Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." ~Harper Lee (R.I.P.)

Dang! I will watch the American Masters episode on her tonight.
http://www.pbs.org/video/2194593065/

NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/ar...-lee-dies.html

[AlexBell]

'We visited the negro quarter; a part of the estate which filled me with disgust, wherever I went. It is something between a haunt of monkeys and a dwelling place of human beings. The natural good taste, so remarkable in free negroes, is here extinguished. Their small, dingy, untidy houses, their cribs, the children crouching round the fire, the animal deportment of the grown-up, the brutish chagrins and enjoyments of the old, were all loathsome... a walk through a lunatic asylum is far less painful than a visit to the slave quarter of an estate.'

Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 1837

[doubleshuffle]

"I don’t think there is time for intimidation in music. If there’s intimidation then that means there must be some sort of ego involved but in order to just express your soul, you have to drop your ego. In order to have conversations soul-to-soul with other musicians, you have to drop your ego."

Tal Wilkenfeld

[covingtoncat73]

"What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss."

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (R.I.P.)

[AlexBell]

'A great latitude of imagination or representation is usually admitted on the subject of missions to the heathen. The reporters of this one appear to be peculiarly imaginative. I fear that the common process has here been gone through of attempting to take from the savage the venerable and the true which he possessed, and to force upon him something else which is to him neither venerable nor true.'

Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 1837

[covingtoncat73]

"This city has a great Mardi Gras and a great party spirit because we’re constantly dying." ~Maurice Ruffin

[WT Sharpe]

Most of the words we use in history and everyday speech are like mental depth charges. As they descend and detonate, their resonant power is unleashed, showering our understanding with fragments of accumulated meaning and association.

— James Axtell (James L. Axtell, 20 December 1941); U.S. historian and professor of history at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. "Forked Tongues: Moral Judgments in Indian History", AHA Perspectives (February 1987).

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." ~Harper Lee (R.I.P.)

Oh my .... this quote really hits home with me .... for posting it.

[AlexBell]

'It is impossible that any human being should pass his life as well as he might do who is never alone, - who is not frequently alone...The silence, freedom and collectedness of solitude are absolutely essential to the health of the mind; and no substitute...is possible.'

Harriet Martineau, Society in America, 1837

[covingtoncat73]

Ecclesiastes 7:9

Do not be eager in your heart to be angry, For anger resides in the bosom of fools.

[kennyc]

"Coyotes have the gift of seldom being seen; they keep to the edge of vision and beyond, loping in and out of cover on the plains and highlands. And at night, when the whole world belongs to them, they parley at the river with the dogs, their higher, sharper voices full of authority and rebuke. They are an old council of clowns, and they are listened to."

― N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn

[kennyc]

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

[covingtoncat73]

"Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“...this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

[covingtoncat73]

"He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck."

[Letter to James Smith, December 8 1822]
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

[BenG]

“He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.”
― Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman