Quote Only Thread

[Cosmic Cowbell]

Private Cowboy: Don't shit me, man!

Private Joker: I wouldn't shit you. You're my favorite turd!

[myriadsmallcreature]

"Most people don't know that the whole world hinges on a little thing called topsoil. When Europeans first settled on this continent, we had eighteen inches of it, on average. Now we're down to about 5 or 6 inches on average. When it goes, we're finished as a nation."

Eddie Albert

[myriadsmallcreature]

That's six of one, but not half dozen of the other. Urp!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One night in the House of Commons, Churchill, after imbibing [I love that word] a few drinks, stumbled into Bessie Braddock, a corpulent Labourite member from Liverpool. An angry Bessie straightened her clothes and addressed the British statesman.

"Winston," she roared. "You are drunk, and what’s more, you are disgustingly drunk."

Churchill, surveying Bessie, replied, "And might I say, Mrs. Braddock, you are ugly, and what’s more, disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow," Churchill added, "I shall be sober."

[myriadsmallcreature]

"You think they came from a test tube? They are merely the ones who survived. I was doing genetic research, treating chlldren of drug addicts. This was years ago, when neuroin first hit the streets. It was impure, not the engineered cocktall popular among the educated. ALL of these kids were born with severe brain damage. Most died before age of 3.

Those few who survived, they had a gift."

[MacCruiskeen]

At the heart of our foolish yearning for more is a paradox: as soon as we try to imagine a future that will not be too different from what we know, we have left the very present we hope will persist. The trouble seems to lie in the fact that one is present, truly present, truly living one’s life, only when one’s mind is where one’s body happens to be. And when. This is one reason why a certain kind of work, the kind that requires both attention and physical exertion, feels so good. That kind of work—or play: a recent essay I read on skateboarding and another on singing come to mind—shapes us more truly than all our anxious attempts to change ourselves or the future we’re inevitably entering at every moment.

Change requires first an acceptance of the state of things as they are now, not strenuous, heartless, and painful reshaping of one’s identity. To treat oneself as a lump of clay or ball of dough is not only foolish but disrespectful. It is the wrong kind of work and nothing but trouble.

- Richard Hoffman

http://www.janushead.org/9-2/Hoffman.pdf

[myriadsmallcreature]

"You saved me. You redeemed me from the pit. I was in it, Emily. I was *in* that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what's transitory. It's human life that is real. I don't want to frighten you, Emily, but what I'm trying to tell you is that moment of terror is a real and living horror, living and growing within me now, and the only thing that keeps it from devouring me is you."

"I'm gonna show these to someone who can read them right, 'cause you're reading them wrong, that's all there is to it. Because no one is gonna tell me you de-differentiated your goddamn genetic structure for four goddamn hours and then reconstitued! I'm a professor of endocrinology at the Harvard Medical School. I'm an attending physician at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital! I'm a contributing editor to the American Journal of Endocrinology and a I am a fellow and vice-president of the Eastern Association of Endocrinologists and president of the Journal Club! And I'm not going to listen to any more of your kabbalistic, quantum, friggin' dumb limbo mumbo jumbo! I'm gonna show these to a radiologist!"

Paddy Chayefsky
'Altered States'

[compared2what?]

"A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."

I can't quite recall who the author was, though.

Anyone?

[MacCruiskeen]

c2w, it's from Pope's An Essay in Criticism (1709):

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first Sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange Surprize
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!

http://poetry.eserver.org/essay-on-criticism.html

On the perils of quoting Pope.

[myriadsmallcreature]

I'm standing by the highway
Suitcase by my side
There's no place I want to go
I just thought I'd catch a ride

Many people look my way
And many pass me by
In moments of reflection
I'm wondering why

To the thieves I am a bandit
The mothers think I'm a son
To the preachers I'm a sinner
Lord I'm not the only one

To the sad ones I'm unhappy
To the losers I'm a fool
To the students I'm a teacher
With the teachers I'm in school

To the hobos I'm imprisoned by everything I own
To the soldier I'm just someone else who's dying to go home
The general sees a number, a politician's tool
To my friends I'm just an equal in this whirlpool

Magic mirror won't you tell me please
Do I find myself in anyone I see?
Magic mirror if we only could
Try to see ourselves as others would

To policeman I'm suspicious it's in the way I look
I'm just another character to fingerprint and book
To the censors I'm pornography with low redeeming grace
To hooker I'm a customer without a face

The sellers think I'm merchandise, they'll help me for a song
The left ones think I'm right,
The right ones think I'm wrong
And many people look my way
And many pass me by
And in my quiet reflection I wonder why

Magic mirror won't you tell me please
Do I see myself in anyone I meet?
Magic mirror if we only could
Try to see ourselves as others would


Leon Russell

[lightningBugout]

"They were swinging and gyrating and shaking their dead little asses like petrified zombies trying to regain the warmth of life"

--Eldridge Cleaver on white rock fans

[MacCruiskeen]

msc, you might be thinking of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses:

They ponder'd the mysterious words again,
For some new sense; and long they sought in vain:
At length Deucalion clear'd his cloudy brow,
And said, the dark Aenigma will allow
A meaning, which, if well I understand,
From sacrilege will free the God's command:
This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones
In her capacious body, are her bones:
These we must cast behind. ...

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/metamorp ... the-first/

On Edit: Bugger it, that was Dryden.

[myriadsmallcreature]

msc, you might be thinking of his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses:

They ponder'd the mysterious words again,
For some new sense; and long they sought in vain:
At length Deucalion clear'd his cloudy brow,
And said, the dark Aenigma will allow
A meaning, which, if well I understand,
From sacrilege will free the God's command:
This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones
In her capacious body, are her bones:
These we must cast behind. ...

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/metamorp ... the-first/

Thanks. But I'm sure it was Pope. It was something about THE Festival, round about the first of May--maenads and Dionysus and all that. I remember for one because it reminded me of the Alexander Pope/Newton/Da Vinci Code nexus. But I won't go into that.

[lightningBugout]

"I live with someone that watches The Bill Cosby show every night and I can hear the show from my room while I am trying to fall asleep and black voices give me bad dreams, and the thought of black Lawyers and black doctors gives me the creeps." -- anonymous stormfront poster

[compared2what?]

c2w, it's from Pope's An Essay in Criticism (1709):

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd at first Sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless Youth we tempt the Heights of Arts,
While from the bounded Level of our Mind,
Short Views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc'd, behold with strange Surprize
New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise!

http://poetry.eserver.org/essay-on-criticism.html

On the perils of quoting Pope.

"When we crossed the sea, my comrades/ And I, I already knew that all/ My purpose was this: to win the good will/ Of your people or die in battle, pressed/ In Grendel's fierce grip. Let me live in greatness/ And courage, or here in this hall welcome/ My death!"***

-- Author of Beowulf


It was a rhetorical question to self, honey, I didn't think anyone would care enough to reply. So...Hmm. Well. While it seems highly unlikely that I inconvenienced you, I do sincerely regret it if I did. And at the same time, I don't regret it one single bit if I did. Furthermore, I insist instead on being very grateful to you for both the consideration and the surprise gift with purchase, as represented by the link. So there. By which I mean: Thank you.

In short: Please know yourself to be appreciated.


-----------------------

*** I can fucking barely discern the meaning of it in Old English anymore. Which is a shameful, but happily, only for those unfortunate enough to know the tedium of having once been me. I do dimly and lovingly recall reading it in this form, though. So in the spirit of the thread, I'm including it, that those in a position to avail themselves of its pleasures may, if that's their cup of mead:

"Ic þæt hogode,   þā ic on holm gestāh,
sǣ‐bāt gesæt   mid mīnra secga gedriht,
þæt ic ānunga   ēowra lēoda
willan geworhte,   oððe on wæl crunge,
fēond‐grāpum fæst.   Ic gefremman sceal
eorlīc ellen,   oððe ende‐dæg
on þisse meodu‐healle   mīnne gebīdan."

[MacCruiskeen]

Ah, you're more than welcome, c2w. It gave me an excuse to look at Pope again, who was a right witty bastard and who is still well worth reading. (I wish he was around to write a new Dunciad, which the world badly needs.)

I'll see your Beowulf and raise you one Gawain:

After Crystenmasse com þe crabbed lentoun,
Þat fraystez flesch wyth þe fysche and fode more symple;
Bot þenne þe weder of þe worlde wyth wynter hit þrepez,
Colde clengez adoun, cloudez vplyften,
Schyre schedez þe rayn in schowrez ful warme,
Fallez vpon fayre flat, flowrez þere schewen,
Boþe groundez and þe greuez grene ar her wedez,
Bryddez busken to bylde, and bremlych syngen
For solace of þe softe somer þat sues þerafter
bi bonk;
And blossumez bolne to blowe
Bi rawez rych and ronk,
Þen notez noble innoȝe
Ar herde in wod so wlonk.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/te ... Gawain%3A2

So wlonk!