Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[poohbear_nc]

Passionate subjects must be dealt with in cold blood.
(Hector Berlioz)

[WT Sharpe]

.....With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different—and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.
..........— James Henry "Jim" Webb, Jr. (1946 - ), senior United States Senator from Virginia, former Secretary of the Navy, author. "Why We Must Fix Our Prisons," Parade Magazine (March 29, 2009).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different—and vastly counterproductive. Obviously, the answer is the latter.
..........— James Henry "Jim" Webb, Jr. (1946 - ), senior United States Senator from Virginia, former Secretary of the Navy, author. "Why We Must Fix Our Prisons," Parade Magazine (March 29, 2009).

Hmmm.........now that's an interesting one. Not sure I agree, but certainly worthy of some thought and examination!

[BenG]

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.
— Julian Barnes, ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ (1984) ch. 13

[WT Sharpe]

.....O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this?
..........— Socrates (circa 469 BCE – circa 399 BCE), Athenian philosopher. Quoted in Plato's Apology (tr. Benjamin Jowett).

[kennyc]

Is that about Charlie Sheen????

[TenaciousBadger]

Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord to all things, yet prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of this world!

-- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

[BenG]

"I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored. But then it occurred to me that musing is a pointless waste of anyone's time, and instead I went off to see if I could find a Baby Ruth candy bar, a far more profitable exercise."
— Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

[WT Sharpe]

.....The Machine hums! Did you know that? Its hum penetrates our blood, and may even guide our thoughts. Who knows!
..........— E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970), English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. The Machine Stops (1909).

This was found in the book (Pandora's Seed by Spencer Wells) that I just finished.

"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours."
—Aldous Huxley

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

This was found in the book (Pandora's Seed by Spencer Wells) that I just finished.

"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours."
—Aldous Huxley

Excellent!

[WT Sharpe]

.....When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. That reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.
..........— John Shelby Spong (1931- ), American clergyman. Quoted in the preface of Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights (2002) by Eric Marcus. Making Gay History is an updated and revised edition of Making History: The Struggle for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, 1945-1990: An Oral History (1992).

My nomination for the April 2011 Book Club, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, reminded me of the quote from which the book title was derived.

'When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”
Jonathan Swift

Related to my previous post. After Einstein had fled Nazi Germany one hundred Nazi professors condemned Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein's comment on this was: 'Were I wrong,' he said, 'one professor would have been enough.'

[BenG]

Résumé

Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.


Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
First printed in New York World, (16 August 1925)