Quotes about down
page 45

“…when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Microserfs (1995)

Love

“"A Holy War," Longstreet said. He shook his head. He did not think much of the Cause. He was a professional: the Cause was Victory. It came to him in the night sometimes with a sudden appalling shock that the boys he was fighting were boys he had grown up with. The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side. Once chosen, you put your head down and went on to win.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Part I, CH 4: Longstreet, p. 58
The Killer Angels (1974)

War, Boy, Thinking, Victory

“As Prince Bismarck, in the ’60s, wanted to move the “Acheron” of socialism, … it was of course not love for socialism or knowledge of socialism that led Prince Bismarck to do this. He understood nothing about socialism at that time, and never did understand anything about it down to his death; in fact, he never had any conception of the moving forces of political and social life at all. There probably never lived at any time in any country a “statesman” who was less scientific, who had less knowledge, and who relied so purely on experience and a sort of half-gambler, half-peddler cunning, as Bismarck. Those offers to socialists place in the clearest light the untruthfulness of Prince Bismarck’s claim that he always regarded the social democracy as incompatible with the existence of the state. Bismarck wanted to use socialism for the purpose of breaking up and dissolving the bourgeois liberal opposition, especially the Progressive party. This, in itself, is the most conclusive proof that he had no conception of the real nature of socialism. Of course the fate of the boy magician was repeated. The elemental force which was conjured up grew over the head of the dabbler, and he did not get the best of socialism; socialism got the best of him.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Love, Life, Death, Fate

“What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

Programmers At Work (1986)

Idea

“By setting aside animal-derived products—meat, dairy products, and eggs—you can reach a level of health and well-being that you may never have expected you could enjoy. … Although our work has focused on helping people trim down, conquer diabetes, cut cholesterol, and tackle other medical problems, it should be said that not everyone who decides to forgo animal products makes that choice for health reasons. Many people are concerned with how animals are treated by the food industries, and rightly so. And the environmental consequences of meat and dairy production should be of concern to all of us.”

Neal D. Barnard (1953) American physician, author, and clinical researcher

The Get Healthy, Go Vegan Cookbook https://books.google.it/books?id=jhkj1chVn28C&pg=PR0 (Da Capo Press, 2010), Introduction.

People, Health, Food, Problem

“When serious scientists with huge beards aren't looking, I jocularly refer to these fossils as my alien goldfish. Picture the scene: the giant spaceship is parked on a wide beach, and kicking pebbles Commodore Grafnik is in a filthy mood. Yet another planet with hundreds of millions of years to go before intelligence evolves, not even at the zorkquaan stage, for Threga's sake! And as for his pet vlantans!! Purchased at huge expense, all they do is feed voraciously and then fall asleep. Still fuming, Grafnik carries the bowl down to the lagoon edge and (contrary to every regulation in the AIPC [Access to Inhabited Planets Code]) tips the vlantans out. They dart away and several months later enter the fossil record of a planet where they have no right to be.”

Simon Conway Morris (1951) British palaeontologist

Astronomy and Geophysics: Vol. 46, No. 4: "Aliens like us?"
Miscellaneous

Intelligence, Mood

“The reason Smolin's idea is interesting is that it may answer the challenge, "The universe is too good to be true. It looks like a put-up job." But, note that the Smolin hypothesis cannot be used to account in particular for the BIOLOGICAL part of that "too good to be true". Smolinian selection may account for the fact that our universe has the necessary constants, dimensionality and laws to last for last for a long time (not fizzle out or crunch immediately its initiating bang), long enough to spawn daughter universes (and INCIDENTALLY long enough to breed life). But Smolinian selection cannot account for the fact that our universe is specifically congenial to life, or to intelligent life, or to us. My negative conclusion would break down only if life itself is in the habit of engineering the spawning of daughter universes. As far as I am aware, this hasn't been suggested, but it is, I suppose, a theoretical possibility that daughter universes are generated as a consequence of the fooling around of highly evolved physicists.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins, "Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder" https://www.edge.org/conversation/science-delusion-and-the-appetite-for-wonder, John Brockman, Edge.org, 1.2.97.

Life, Law, Fools, Intelligence

“All the way home Hellfrick was exultant, but the steering wheel was sticky with blood, and once or twice I thought I heard the calf kicking in the back seat…On bunker Hill we turned down our alley and pulled up at the parking space adjacent the hotel wall. Hellfrick got out. "Now I'm going to give you a lesson in butchering."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Way, Home

“For fast acting relief, try slowing down.”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

Other material for Lily Tomlin

Peaceful

“Well, dust off your thinking caps
Solar powered plastic plants
Pretty pictures of things we ate
We are only what we hate
But in the long run we have found
Silent films are full of sound
Inaudibly free
Slow down everyone
You're moving too fast
Frames can't catch you when
You're moving like that”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Inaudible Melodies.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Hate, Thinking

“It creeped him out, the way it just sat there looking so plastic and harmless among the old-time good intentions of all that downtown architecture, no more sinister than a chain motel by the freeway, and yet behind its neutral drapes and far away down its fluorescent corridors it was swarming with all this strange alternate cop history and cop politics—cop dynasties, cop heroes and evildoers, saintly cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their own good—insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they'd all be given to control, or, as they liked to put it, protect and serve.”

Thomas Pynchon book Inherent Vice

Source: Inherent Vice (2009), p. 137

Secret, Stupidity, World, Way

“Beat all your feathers as flat down as pancakes.”

Thomas Middleton The Roaring Girl

The Roaring Girl (co-written with Thomas Dekker, 1611), Act i. Sc. 1.

“It's genes. My mother looked great at 96. And, you know, I realized that the more you're around, the more that gravity pulls you down. And so I started rubbing up. I wash my face rubbing up, I put my makeup on up and in the shower I rub up — anyplace I can. I'm going to the gym three times a week. That also helps. And it helps to have a good feeling about people. The laugh line is going to be there whether you like it or not, so keep it there — keep it in a laugh line.”

Lee Meriwether (1935) American actress, former model

Lee Meriwether, Miss America 1955: Pageant Is 'Very Special' http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/style-trends/info-01-2013/is-miss-america-still-relevant.html (January 2, 2013)

People, Feeling, Time, Help

“If we don't put our foot down, they will release every man and his dog.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

(Criticizing the government's policy of releasing persons sentenced for involvement in the 2000 coup).
2000

Dogs

“We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late… The science is clear. The global warming debate is over.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947) actor, businessman and politician of Austrian-American heritage

Bill signing ceremony for California's strict anti-emissions law (26 September, 2006) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15029070/. 2000s

Science

“Americans are therefore wrong in assuming — and this was another line of argument against my RAS lecture — that South Koreans have struggled too long and too bravely for human rights ever to knuckle down to the North. There was no significant opposition here to the prosecution of Professor Park Yu-ha for criticizing the orthodox history of the so-called comfort women, and that took place under Park Geun-hye.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Women, History

“The rains tumble down in the sky,
Young swallows have learned how to fly,
The leaves that were green are no longer so green,
And it looks like the summer is over.”

Tom Springfield (1934) English musician, songwriter and record producer

Song Summer Is Over.

Learning, Summer, Flying

“Love is infinity - come down to poodles'level.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

1
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Love

“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me—into us—clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 185)

Hope, Way, Heart, Dead

“Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed-down frames of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.”

Viola Spolin (1906–1994) American academic and acting theorist

Improvisation for the Theater 1963), page 4

People, Reality, Freedom, Memory

“Perhaps we shall one day find that Rembrandt is a greater painter than Raphael. I write down this blasphemy which will cause the hair of the school-men to stand on end without taking sides.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 1851; as cited in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2004) by Alison McQueen, p. 102
1831 - 1863

Men, School

“My work has the abstraction underneath it all now & what I deliberately set out to do down here, for this is the perfect realistic abstraction in landscape.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to w:Alfred Stieglitz, October 9, 1919, Hartley Archive, Yale University; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 68
1908 - 1920

Perfection

“I threw the stones down at the reflection of my image in the water
And it altogether disappeared.
I burst as it shattered through me like a bullet through a bottle…
And I'm expected to believe that any of this is real?”

Aaron Weiss

Seven Sisters.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Water

“All kinds of things set us back, but life goes on. You don’t shoot yourself. Soon this will be old news. People got lives to live, bills to pay, mouths to feed. Maybe a plane will go down with ninety people on it. Or a great man will be assassinated. That will be more important than Ali losing. I never wanted to lose, never thought I would, but the thing that matters is how you lose. I’m not crying. My friends should not cry.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Press conference, March 9, 1971, following his defeat by Joe Frazier, quoted in The Intercept, June 6, 2016 https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/in-1971-muhammad-ali-helped-undermine-the-fbis-illegal-spying-on-americans/

Life, People, Cry

“Now, I'm no shrinking violet. I played hockey until half of my teeth were knocked down my throat. And I'm extremely competitive on a tennis court — I'll dive for any ball on any surface. But that experience at the slaughterhouse overwhelmed me. When I walked out of there, I knew I would never again harm an animal! I knew all the physiological, economic, and ecological arguments supporting vegetarianism, but it was that firsthand experience of man's cruelty to animals that laid the real groundwork for my commitment to vegetarianism.”

Peter Burwash (1945) Canadian tennis player

Vegetarian Primer (New York: Atheneum, 1983), p. 75

Support, Animals, Hockey

“We lived one year in a suburb so new it was still being built in fields of red clay: a neat grid of streets named after songbirds was being dropped like a lattice of dough over a pie. Up and down Robin and Tanager and Bluebird I raced my bike; in a storm I pedaled so fast I hoped to catch up with the wind-driven rain. As I sped into the riddling wet warmth I shook my right hand according to a magical formula of my own. The universe, signaled by its master, groaned, revolved, released a flash of lightning. At last the imagination, like a mold on an orange, was covering the globe of my mind.”

Edmund White book A Boy's Own Story

Source: A Boy's Own Story (1982), Chapter Three (p. 81).

Hope, Imagination, Universe

“DK: How often does the seriousness end and the irony begin in your work?
M: Many times. I have a grand and endless capacity to find myself slightly ridiculous. I'm not pretending to be some wallowing prophet, for heaven's sake. I think we all have to sit down and look in the mirror and think, What is that absurd monstrosity?”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "Homme alone 2" by David Keeps, Details (December 1992)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Thinking, Time

“Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate, — and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance?”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Experience

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), Experience

Fate, Laughter

“Why has he closed the door on Canada Post? Here's a guy who says he was a terrific manager of the economy and all things economic yet he's shut down our postal service. It's certainly the wrong thing to do and it sends a very bad signal out to the working people that tromp up and down our sidewalks and deliver our mail … that he doesn't really respect the bargaining process.”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

Layton nixes cutting NDP ties to labour unions http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20110618/ndp-layton-labour-movement-110618/ June 18,2011

People, Guy

“Ba'athism died in Iraq last week. The sight of the oversized bronze head of Saddam rolling in the dust and being beaten with shoes by exuberant Iraqis is perhaps the most important image of Iraqi politics of the last 50 years. It was the end of the republic of fear. Two Iraqis with whom I was camping out in Washington, D. C., woke me up at 5 a. m. that day so we could watch the images of a free Iraq. Tears rolled down our cheeks uncontrollably.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Thank you, America", New York Post (April 15, 2003)

Fear, Shoe, Tear

“For us humanity was a distant goal toward which all men were moving, whose image no one knew, whose laws were nowhere written down.”

David Zindell book Neverness

Emil Sinclair
Neverness (1988)

Men, Law, Distant

“Here comes old Rosie she's looking mighty fine
Here comes hot Nancy she's steppin' right on time
There go the street lights bringin on the night
Here come the men faces hidden from the light
All through the shadows they come and they go
With only one thing in common
They got the fire down below.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

The Fire Down Below.
Song lyrics, Night Moves (1976)

Men, Light, Time, Night

“Worship thou God in such wise that if thy worship lead thee to the fire, no alteration in thine adoration would be produced, and so likewise if thy recompense should be paradise. Thus and thus alone should be the worship which befitteth the one True God. Shouldst thou worship Him because of fear, this would be unseemly in the sanctified Court of His presence, and could not be regarded as an act by thee dedicated to the Oneness of His Being. Or if thy gaze should be on paradise, and thou shouldst worship Him while cherishing such a hope, thou wouldst make God’s creation a partner with Him, notwithstanding the fact that paradise is desired by men.
Fire and paradise both bow down and prostrate themselves before God. That which is worthy of His Essence is to worship Him for His sake, without fear of fire, or hope of paradise.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

VII, 19
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Fear, Hope

“The means of existence of our country will break down, once the watergates are open to the foreigners.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

Die Existenzgrundlage unseres Landes geht kaputt, wenn erst die Schleusen für die Ausländer geöffnet sind.
Lecture for businessmen from Schwabia (March 1994)

Country

“Along crags and sunless cracks I go,
Up rib of rock, down spine of stone,
I dare not slumber where the right winds whistle,
Lest her creeping-soul clutch this heart of thistle.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Well of Misery

Soul, Heart

“High elasticity means that unit output goes up more than prices went down, so you get a growth business.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part II, Revolution, Meeting Mr. Zed, p. 42.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Business

“The King of Wu said，"Enough, general. Retire to your hostel, We do not wish to come down and observe." Sun Tzu said, "The king only loves the words, he cannot make use of the reality." After this, Ho-lu knew that Sun Tzu could command troops and in the end appointed him commander. [Later when Wu] defeated mighty Ch’u to its west and entered its capital Ying awed Ch'i and Chin to its north and spread its fame among the feudal lords, it was due in part to Sun Tzu.”

Sima Qian book Records of the Grand Historian

translated by Tsai-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and Robert Reynolds, in The Grand Scribe’s Records, edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr. 孫子吳起列傳 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7065 Records of the Grand Historian

Love, Reality, Sun, Parting

“The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge. This transformation was signalled by McGregor, but we must go further.”

Wanda Orlikowski American computer scientist

Thomas Kochan, Wanda Orlikowski, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld. "Beyond McGregor's theory Y," in: Douglas McGregor (1960), The Human Side of Enterprise; Annotated Edition, 2006, p. 366

People, Nature, Knowledge

“The whole, however, had become more than the sum of its parts. The parts concentrate on the periods in the chrysalis when life as we have known it is over. No longer who we were, we know not who we may become. We experience ourselves as living mush, fearful of the journey down the birth canal. The whole has to do with the process of psychological pregnancy—the virgin forever a virgin, forever pregnant, forever open to possibilities.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Introduction, p. 7
The Pregnant Virgin (1985)

Life, Fear, Birth, Parting

“It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein's Law and yell, ‘Stop.’ You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2013, Detroit Ran Into The Inviolable Rule Of Economics (2013)

Law, Time

“Modern football is akin to a turbulent sea. Changes come fast and furious. One may be riding the crest of great waves before being engulfed in enormous crescendos of confusion. Sometimes is can be like surfboarding in the South Atlantic. You do the best you can to stay afloat while all the time fully understanding the fact that things can come crashing down around you. If you worry about the consequences you miss the thrill of the ride.”

Damien Richardson (1947) Irish footballer and manager

City Edition, Vol. 22, Issue 1, p. 7.

Understanding, Change, Time, Football

“Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
"Rip down all hate," I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), My Back Pages

Life, Hate

“The foundation of our religion is very strong. The material is strong as well, but the building itself was neglected for hundreds of years. As the plaster dropped down, none thought to replace it and none felt the need to reinforce the building. Quite the contrary: many foreign elements and interpretations, as well as empty beliefs, came along and damaged it still more.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in Kemalizm, Laiklik ve Demokrasi [Kemalism, Laicism and Democracy] (1994) by Ahmet Taner Kışlalı

Religion, Strong

“I'll tell you what harms the vast majority of Muslims that love freedom and hate terror: Muslim theocracy does. Muslim intolerance does. Wahabism does. Salafism does. Islamism does. Jihadism does. Sharia law does. The mere conservatism of traditional Islam does. We're not talking about only jihadists hating homosexuals and thinking they should die, we're talking about conservative Muslims. The percentage of British Muslims polled who said that homosexuality was morally acceptable was zero. Do you realize what it takes to say something so controversial in a poll that not even 1% of those polled would agree with it? There's almost no question that extreme that you will ever see in a poll that gets a zero, but ask British Muslims whether homosexuality is morally acceptable, and that's what you get. And the result is more or less the same in dozens of other countries. It's zero in Cameroon, zero in Ethiopia. 1% in Nigeria, 1% in Tanzania, 1% in Mali, 2% in Kenya, 2% in Chad. 1% in Lebanon, 1% in Egypt, 1% in the Palestinian territories, 1% in Iraq, 2% in Jordan, 2% in Tunisia, 1% in Pakistan. But 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh: that bright spot in the Muslim world where they are regularly hunting down and butchering secular writers with machetes. The people who suffer under this belief system are Muslims themselves. The next generation of human beings born into a Muslim community who could otherwise have been liberal, tolerant, well-educated, cosmopolitan productive people are to one or another degree being taught to aspire to live in the Middle Ages, or to ruin this world on route to some fictional paradise after death. That's the thing we have to get our heads around. And yes, some of what I just said applies with varying modifications to other religions and other cults. But there is nothing like Islam at this moment for generating this kind of intolerance and chaos. And if only a right wing demagogue will speak honestly about it, then we will elect right wing demagogues in the West more and more in response to it. And that will be the price of political correctness: that's when this check will finally get cashed. That will be the consequence of this persistent failure we see among liberals to speak and think and act with real moral clarity and courage on this issue. The root of this problem is that liberals consistently fail to defend liberal values as universal human values. Their political correctness, their multiculturalism, their moral relativism has led them to rush to the defense of theocrats and to abandon the victims of theocracy and to vilify anyone who calls out this hypocrisy for what it is as a bigot. And to be clear, and this is what liberals can't seem to get, is that speaking honestly about the ideas that inspire Islamism and jihadism, beliefs about martyrdom, and apostasy and blasphemy and paradise and honour and women, is not an expression of hatred for Muslims. It is in fact the only way to support the embattled people in the Muslim community: The reformers and the liberals and the seculars and the free thinkers and the gays and the Shiia in Sunni-majority context and Sufis and Ahmadiyyas, and as Maajid Nawaz said, the minorities within the minority, who are living under the shadow, and sword rather often, under theocracy. […] If you think that speaking honestly about the need for reform within Islam will alienate your allies in the Muslim community, then you don't know who your allies are.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2 2010s

Love, Death, Women, Hate

“Andrzej Szczeklik was a fascinating personality in many respects. The scope of his general knowledge was absolutely rare. He saw what others did not notice. It's enough to say he was a better doctor than a good doctor. He could look and listen to what the patient says. Looking, he already knew what was wrong, after little things, after grimaces, after the way of breathing, after the way someone sits down or gets up…”

Marek Sanak (1958) Polish scientist

Kobos, Andrzej (2012). Po drogach uczonych. 5. Polska Akademia Umiejętności. pp. 317–335. ISBN 978-83-7676-127-5.

Way, Knowledge, Personality

“You know, without my telling you, how sometimes
A word or name eludes you, and you seek it
Through running ghosts of shadow,—leaping at it,
Lying in wait for it to spring upon it,
Spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound:
Until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest,
You hear it, see it flash among the branches,
And scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it—
Well, it was so I followed down this music,
Glimpsing a face in darkness, hearing a cry,
Remembering days forgotten, moods exhausted,
Corners in sunlight, puddles reflecting stars”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Music, Star, Spring, Lying

“But in their second-best rank, books of this academic sort are, of all books, the easiest to write. They chew over what has already been well chewed; they grapple with other scholars, seeking to bear them down into the academic ooze; they explore the vast caverns of the creator's spirit with no illumination save the smoky and fitful rushlight of their own critical intelligence.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books, Intelligence

“It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
"Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the Sydney toff up home in Ironbark."”

Andrew Paterson (1877–1948) Scottish photographer

Home, Despair

“A Frenchman cried and Connelly squatted beside him, took the man's hand, and talked of Ireland. He told the uncomprehending Frenchman of Connaught's beauty, of its women, of fields so fat that a lamb was full grown in a week, of rivers so thick that the fish begged to be caught, and the Frenchman quieted and Connelly patted his hair and told him he was brave, and he was proud of him, and beyond the small grating the sky darkened into dusk and the orderlies came down again and dragged the Frenchman, who had died, head-bumping up the steps.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 184
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Women, Beauty, Fish

“Up and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant-gathered for the purpose of constructing enlightened governments.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter VI, THE CONTAGION OF LIBERTY, p. 231.

Men, Learning

“Thus, at eighteen, we find him, an English lordling, who could speak no English, and yet who could read and write his native language. Never had he seen a human being other than himself, for the little area traversed by his tribe was watered by no greater river to bring down the savage natives of the interior.
High hills shut it off on three sides, the ocean on the fourth. It was alive with lions and leopards and poisonous snakes. Its untouched mazes of matted jungle had as yet invited no hardy pioneer from the human beasts beyond its frontier.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 9 : Man and Man

Water, Reading

“Return, O Power of the Pentecost, return to Thy people! Shed down Thy flame on many heads! To us, as to our fathers and to those of the old time before them, give fullness of grace! Without Thee we can do nothing; but filled with the Holy Ghost, the excellency of the power will be of Thee, O God! and not of us.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 323.

God, People, Time

“No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Quoted in Robert J. Schoenberg (1992), Mr. Capone, apparently referring to the temperance movement.
Attributed

People, Nature, Strong

“Thus he spake, honouring her; and she cast her eyes down with a smile divinely sweet; and her soul melted within her, uplifted by his praise.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1008–1010 (tr. R. C. Seaton)

Smile, Soul

“[T]he rules are different for you and always will be; that you must be composed at all times and never scrap in the muck laid down by your opponents because your moral purity is measured differently to theirs.”

Clementine Ford (writer) (1981) Australian feminist writer, broadcaster and public speaker

Clementine Ford: This is the personal price I pay for speaking out online http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-this-is-the-personal-price-i-pay-for-speaking-out-online-20170713-gxaa6z.html, July 13 2017, in the Sydney Morning Herald 2017

Time

“Robert Parish and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the two reasons I became a vegetarian fully in the first place. They where the first ones I saw and I was 27 at the time and there was an article about Robert Parish and one of his martial art forms and I remember playing against this guy and asking him how he was running up and down the court with me and I was in my twenties. He said, "you have to learn to pace yourself young fella". … Then I would go, "well then your car has no gas" and I thought about that. So at 27 I made the change. … I had a good career but Robert Parish had a view to look at stats and a better career. If I would have known how to take care of my body … then I would have played until I was 40 as well.”

John Salley (1964) American basketball player

“Along Came a Spider-An Interview With John Salley,” in Basketball 24/48/82 (12 August 2014) http://basketball244882.blogspot.com/2014/08/along-came-spider-interview-with-john_12.html.

Art, Cars, Guy, Learning

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there, communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Elton John, blaming the internet for destroying good music http://www.gigwise.com/news/35721/elton-john-wants-to-tear-down-the-internet (2 August 2007)

People, World, Art, Music

“I remember a story my father used to tell. As he was coming home one day, he ran across a group of men who were firing on the troops from an ambush. During the excitement a daring onlooker went up to one of the snipers who seemed to be a poor marksman. He took the man's gun and brought down a soldier, then handed it back to its owner who motioned as if to say, 'No, go on. You're a better shot than I am.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

But the stranger said, 'No, I'm not interested in politics.'
Vollard, Degas and others were talking about the revolution of 1847. Somebody remarked to Degas that he must have been quite young at that time. Than Degas start to quote his father.
Source: posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927), p. 40

Men, Home

“Knowing that training is little more than breaking down muscle, I figured that what rebuilds that same muscle must be a major factor for recovery and therefore quicker improvement. If I was able to recover from each workout faster, I would be able to schedule them closer together and therefore train more than my competition. I would improve faster. As I suspected, food was the answer—high-quality, nutrient-dense, alkaline-forming, easily digestible food in proper proportions … Nutrition has a dramatic effect on recovery—that was unmistakable. … The result was astounding. Not only did my recovery time plummet but my energy level, strength-to-weight ratio, and endurance shot up. … On the cellular level, this diet was able to speed the renewal of muscle tissue. That meant that following this diet would actually help the body regenerate more frequently, suggesting that it could help reduce biological age.”

Brendan Brazier (1975) Canadian triathlete, publisher, writer, editor

Introduction
The Thrive Diet

Age, Food, Time, Help

“I sort of sympathise with them looking for weapons of mass destruction, because I'm like that with scissors. Honestly, I just turn the house upside down. Of course the difference is, I know I have got some scissors.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

A Brief History of Timewasting, Room 101, The News Quiz

Housing

“You're just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you.
Crosstown traffic.
I don't need to run over you.
Crosstown traffic.
All you do is slow me down.
And I'm tryin' to get on the other side of town.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Crosstown Traffic
Song lyrics, Electric Ladyland (1968)

“Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down the road we go, all in good faith and see where it gets us. Think about our success Kelvin; think about our cabins, the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of faithful wardobes devoted cupboards…”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 185 [elipsis in original]

Faith, Law, Thinking, Success

“Infinite God, age after age, throughout all cycles, wills through His Infinite Mercy to effect His presence amidst mankind by stooping down to human level in the human form, but His physical presence amidst mankind not being apprehended, He is looked upon as an ordinary man of the world. When He asserts, however, His Divinity on earth by proclaiming Himself the Avatar of the Age, He is worshipped by some who accept Him as God; and glorified by a few who know him as God on Earth. But it invariably falls to the lot of the rest of humanity to condemn Him, while He is physically in their midst.
Thus it is that God as man, proclaiming Himself as the Avatar, suffers Himself to be persecuted and tortured, to be humiliated and condemned by humanity for whose sake His Infinite Love has made him stoop so low, in order that humanity, by its very act of condemning God's manifestation in the form of Avatar should, however, indirectly, assert the existence of God in His Infinite Eternal state.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

The Highest of the High (1953)

Love, God, Age, World

“Don't you know that I love you?sometimes I feel likeonly a cold still lifeonly a frozen still lifethat fell down here to lay beside you.<BR”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Angel in the Snow.
Lyrics, New Moon (posthumous, 2007)

Love, Feeling

“A lot of people wouldn't believe me now if I told them I used to down pints of beer with friends, loitering on the banks of the Nainital Lake while at Sherwood College. Something I would be embarrassed to admit now, but that still was youthful joie de vivre. Later in the film industry it became a kind of social compulsion to be seen at parties holding a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in another, looking all classy and affluent. There was a certain artificiality about it I couldn't fathom. Maybe that's what gradually led me to become a teetotaler.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

People, Youth, Beer, Wine

“Down on Spring Street, in a bar across the street from the secondhand store. With my last nickel I went there for a cup of coffee. an old style place, sawdust on the floor, crudely drawn nudes smeared across the walls. It was a saloon where old men gathered, where the beer was cheap and smelled sour, where the past remained unaltered.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Men, Spring, Coffee, Beer

“Do I think that we should work with the community or the police or the medical people down there to work out what to do if there’s another Scientologist who needs care and we want to avoid psychiatric treatment? Yes I do. And why is that? No matter what the circumstance … anybody would want to do something to avoid someone dying.”

David Miscavige (1960) leader of the Church of Scientology

Discussing the death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson in Clearwater, Florida — [Thomas C., Tobin, The Man Behind Scientology, http://www.sptimes.com/TampaBay/102598/scientologypart1.html, St. Petersburg Times, October 25, 1998, 2010-07-03].

People, Communication, Thinking

“The standard SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) theory of strong, electromagnetic, and weak interactions appears to correctly describe physics down to the smallest distance scales yet probed.”

Leonard Susskind (1940) American physicist

[1984, The gauge hierarchy problem, technicolor, supersymmetry, and all that, Physics Reports, 104, 2–4, 181–193, 10.1016/0370-1573(84)90208-4]

Strong, Appearance

“To anyone who is not an artist it must seem rather strange that Degas who could do anything — for whom setting down what he saw presented no difficulties at all — should have continued to draw the same poses year after year — often, it would seem, with increasing difficulty. Just as a classical dancer repeats the same movements again and again, in order to achieve a greater perfection of line and balance, so Degas repeats the same motifs, it was one of the things that gave him so much sympathy with dancers. He was continually struggling to achieve an idea of perfect form, but this did not prevent him looking for the truth in what might seem an artificial situation.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 13: Degas

Truth, Idea, Drawing, Perfection

“He seemed to lose interest in the subject of his daughter, glooming at a yellow card of ancient railway regulations on the wall. But when the harbingers of the coming train were audible – porters trundling, a scrambled gabble from the station announcer, frantic blowing on hot tea – he became eager again and was out swiftly on to the platform. I followed him. The train slid in. I saw the driver look down disdainful from his cosy hell, sharing – like soldier and auxiliary – a mystique with the tea-room woman. Passengers, disillusioned with arrival, got out greyly amid grey steam; passengers, hungry for the illusion of getting somewhere, jostled their way on.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Way, Hell, Tea, Daughters

“I remember sitting down once, [at] three in the morning and probably the only person awake in Stevens Point […] *imitates typing with his fingers* And I stop, and I think: "This is crap! I've spent years of my life writing crap. This will never be published - it isn't good… I've wasted years of my life!" *shrugs and types on* You do it because you like the process. I mean… you write because you like to write.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

Suvudu interview with Shawn Speakman, June 2010 http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2011/01/video-interview-patrick-rothfuss.html

Life, Thinking, Personality

“Here there was only yourself; a soul buried alive. Nothing to comfort you but your own life. Screaming from the pain of the blows which battered him down might have stopped, but the internal scream of self-loathing could never cease.”

Peter F. Hamilton (1960) English novelist

as the ghost Dariat lies immobile in a wispy limbo
The Night's Dawn Trilogy (1996-1999), The Naked God (1999)

Life, Pain, Soul

“It's only my town (Chagall was born in Vitebsk), mine, which I have rediscovered. I come back to it with emotion. It was at that time that I painted my Vitebsk series of 1914. (Chagall couldn't go back to Paris because of the outbreak of the first World War in 1914) I painted everything that met my eyes. I painted at my window; I never walked down the street without my box of paint.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Quote in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 31
1920's, My life (1922)

War, World, Time, Painting

“In the Seventies, women runners, developing amenorrhea and calcium-related shin splints, were the first to realize that nature is hovering over us, ready to shut down our systems if our fetus-feeding fat reserve drops below a certain percentage of body weight. In other words, in nature's eyes we are nothing but milk sacs and fat deposits.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 41

Women, Nature

“I just heard what was said, it isn't strictly accurate by any means, I'm a man who's just been lucky on having wonderful partners, Schoedsack alot more than I did on Grass and Chang, and right down the line I've only had John Ford as a partner, Thomas is a great friend on technicolor, and for cinerama, Fred Waller invented it, Thomas picked up the ball and ran with it, and there's a young man in this audience, Bob Bendick, that most of you have never heard, that did far more of the production then I did. I want to thank all the great partners I've had in my life, thank you. I just want to add I'm still John Ford's partner.”

Merian C. Cooper (1893–1973) American aviator, actor, director and producer

Speech after receiving an Honorary Academy Award at the 25th Academy Awards (March 19, 1953)

Life, Grass, Change

“It has become increasingly evident, at least among those who aren't currency traders or true believers in the optimality of free markets, that it would be nice if this system could calm down a touch. One option is the Tobin tax, which would impose a tax of around 0.1 percent on currency trades, and act as a kind of damper on speculation.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 6, At Rest Versus In Motion, p. 197

Optimism

“It's coming on Christmas,
They're cutting down trees.
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace.
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

"River" from Blue
Songs

Peace, Tree, Singing, Joy

“This was not long desired before it was realized. The Lord, who is rich in mercy, and ever willing to answer the consistent prayer of the humble, after we had called upon Him in a fervent manner, aside from the abodes of men, condescended to manifest to us His will. On a sudden, as from the midst of eternity, the voice of the Redeemer spake peace to us, while the veil was parted and the angel of God came down clothed with glory, and delivered the anxiously looked for message, and the keys of the Gospel of repentance. What joy! what wonder! what amazement! While the world was racked and distracted—while millions were groping as the blind for the wall, and while all men were resting upon uncertainty, as a general mass, our eyes beheld, our ears heard, as in the ‘blaze of day’; yes, more—above the glitter of the May sunbeam, which then shed its brilliancy over the face of nature! Then his voice, though mild, pierced to the center, and his words, ‘I am thy fellow-servant,’ dispelled every fear. We listened, we gazed, we admired! ’Twas the voice of an angel from glory, ’twas a message from the Most High! And as we heard we rejoiced, while His love enkindled upon our souls, and we were wrapped in the vision of the Almighty! Where was room for doubt? Nowhere; uncertainty had fled, doubt had sunk no more to rise, while fiction and deception had fled forever!”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Love, Men, God, World

“The sheep are down at the water, a-drinkin' their bloomin' fill,
An' me and the dog are dozin', as herders and collies will;
The world may be movin' somewheres, but here it is standin' still.”

Arthur Chapman (poet) (1873–1935) American poet and newspaper columnist

The Herder's Reverie http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#Reverie, st. 1. Out Where the West Begins and Other Western Verses http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#outbk (1917)

World, Dogs, Water

“Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move.”

James Cameron (1954) Canadian film director

Jake Sully
Avatar (2009)

Life

“Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words abortion or tax cuts pass their lips.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Put the tax cut in a lock box
2002-02-02
Townhall
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2002/02/21/put_the_tax_cut_in_a_lock_box/page/full
2002

Support

“We are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was…. My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Thoughts on actors, Ch. 1
On Reflection (1968)

Love, Life, Way, Change

“We were very young. I don't think I ever slept that year, but I had a friend who slept even less than I did. Some mornings you could see him strolling up and down in front of the station when the first trains were arriving and leaving.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Incipit
The devil in the hills (1949)

Thinking, Training

“Do you know,’ said a thoughtful Bean, ‘I’ll bet that if all the girls Freddie Widgeon has loved were placed end to end—not that I suppose one could do it—they would reach half-way down Piccadilly.’
‘Further than that,’ said the Egg. ‘Some of them were pretty tall.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Young Men in Spats

Young Men in Spats (1936)

Love, Way, Girl

“The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports the same inherent malignancies and perverse incentives of government, down to the racial-spoils system.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Silent Co-Conspirators In Military Mass Shootings" http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/the-silent-co-conspirators-in-military.html Economic Policy Journal, September 22, 2013. 2010s, 2013

Sport

“So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides
The Derby dilly, carrying three INSIDES.”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

The Loves of the Triangles, line 178.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.”

Geddy Lee (1953) vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush

Global Bass interview (2000)

Feeling

“Well they're breaking down doors in foreign countries,
Everybody thinks somebody's hiding something.
There's talk on the street and the nation is worried.
But you can't talk back when you're dead, when you're dead and buried.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Restless
Song lyrics, Breaking Hearts (1984)

Thinking, Dead, Country

“The way of revenge lies in simply forcing one's way into a place and being cut down. There is no shame in this. By thinking that you must complete the job you will run out of time. By considering things like how many men the enemy has, time piles up; in the end you will give up. No matter if the enemy has thousands of men, there is fulfillment in simply standing them off and being determined to cut them all down, starting from one end. You will finish the greater part of it.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

Men, Way, Revenge, Thinking

“There's a dark cloud rising from the desert floor.
I packed my bags and I'm heading straight into the storm.
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground.
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart,
Blow away the dreams that break your heart.
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The Promised Land"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Faith, Dreams, Tear, Heart

“We want the happiness of the Philippines, but we want to obtain it through noble and just means. If I have to commit villainy to make her happy, I would refuse to do so, because I am sure that what is built on sand sooner or later would tumble down.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Letter to Blumentritt, (31 January 1887)

Happiness

“Hitchens: I've got another question for you, which is this: How many religions in the world do you believe to be false?
Craig: I don't know how many religions in the world there are, so I can’t answer.
Hitchens: Well, could you name... fair enough. I'll see if I can't narrow that down. That was a clumsily asked question, I admit. Do you regard any of the world's religions to be false?
Craig: Excuse me?
Hitchens: Do you regard any of the world's religions to be false preaching?
Craig: Yes, I think—yes, certainly.
Hitchens: Would you name one, then?
Craig: Islam.
Hitchens: That's quite a lot.
Craig: Pardon me?
Hitchens: That's quite a lot.
Craig: Yes.
Hitchens: Do you, therefore—do you think it's moral to preach false religion?
Craig: No.
Hitchens: So religion is responsible for quite a lot of wickedness in the world right there?
Craig: Certainly.
Hitchens: Right.
Craig: I'd be happy to concede (laughs) that. I would agree with that.
Hitchens: So if I was a baby being born in Saudi Arabia today, would you rather it was me or a Wahhabi Muslim?
Craig: Would I be—you rather be what?
Hitchens: Would you rather it was me—it was an atheist baby or a Wahhabi baby?
(Audience and Dr. Craig laugh):
Craig: I-I don't have any preference as to whether you would be... (laughing)
Hitchens: You don’t? As bad as that, O. K. Are there any—I'm sorry. I've only got a few seconds. It's a serious question. I shouldn't squander it. Are there any Christian denominations you regard as false?
Craig: Certainly.
Hitchens: Could I know what they are?
Craig: Well, I am not a Calvinist, for example. I think that certain tenets of Reformed Theology are incorrect. I would be more in the Wesleyan Camp myself. But these are differences among brethren. These are not differences on which we need to put one another in some sort of a cage. So within the Christian camp, there's a large diversity of perspectives. I'm sure there are views that I hold that are probably false, but I'm trying my best to get my theology straight, trying to do the best job. But I think all of us would recognize that none of us agree on every point of Christian doctrine, on every dot and tittle.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Craig vs Christopher Hitchens debate, Biola University, La Mirada, California, 4th April 2009 http://www.reasonablefaith.org/does-god-exist-craig-vs-hitchens-apr-2009#section_6

Happiness, World, Religion, Question

“You carried it alone as long as you could, and then you weren't strong enough to take it any longer. You kept fighting everything, and everything broke you down, until in the end you were just a little goddam bolt holding on and squealing when the machine went too fast.”

Norman Mailer book The Naked and the Dead

Pt. 3, Ch. 14
The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Strong, Fight

“I'm on top cuz I deserve to be
So simmer down, calm your nerves at least
Speak your words with peace
Before you lay out on the curb deceased.”

T.I. (1980) American rapper, record producer, actor, and businessman from Georgia

"Told You So".

Peace

“These facts and figures must serve as an eye-opener to the people of Mysore. I refer to them here not because I have any hopes of our reaching the levels of prosperity of the two Colonies, but because it will do us good to know what organization and human endeavour are capable of achieving under favourable conditions. / The nationality of our people rests on a religious and fatalistic basis, not on an economic basis, as in the West. There are still people among us who believe that the golden age was in the past, the world is on the down-grade and the old-word conditions might yet be reproduced some day. The Hindu ideal of life is that this world is a preparation for the next and not a place to stay in and make ourselves comfortable. We are devoted to past ideals, although, out of necessity or from prospect of personal gain, we have partly taken to Western methods of work and business. There is a yearning for the old ideals and a half-hearted acquiescence in the new and, on the whole, the genius of the people is for standing still. / If we are to follow in the wake of other countries in the pursuit of material prosperity, we must give up aimless activities and bring our ideals into line with the standards of the West, namely, to spread education in all grades, multiply occupations and increase production and wealth. All other activities should conform themselves to the economic idea.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

148-149
[Speeches by Sir M. Visvesvaraya, K.C.I.E, https://archive.org/details/VisvesvarayaSpeeches, 1917, Bangalore Government Press, 148]

Life, People, Age, World

“Our understanding of how markets and businesses operate was passed down to us more than a century ago by a handful of European economists — Alfred Marshall in England and a few of his contemporaries on the continent. It is an understanding based squarely upon the assumption of diminishing returns: products or companies that get ahead in a market eventually run into limitations, so that a predictable equilibrium of prices and market shares is reached. The theory was roughly valid for the bulk-processing, smokestack economy of Marshall’s day. And it still thrives in today’s economics textbooks. But steadily and continuously in this century, Western economies have undergone a transformation from bulk - material manufacturing to design and use of technology — from processing of resources to processing of information, from application of raw energy to application of ideas. As this shift has occurred, the underlying mechanisms that determine economic behavior have shifted from ones of diminishing to ones of increasing returns.”

W. Brian Arthur (1946) American economist

Arthur, W. Brian. "Increasing Returns and the New World of Business." Harvard business review 74.4 (1996): p. 100

Behavior, Idea, Understanding, Business

“You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Cross of Gold Speech (1896)

Spring, Grass, Country

“She (Maria) lived in an enormous house in the wilds of Northamptonshire, which was about four times longer than Buckingham Palace, but was falling down.”

T. H. White book Mistress Masham's Repose

Mistress Masham's Repose (1946)

Time, Housing

“A cat is the ideal literary companion. A wife, I am sure, cannot compare except to her disadvantage. A dog is out of the question. It may do at a butcher's – it would be out of place in a bookseller's. A cat for a bookseller is a different creature temperamentally from the same animal at a fishmonger's or a baker's. In these shops the cat is a useful animal – I suppose it is employed to eat fish entrails or to keep down rats and mice – but in my shop its function is that of a familiar. It is at once decorative – contemplative – philosophical, and it begets in me great calm and contentment.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 48

Dogs, Cats, Question, Fish

“Has, then, the influence of the crown increased since the Revolution? Down to the period of 1782 I believe the fact will not be much disputed. It was upon the notoriety of the fact, and the bad consequences it had produced, that the motions of the right hon. gentleman in favour of reform were founded. That it has increased, I think every impartial man must be compelled to admit…If, then, while the influence of the crown has so manifestly advanced, while the cause of liberty has remained the same, or has sustained a diminution of its strength, can it be said that we are standing upon the establishment of the Revolution, and adhering to the principles which it ascertained? It is, then, upon this ground of experience and the evidence of facts, upon proof of positive inconvenience and real declination from its original purity, that I should propose to recall our constitution to its true principles and to amend the system of our representation.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Speech in the House of Commons (25 April 1800), reported in The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XXXV (London: 1819), pp. 91-93.
1800s

Thinking

Quotes about down page 45

Quotes about down
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