Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[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"

[kennyc]

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

[covingtoncat73]

"If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe." - Joe Rogan

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on anorganic spaceship flying through the universe." - Joe Rogan

Channeling Douglas Adams?

[astrangerhere]

"Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind."

Daphne Du Maurier | Rebecca

[covingtoncat73]

Have courage for the great sorrows of life
and patience for the small ones;
and when you have laboriously
accomplished your daily task,
go to sleep in peace.
~ Victor Hugo ~

[BenG]

Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


-- Constantine P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

[kennyc]

I don't know this author, but I love this quote:

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I don't know this author, but I love this quote:

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”
― Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Great quote. This reminds me that I've had this book on my wishlist for ages. Maybe I should go ahead and read it already.

[kennyc]

"I've allowed some of these points to stand, because this is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell. But I have done my best to make it tell a truthful story."

- Tobias Wolff from This Boy's Life

[kennyc]

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes."
- Nikola Tesla

(I continue to try and fathom the seeming obsession many have with this man)

[poohbear_nc]

Nature is a Haunted House --
but Art --
a House that tries to be haunted.

Emily Dickinson

[BenG]

"The thing to remember is that science fiction should not be judged by how accurately it portrays the future, but by how lucidly, and entertainingly, it describes for you the possible varieties of future that lie within our grasp.

The prediction of gadgets is a part of this, to be sure. But it is only the smallest part. What is more important in a real sense, and what is a lot more fun, is the detailed imagination of the skilled science-fiction writer at work, building a future universe for you..."

— Frederik Pohl, Introduction to The 2nd 'If' Reader

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by kennyc

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

Machiavelli said something to the same effect in his letter to Francesco Vettori

"On the coming of evening, I return to my house and enter my study; and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garments regal and courtly; and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; entirely I give myself over to them.

"And because Dante says it does not produce knowledge when we hear but do not remember, I have noted everything in their conversation which has profited me, and have composed a little work On Princedoms, where I go as deeply as I can into considerations on this subject, debating what a princedom is, of what kinds they are, how they are gained, how they are kept, why they are lost."

[covingtoncat73]

"There was no more dangerous kind of madman than one who devoted a good brain and courageous heart to unhealthy ambitions." Michael Moorcock, The City in the Autumn Stars