac Asimov (born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov; circa 1920–1992), I, Robot

[covingtoncat73]

“Words are sublime, and in books we may commune with the dead. Beyond this there is nothing true, no voices we can hear.”
― Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria

[WT Sharpe]

Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.
— Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-born U.S. political philosopher. The Human Condition (1958), ch. 6.

[kennyc]

"The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me."
- Ayn Rand

[covingtoncat73]

"What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms...or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the Gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy." Aemon Targaryen in G.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones.

[WT Sharpe]

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.
— Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), German-born U.S. political philosopher. From Crises of the Republic, “On Violence” (1972). I know I just posted a quote from Hannah Arendt, but I stumbled upon this quote recently when someone posted it on Facebook which sent me on a quest to find the source. It's actually rather lengthy for an essay and, in fact, can be found separately as a book ($9.45 for the 122 page Kindle edition). Or you could buy,Crisis of the Republic for 54¢ more ($9.99) and get three additional essays. Go figure!

[kennyc]

"There's no accounting for pricing."
- me

[AlexBell]

'human children especially - seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to make others wretched; a pupil whose sensations are duller than those of his instructor, while his nerves are tougher and his bodily strength perhaps greater, has an immense advantage over that instructor, and he will generally use it relentlessly, because the very young, very healthy, very thoughtless, know neither how to sympathize nor how to spare.'

Charlotte Brontë, in The Professor

[kennyc]

"Dreary and wearisome. Cold, clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers."
- J. R. R. Tolkien from Passage of the Marshes, The Two Towers

[kennyc]

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."
- Norman Maclean A River Runs through It

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by kennyc

"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."
- Norman Maclean A River Runs through It

"I don't have a family. I have a Tennessee Williams play." ~me, every Thanksgiving

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"I don't have a family. I have a Tennessee Williams play." ~me, every Thanksgiving