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Favorite Quotes

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

-D.H. Lawrence
 
Okay, I've got a few, from my current read, 'I, Lucifer':

Lucifer on the creation of Eve:
The first thing to say about Eve is that she was a big improvement on the Adam design, or that Adam was an extremely misguided variation on the Eve design. (Consider testicles. Two concentrated nuclei of absolute vulnerability. Where? Dangling between the legs. I rest my case.)
Lucifer on freedom:
The key to evil? Freedom. The key to freedom? Money. For you, my darlings, freedom to do what you like is the discovery of how unlikable what you like to do makes you. Not that it stops you doing what you like, since you like doing what you like more than you like liking what you do . . .

Cheers, Martin :D
 
(an inscription on hell's door)

"Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

Dante Alighieri
"Divine Comedy"
 
Here are some of my favorite quotes:



What did they ever think of us transitory ones? Ones such as I...birds of passage who were too obscure for learned classification, too silent for the most sensitive recorders of sound; of natures too ambiguous for the most ambiguous words, and too distant from the centers of historical decision to sign or even to applaud the signers of historical documents? We who write no novels, histories or other books. What about us?
-From Invisible Man


We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.
-From Pride and Prejudice





And now an amusing one....


The one-eyed man said softly, "Think-somebody'd like-me?"
"Why, sure," said Tom. "Tell 'em ya dong's growed sence you los' your eye."

-From The Grapes of Wrath
 
I got another one:

"Luck is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by."

- 'The Sirens of Titan' by Kurt Vonnegut

Cheers, Martin :D
 
"When angry, count to ten, when very angry, swear."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read, and nobody wants to read."

both by Mark Twain
 
Martin, your signature quote makes me think. I like it. While we are on the subject of quotes... :)

I think it would be a good idea.
----- Mahatma Ghandi, when asked by a reporter for his opinion of western civilization

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"
----- Sydney Harris

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much.
----- Mother Teresa

"Men have forgotten this truth," says the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
----- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.
----- Mortimer Adler-- American philosopher

It is only with the heart that one sees rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
----- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
----- Oscar Wilde

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.
----- Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher


 
Nelka35 originally posted:
Martin, your signature quote makes me think. I like it.
Thanks. It does do that, doesn't it, make you think. You'll never guess where I found it, so I'll just tell you. It's from a song ('Dying to live', performed by Jonny Lang, written by Edgar Winter) which has recently been sampled by Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG (who I don't like). I heard the song, hated it, heard the sample, loved it, did some research, found the original track, and voila, my sig was born.

Don't exactly know why I told you that, but there you go.

Cheers, Martin :D
 
Thanks for telling me the background, Martin.
I was actually thinking of searching for its source, so you preempted me. :)
Thanks.

 
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and ensure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success."

Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
“. . . by the end you feel you have lived many lives: which is perhaps the greatest gift a novel can give.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Third Man Girl
 
Here is one.

Ernest Hemingway
"In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument that you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused."

I really like this a lot. He is talking about writing but it's very applicable to life in general. I couldn't agree with him more.
 
And lo the Wabbit did speakth saying unto Third Man Girl...

Hi :)

It's part of the forward written by Hemingway for a collection of his short stories. The collection is called "The First Forty-Nine Stories." It's a really great collection. But then, I love Heminway's stuff... so I would say that. The rest of the forward is great too! A great man.

That book has traveled all around the world with me and the words in it have a lot of meaning to me :)

Regards
Wabbit
 
Hey Wabbit

Might give the Forty-Nine Stories a go (if there are only forty-eight, I will demand a refund) ;)

I recently read my first Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises. I found the animal massacring a bit unpleasant. Bulls, fish, steer, goats: you name it - he whacked it on the head. Hey, I see enough dead bods at my work.

However, where would we be if we didn't try everything twice :D

Third Man Girl
 
Originally posted by third man girl
Hey Wabbit

Might give the Forty-Nine Stories a go (if there are only forty-eight, I will demand a refund) ;)

I recently read my first Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises. I found the animal massacring a bit unpleasant. Bulls, fish, steer, goats: you name it - he whacked it on the head. Hey, I see enough dead bods at my work.

However, where would we be if we didn't try everything twice :D

Third Man Girl

lol Indeed! Where WOULD we be if we didn't try everything twice!!! :D

Yes, please do give his short stories book a try! They are great! Let me know what you think of them and the rest of the forward, if you try them. I really like A farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls :)

Now I'm curious, what do you do at work? Are you an assassin? lol

Regards
That ol Wabbit
 
Originally posted by SillyWabbit


Now I'm curious, what do you do at work? Are you an assassin?

Oh! I wish . . . Rat-a-tat-tat (and other worrying gun noises)

No - they called me a scientist and made me wear a white coat; put a pipette in one hand and a Petri plate in the other.
I won't bore with gore [gosh, remember when poetry used to rhyme?] but I suffer from PMT now and again - PostMorTemism.

I work with non-humans so, if you can't hide, Wabbit, you'd better run :eek:

Third Man Girl
 
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