Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Ben, I've been looking at your avatar for ages wondering what it meant, finally did some googling.

"And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished, for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare."
- H.P. Lovecraft, Nyarlathotep

Wow.


Nyarlathotep by Dominique Signoret

[BenG]

The Crawling Chaos, though sometimes he appears as an Egyptian prince.

I was reading the new Annotated Lovecraft when I chose that avatar.

[WT Sharpe]

The novels of English novelist Jane Austin (1775-1817) contain several quotable passages, but many of her sharpest witticisms were often reserved for her private correspondence.

I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.
— Letter to Cassandra Austen, 24 Dec. 1798.

At the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman who, on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall — and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.
— Letter to Cassandra Austen, 17 May 1799.

[kennyc]

Love the Christmas Eve one!

[kennyc]

"Within one linear centimeter of your lower colon there lives and works more bacteria
(about 100 billion) than all humans who have ever been born. Yet many people continue
to assert that it is we who are in charge of the world."
- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

(more Neil quotes here: http://www.businessinsider.com/15-in...-tyson-2015-11)

[WT Sharpe]

A couple more from astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson (1958 - ), from Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries:

A now-famous science fair experiment that tested antitechnology sentiments and associated chemical-phobia was conducted in 1997 by Nathan Zohner, a 14-year-old student at Eagle Rock Junior High School in Idaho. He invited people to sign a petition that demanded either strict control of, or a total ban on, dihydrogen monoxide. He listed some of the odious properties of this colorless and odorless substance:
• It is a major component in acid rain
• It eventually dissolves almost anything it comes in contact with
• It can kill if accidentally inhaled
• It can cause severe burns in its gaseous state
• It has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients
Forty-three out of 50 people approached by Zohner signed the petition, six were undecided, and one was a great supporter of dihydrogen monoxide and refused to sign. Yes, 86 percent of the passersby voted to ban water (H2O) from the environment.

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[W]hat nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?

[covingtoncat73]

"If there is a Divine Providence, there is also a wicked one, provided you agree that making love to offbalance women you aren't married to is wickedness. My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward."
― Kurt Vonnegut, from "Hocus Pocus"

[covingtoncat73]

“Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

[covingtoncat73]

“... in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights", the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

[WT Sharpe]

Three more from the English novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817).

Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.
-- Sense and Sensibility Vol. 2, ch. K 12. (1811)

She was not a Woman of many Words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas.
-- ibed.

"Oh! It is only a novel! . . ." in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
-- Northanger Abbey (1818).

[AlexBell]

'You would wish to be proud of your daughters, and not to blush for them; then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief making talebearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered; they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate them - give them scope and work; they will be your gayest companions in health, your tenderest nurses in sickness, your most faithful prop in age.'

Charlotte Brontë, addressing fathers in Shirley, 1847

[WT Sharpe]

Of the Greek historian Herodotus (484 BCE-425 BCE), the editors of Mental Floss had this to say:

Greek gods showed up in Herodotus’s writing a lot more often than they tended to appear in real life.
— from Mental Floss: Genius Instruction Manual (2006) by the Editors of Mental Floss.

[covingtoncat73]

Seems apropos for tomorrow, though I am sure everyone here knows this one...

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[covingtoncat73]

And, some advice from the original "Uncle Walt."

“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.”
― Walt Whitman

[covingtoncat73]

And, finally, the Oscar goes to...


“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance