Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

From "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman (Gospel of Loki is fun but this is a far superior retelling) -

"None of this matters. The world is burning,” says Loki. “The mortals are dead. Midgard is destroyed. I have won.”

“I can see further than you can, Loki. I can see all the way to the world-tree,” Heimdall will tell him with his last breath. “Surtr’s fire cannot touch the world-tree, and two people have hidden themselves safely in the trunk of Yggdrasil. The woman is called Life, the man is called Life’s Yearning. Their descendants will populate the earth. It is not the end. There is no end. It is simply the end of the old times, Loki, and the beginning of the new times. Rebirth always follows death. You have failed.”

I run really hot and cold on Gaiman - I either love it or hate it. But I really loved Norse Mythology. I cannot deny his gift for prose and he showed it to its best effect in Mythology!

[issybird]

In "Love Songs for Married People" from the New Yorker:

When Are You Planning to Turn Off Your Kindle?

They say love is light.
I think they do.
I’m not really sure.
I might have heard that in a Subaru commercial.

The point is that I see your light right now.
And I wish I didn’t.
Because I’m really tired.
And I had a long day.
And I have to get up early tomorrow.
All of which you know.

<SNIP>

Maybe love is like light.
In that it can fade.
Seriously. Would it kill you to watch that in the bathroom?

[covingtoncat73]

I am, therefore, leaving immediately for Nepal, where I intend to live as a goat."

~Blackadder, Blackadder

[AlexBell]

Books delight our innermost selves, they speak to us, counsel us, and are joined to us by a sort of living friendship.

from Romola by George Eliot

[gmw]

Judge not lest ye be judged by a gang of small-minded nut jobs

-- Jane Harper, The Dry (2016)

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

George Bernard Shaw

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind

Albert Einstein

[badgoodDeb]

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

-Charles de Gaulle, French president (22 Nov 1890-1970)

[astrangerhere]

But you know as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean ‘whither my country right or wrong,’ which is infamous or 'my country is always right,’ which is imbecile.

— Patrick O'Brian in Master and Commander

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

George Bernard Shaw

[GlennD]

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it. - Mark Twain

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first. - Charles de Gaulle

Whereas nationalism still seeks power, honour, and glory through means that endanger other countries, patriotism knows that a country's strength and honour can only be permanently safeguarded through concourse with other countries. And whereas nationalism scoffs at the idea of international laws and regulations, patriotism seeks to create such. - Ellen Key

I have no patriotism, for patriotism, as I see it, is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

George Jean Nathan

[issybird]

I am afraid there is more vice, more misery and penury in this country than in any other, and at the same time greater wealth. . . The contrasts are too striking, and such an unnatural, artificial, and unjust state of things neither can, nor ought to be, permanent. I am convinced that before many years elapse these things will produce some great convulsion.

―Charles Greville, 1829, quoted in An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England by Venetia Stanley

[covingtoncat73]

"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.

This is not her story.

But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences." ~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[gmw]

Even as the world tries to define you, narrow the definition of you, don’t do it to yourself.

-- Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2008)
Quote taken from the author interview at the end of the book.

[covingtoncat73]

"'If you want to know someone’s heart,' Meacham began to reply — but the president interrupted him.

'You have to know what breaks it,' Bush added.

~George H.W. Bush from This WaPo article