Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[BenG]

In my experience ideology is a lot like religion; it's a belief system and most people cling to it long after it becomes clear that their ideology doesn't describe the real world.
-- Maureen F. McHugh, China Mountain Zhang

[covingtoncat73]

"Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'...”


― Alfred Lord Tennyson

[covingtoncat73]

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

[covingtoncat73]

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”
― Ogden Nash, Collected verse from 1929 on

[kennyc]

"That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!"
- Connie Willis

[WT Sharpe]

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains, — "I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them, nevertheless".

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809 – 1894); American author, poet, and father of US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872).

[WT Sharpe]

There have been certain myths universal among men. Gardens of Eden have been absolutely universal — the golden age, which is absolutely the same thing. And what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Boston will tell you that fifty years ago all people were honest. Fifty years ago all people were sociable — there was no stuck-up aristocracy then. Neighbors were neighbors. Merchants gave full weight. Everything was full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool. Now everybody swindles everybody else, and calls it business. Go back fifty years and you will find an old man who will tell you that there was a time when all were honest. Go back another fifty years and you will find another sage who will tell you the same story. Every man looks back to his youth, to the golden age, and what is true of the individual is true of the whole human race. It has its infancy, its manhood, and, finally, will have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us. There are more honest men, good women, and obedient children in the world today than ever before.
— Robert G. Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899); lawyer, Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator. Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll (1898), "Myth and Miracle".

[kennyc]

"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the mind of the expert there are few."
- Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Mind, Beginners Mind

[BenG]

“He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

[kennyc]

Love that one!

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by BenG

“He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it”

― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

[WT Sharpe]

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
— Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910); American humorist and author. Draft manuscript (c.1881); quoted in Mark Twain, A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1912) by Albert Bigelow Paine.

[WT Sharpe]

Here's a comment from Twain whose tone is more serious than what we usually associate with him.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
— Following the Equator (1898), chapter 10 (Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Here's a comment from Twain whose tone is more serious than what we usually associate with him.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
— Following the Equator (1898), chapter 10 (Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar).

Musta been having a bad day.....

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Musta been having a bad day.....

Indeed. But I've read similar sentiments from other comedians. Tears of a clown, you know.

Here's an interesting thought about that seemingly faster than light spooky action at a distance phenomenon known as entanglement. (The bolding in the following quote is mine.)

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Because these two electrons are "entangled," that is, their wave functions beat in unison, their wave functions are connected by an invisible "thread" or umbilical cord. Whatever happens to one automatically has an effect on the other. (This means, in some sense, that what happens to us automatically affects things instantaneously in distant corners of the universe, since our wave functions were probably entangled at the beginning of time. In some sense there is a web of entanglement that connects distant corners of the universe, including us.)
— Michio Kaku (24 January 1947 - ); Japanese American theoretical physicist. Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel (2008).