Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by BenG

"Hugo?"
"Millicent?"
"Is that you?"
"Yes. Is that you?"
"Yes."
Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.
― P.G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning

.

[BenG]

"I strongly suspect the things people believe in are usually just what they instinctively feel is right; the excuses, the justifications, the things you're supposed to argue about, come later. They're the least important part of the belief. That's why you can destroy them, win an argument, prove the other person wrong, and still they believe what they did in the first place." He looked at Erens. "You've attacked the wrong thing.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

[orlok]

Originally Posted by BenG

"Hugo?"
"Millicent?"
"Is that you?"
"Yes. Is that you?"
"Yes."
Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.
― P.G. Wodehouse, Summer Lightning

[covingtoncat73]

“Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“In the temple of Solomon, one rode in blood up to the knees and even to the horses’ bridles, by the just and marvelous judgment of God.”

Cleric Raymond of Aguilers, commenting on the massacre of most of the population of Jerusalem [Jews, Muslims, and other 'infidels'] following the capture of the city in the First Crusade.

[covingtoncat73]

"'I'm going to kill somebody,' said.the Elephant. 'As soon as I figure out who.'
'Whoa, dear heart,' said the Marquis, rubbing his hands together. 'You mean whom.'"
~"How the Marquis Got His Coat Back,", Neil Gaiman

[covingtoncat73]

"Quit your yapping and fix Mama a Sazerac." ~Character Actress Margo Martindale in Season 3: Ep. 12 of BoJack Horseman

[gmw]

One thing about living in a psychological era is that few people give credence or value to a philosophical perspective. In our period, despairing of finding any meaning in life is rarely considered a sincerely held worldview; no, it is a sickness that needs to be cured.

-- Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It (2015)

And another quote from just a few pages on in the same book:

I also remember seeing attractive Sorbonne students in Paris cafes shrugging with soulful resignation and intoning, "Je m'en fous," a fashionable phrase of the day that meant, roughly, "Not only do I not give a shit, but it wouldn't make any difference if I did."

[covingtoncat73]

"One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober." ~Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

[covingtoncat73]

"Because no other city in America looks like it, Because its houses are haunted and its people are strange and its sunsets are bloody and its water is black and its music is madness and its food is incredible." Rich Cohen on New Orleans in "The Fish That Ate the Whale"

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"One of the first symptoms of time-lag is a tendency to maudlin sentimentality, like an Irishman in his cups or a Victorian poet cold-sober." ~Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“She would roll up her sleeves and dispense with sentimentality, and do whatever blood-soaked, bad-smelling thing had to be done. She would become adept with axes.” Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder And Other Stories

[covingtoncat73]

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history.”
― Georg William Friedrich Hegel (born August 27, 1770)

[covingtoncat73]

"Then the Wind grew weird. It ceased being a breath; it became a Voice moaning across the world,—hooting,—uttering nightmare sounds,—Whoo!—whoo!—whoo!—and with each stupendous owl-cry the mooing of the waters seemed to deepen, more and more abysmally, through all the hours of darkness." Lafcadio Hearn, Chita: A Memory of Last Island

[BenG]

… he felt, too keenly, the narrowing of life itself. You start out, Creath thought, you are a river in full flood; but life meets you with its dams and deadfalls and all its interminable and arid places. You lose speed, depth, urgency, desire. You become a trickle in a desert.
― Robert Charles Wilson, A Hidden Place

[covingtoncat73]

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

"The world hasn't been truly silent since the beginning of the industrial revolution." ~Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog