Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[kennyc]

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

* The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.

[kennyc]

"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the
writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public
stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his
work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity,
or the lack of it, each day."
-- Ernest Miller Hemingway

(from Nobel acceptance speech read by someone else)

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by BreezyDay

from “The Matrix”

Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions. [Agent Brown]

I see it in your eyes. You have the look of a man who accepts what he sees because he is expecting to wake up. [Morpheus]

I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. [Morpheus]

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt? Morpheus: You've never used them before.


__________________________________________________ _________________
Kindle Edition of Outsmart the Unexpected (Unusual edge-of-your-seat dilemmas to solve your way out of)
Resources for improving your ability to Think on Your Feet
.

I love that movie!

One more from the same source:

Morpheus: "You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

[Falcao]

... because just as men from other nations venerate and intuit the sea, so we (also the man who interweaves these symbols) long for the inexhaustible plains that resounds under the hooves.
-- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Dead" [El muerto] Translated by me.

[Falcao]

To the reader:

If the pages of this book consent a happy verse, excuse me the reader the discourtesy of having usurped it before. Ours nothingness differ little, it is trivial and fortuitous the circumstance that you are the reader of these exercises and I its writer.
-- Preface to "Fervor of Buenos Aires"

There is a line from Verlaine that I will not remember again. Near, there is a street that is forbidden to my steps, there is a mirror that has seen me for the last time, there is a door that I have closed up until the end of the world. Among the books of my library (I am looking them) there is some that I will never open again. This summer I will be fifty years old; the death is wearing me, incessantly.
-- "Limits"

The coin fell down in my hollow hand.
I could not bear it, though it was slight,
and I left it to fall down. Everything was in vain.
The other said: there are still twenty-nine more.
-- "Matthew, XXVII, 9"

What is the sea? Who am I? I will know it the next day that follows the agony.
-- "The Sea"

The wet afternoon brings me the voice, the desired voice, of my father who returns and who is not dead.
-- "The Rain"

I am, tacit friends, the one who knows that there is no other revenge that the oblivion, or another pardon. A god has granted to the human hatred this curious key.
-- "I am"

[Buenos Aires] is a corner at Peru street, in which Julio César Dabove told us that the worst sin a man can commit is to breed a child and sentence him to this frightful life.
-- "Buenos Aires"

Soon I will know who I am.
-- "Praise of the Shadow"

[WT Sharpe]

.....More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
..........— Woody Allen (1935 - ), American film director, writer, actor. Side Effects (1980), "My Speech to the Graduates."

[WT Sharpe]

.....In political speculations “the tyranny of the majority” is now generally included among the evils against which society requires to be on its guard.
..........— John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), English political economist, philosopher. On Liberty (1859).

[Nexutix]

"The coroner’s office released Drake’s body shortly after the autopsy
was completed, but no one ever claimed it. His family and executive staff
must have been too distracted with their financial and legal matters to
worry about his body. Thaddeus Drake, the multimillionaire whose
enormous media empire was built on a foundation of hatred and
intolerance, had no wake, no funeral, and was buried in an unmarked
pauper’s grave."

- From Adam's Covers by Willie Qwit and Betty Will.

[BenG]

In literature as in love, we are surprised at what is chosen by others.

- André Maurois, An Art of Living

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by BenG

In literature as in love, we are surprised at what is chosen by others.

- André Maurois, An Art of Living

[WT Sharpe]

.....There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.
.......... Luis Walter Alvarez (1911 – 1988), American physicist. Quoted in D. S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (1969).

[Stitchawl]

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in
a garage makes you a car. "


Stitchawl

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by patilsaurabhr

"The coroner’s office released Drake’s body shortly after the autopsy was completed, but no one ever claimed it. His family and executive staff must have been too distracted with their financial and legal matters to worry about his body. Thaddeus Drake, the multimillionaire whose enormous media empire was built on a foundation of hatred and intolerance, had no wake, no funeral, and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave."

- From Adam's Covers by Willie Qwit and Betty Will.

That book sounds interesting. Thanks for that quote!

[WT Sharpe]

...My candle burns at both ends;
.......It will not last the night;
...But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
.......It gives a lovely light!
..........— Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet. A Few Figs From Thistles (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1922), "First Fig."

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

...My candle burns at both ends;
.......It will not last the night;
...But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends–
.......It gives a lovely light!
..........— Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet. A Few Figs From Thistles (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1922), "First Fig."

Outta my head now! I've had that running through my head for the past few days!