Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[covingtoncat73]

This quote from "Rooftoppers" by Katherine Rundel would be a Tinder profile that would actually make me consider joining Tinder:

"He was thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time."

[covingtoncat73]

"I am a failure in the world. I do not rule people, nor deceive them for the sake of power, nor try to swindle their livelihood into my own possession. I say to them: Please go freely on your way, and I will do my best to follow mine. Well then, Maria, although this is not a fashionable way of going on, nor even a successful one, it is a thing which I believe in—that people must not tyrannize, nor try to be great because they are little."

T.H. White, Mistress Masham's Repose

[kennyc]

“Philosophy is no help at all, and offers absolutely no answers. So I turned to poetry and literature, where I found no answers either, but states of mind analogous to my own.”
- E. M. Cioran


“Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.”
- Emil M. Cioran, The Book of Delusions

“We begin to live authentically only where philosophy ends, at its wreck, when we have understood its terrible nullity, when we have understood that it was futile to resort to it, that it is no help.”
- Emil M. Cioran

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"I am a failure in the world. I do not rule people, nor deceive them for the sake of power, nor try to swindle their livelihood into my own possession. I say to them: Please go freely on your way, and I will do my best to follow mine. Well then, Maria, although this is not a fashionable way of going on, nor even a successful one, it is a thing which I believe in—that people must not tyrannize, nor try to be great because they are little."



T.H. White, Mistress Masham's Repose

Stolen, and reposted elsewhere as if it were my own find!

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

"I am a failure in the world. I do not rule people, nor deceive them for the sake of power, nor try to swindle their livelihood into my own possession. I say to them: Please go freely on your way, and I will do my best to follow mine. Well then, Maria, although this is not a fashionable way of going on, nor even a successful one, it is a thing which I believe in—that people must not tyrannize, nor try to be great because they are little."

T.H. White, Mistress Masham's Repose

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Stolen, and reposted elsewhere as if it were my own find!

I thought it was marvelous too.

[kennyc]

"We don't have to live great lives, we just have to understand and survive the ones we've got."
- Andre Dubus

[BenG]

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
— Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson

[covingtoncat73]

Another T.H. White...

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

[kennyc]

Today being Charles Bukowski's Birthday:

Bukowski summed up his philosophy in a letter he wrote in 1963: "Somebody [...] asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: 'not' to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it."

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

Another T.H. White...

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

I love this!

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by BenG

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
— Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

Another T.H. White...

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

[BenG]

“The moon, like a gardenia in the night’s buttonhole—but no! why should a writer never be able to mention the moon without likening her to something else—usually something to which she bears not the faintest resemblance? . . . The moon, looking like nothing whatsoever but herself, was engaged in her old and futile endeavour to mark the hours correctly on the sun-dial at the centre of the lawn.”
— Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson

[issybird]

"Sooner or later...one has to take sides. If one is to remain human."
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American

[AlexBell]

'Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.'

Anarchasis, a 6th century BC Scythian philosopher