Quotes about passing
page 33
Opening Chapter
Naked Lunch (1959)
Context: Shooting PG is a terrible hassle, you have to burn out the alcohol first, then freeze out the camphor and draw this brown liquid off with a dropper—have to shoot it in the vein or you get an abscess, and usually end up with an abscess no matter where you shoot it. Best deal is to drink it with goof balls … So we pour it in a Pernod bottle and start for New Orleans past iridescent lakes and orange gas flares, and swamps and garbage heaps, alligators crawling around in broken bottles and tin cans, neon arabesques of motels, marooned pimps scream obscenities at passing cars from islands of rubbish … New Orleans is a dead museum. We walk around Exchange Place breathing PG and find The Man right away. It’s a small place and the fuzz always knows who is pushing so he figures what the hell does it matter and sells to anybody. We stock up on H and backtrack for Mexico. Back through Lake Charles and the dead slot-machine country, south end of Texas, nigger-killing sheriffs look us over and check the car papers. Something falls off you when you cross the border into Mexico, and suddenly the landscape hits you straight with nothing between you and it, desert and mountains and vultures; little wheeling specks and others so close you can hear wings cut the air (a dry husking sound), and when they spot something they pour out of the blue sky, that shattering bloody blue sky of Mexico, down in a black funnel … Drove all night, came at dawn to a warm misty place, barking dogs and the sound of running water.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: A well-intentioned movement had gained support to give the remnant Indian populations the dignity of private property, and the plan was widely adopted in the halls of Congress, in the press, and in the meetings of religious societies.... the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887... provided that after every Indian had been allotted land, any remaining surplus would be put up for sale to the public. The loopholes... made it an efficient instrument for separating the Indians from this land.... The first lands to go were the richest—bottom lands in river valleys, or fertile grasslands. Next went the slightly less desirable lands... and so on, until all the Indian had left to him was desert that no White considered worth the trouble to take.... Between 1887, when the Dawes Act was passed, and 1934, out of 138 million acres that had been their meager allotment, all but 56 million acres had been appropriated by Whites.... not a single acre [of which] was judged uneroded by soil conservationists.
“And the food for the soul passes, candid and free, without paying tribute to the customs.”
Source: Platero and I (1917), Ch. 2 : White Butterflies, as translated by Eloïse Roach (1957).
Context: The man wants to stick his iron pick in the little basket, and I do not prevent him. I open the knapsack, and he sees nothing in it. And the food for the soul passes, candid and free, without paying tribute to the customs.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity
Context: "God does not think, He creates; He does not exist, He is eternal," wrote Kierkegaard (Afslutende uvidenskabelige Efterskrift); but perhaps it is more exact to say with Mazzini, the mystic of the Italian city, that "God is great because his thought is action" (Ai giovani d'Italila), because with Him to think is to create, and He gives existence to that which exists in His thought by the mere fact of thinking it, and the impossible is unthinkable by God. It is not written in the Scriptures that God creates with His word — that is to say, with His thought — and that by this, by His Word, He made everything that exists? And what God has once made does He ever forget? May it not be that all the thoughts that have ever passed through the Supreme Consciousness still subsist therein? In Him, who is eternal, is not all existence eternalized?
Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)
Context: My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily derive comfort from that conviction.
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)
Context: The Occasion of that Assembly was this; The Parliament which then was, (or the prevailing part of them,) were ingaged in a War with the King.... The Issue of which War, proved very different from what was said to be at first intended. As is usual in such cases; the power of the sword frequently passing from hand to hand and those who begin a War, not being able to foresee where it wil end.<!--pp. cliii-cliv
Letter to Marquis Childs quoted in St. Louis Post Dispatch (15 October 1930) and in the address "American Literature and the American Language" delivered at Washington University (9 June 1953) published in Washington University Studies, New Series: Literature and Language, no. 23 (St. Louis : Washington University Press, 1953), p. 6
Context: It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.
Blessings (1998)
Context: I honor my importance and the importance of others. None of us is dispensable, none of us is replacable. In the chorus of life each of us brings a True Note, a perfect pitch that adds to the harmony of the whole. I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing.
“With a kiss
I'd pass the key
And feel your tongue
Teasing and receiving.”
Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)
Context: With a kiss
I'd pass the key
And feel your tongue
Teasing and receiving.
With your spit
Still on my lip,
You hit the water.
Kosmos (1845 - 1847)
Context: From the remotest nebulæ and from the revolving double stars, we have descended to the minutest organisms of animal creation, whether manifested in the depths of ocean or on the surface of our globe, and to the delicate vegetable germs which clothe the naked declivity of the ice-crowned mountain summit; and here we have been able to arrange these phenomena according to partially known laws; but other laws of a more mysterious nature rule the higher spheres of the organic world, in which is comprised the human species in all its varied conformation, its creative intellectual power, and the languages to which it has given existence. A physical delineation of nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is opened to our view. It marks the limit, but does not pass it.
“Yet the moonlight is the sunlight and the sun himself will pass.”
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 182
Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
Context: How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood.
Kibbeh Palace, Cairo, Oct. 31, 1980, as quoted in Farah Pahlavi (2004) An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah, p. 434.
Speeches, 1980
From the first Cosmos: ASO episode, Standing Up in the Milky Way.
2010s, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)
Variant: Science is a cooperative enterprise, spanning the generations. It's the passing of a torch from teacher, to student, to teacher. A community of minds reaching back to antiquity and forward to the stars.
Source: "A Shadow of the Night", p. 26 note: Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)
“Improvement demands a commitment to growth long after the mood in which it was made has passed.”
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
"Investiture of New Patriarch" (11 May 1971), in Important Utterances of H. I. M. Emperor Haile Selassie I, 1963-1972 (1972) edited by the Imperial Ethiopian Ministry of Information, p. 268
Pithy Aphorisms: Wise Saying and Counsels, Edited by Mansoor Limba, Tehran: The Institute for Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works -- International Affairs Department. p. 7.
Theology and Mysticism
Rival Caesars (1903)
71. The Election of the Judiciary by The Workers
ABC's of Communism
On Black masculinity in “Derek Owusu: ‘Mental health issues that people find scary aren’t being talked about’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/02/derek-owusu-that-reminds-me-stormzy-mens-mental-health in The Guardian (2019 Nov 2)
Leader of the Opposition
Source: Speech to the executive committee of the City of London Conservative Association announcing his resignation as party leader (8 November 1911), quoted in The Times (9 November 1911), p. 10
Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), pp. 154-155
My friend, that is worth more than all the feeling you can have in a life-time.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 244
Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 1
Source: The Nature of the Physical World (1928), Ch. 12 : Pointer Readings
Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001) by Koenraad Elst
116
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One (The Call) (1924)
1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Cagliostro’s Letter to the English People (1787)
Balsamo the Magician (or The Memoirs of a Physician) by Alex. Dumas (1891)
On one of the inspirations behind his play Living Sculpture in “SIN MUROS: INTERVIEW WITH “LIVING SCULPTURE” PLAYWRIGHT MANDO ALVARADO” https://thetheatretimes.com/sin-muros-interview-living-sculpture-playwright-mando-alvarado/ in The Theatre Times
Persian Sufi Poetry, p. 73,
A Literary History of Persia, Vol. III, p. 141-146
Jan Rypka's History of Iranian Literature, p. 254
about Sufism
quote in Arp on Arp: poems, essays, memories, Viking, 1972, p. 231
Attributed from posthumous publications
“The Social Security Myth” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCdgv7n9xCY&t=124s (1980s)
“Economic Myths and Public Opinion” https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/AmSpectator_01_1976.pdf, The Alternative: An American Spectator, vol. 9, no. 4, (January 1976) pp. 5-9
Prime Ministers' Questions (27 April 1989) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1989/apr/27/engagements#S6CV0151P0_19890427_HOC_126
Third term as Prime Minister
"Diagnosis of Our Moral Uneasiness"
Power, Politics, and People (1963)
"Recession Economics," New York Review of Books, Volume 29, Number 1 (4 February 1982)
Letter to Walter Jones (2 January 1814) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0052.
1810s
Letter to John Jay from Paris, France (January 25, 1786). Source: “ From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 25 January 1786 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-09-02-0190,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9, 1 November 1785 – 22 June 1786, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 215.]
1780s
“That’s not…untrue. But money corrupts. Almost invariably, powers that arise around money are corrupted by it. He might have started out as a true believer, but money has a way of taking over. A church is a business, after all, and those employees or executives who are good at raising money are promoted by their fellows.”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 7, “Communion” (p. 126)
"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)
"Vestigial Customs and Institutions, pp. 190–191
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 87–88
"The Source of Religion", International Socialist Review, Vol. 16, Iss. 12, Jun. 1916
That mighty race who fought and almost vanquished the whole world is on the march again. The whole nation is inspired with the idea of retrieving and avenging their defeat in the Great War. They have arisen from the pit of disaster in monstrous guise. ... And we are still pestering France to disarm, and we are still disarmed ourselves!
'How I Would Procure Peace', Daily Mail (9 July 1934), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 825, n. 3
The 1930s
On her poetic lineage in “An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate” https://poets.org/text/interview-joy-harjo-us-poet-laureate?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiJP5naHW5QIV0Rx9Ch0tGgkkEAAYASAAEgIJD_D_BwE in Poets.org (2019 Mar 31)
Memorandum, 'Wages and Prices and Full Employment' (1 December 1950), quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Lost Victory: British Dreams, British Realities: 1945–1950 (London: Pan, 1996), pp. 350–352
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Remarks at Bush Institute Summit, "The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World" at the Bush Institute Summit in New York City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2YlVZxu_L0 (October 2017), as quoted in The Washington Post http://archive.is/jl9AF#selection-2115.0-2135.112 (October 2017)
2010s, 2017
Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan, 26 November 1938. Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf
1930s
Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?, 2019
President Hugo Chavez's Speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Wednesday, September 20, 2006
The Secret Teachings of All Ages,The Druidic Mysteries of Britain & Gaul, p. 46, https://ia800809.us.archive.org/15/items/Thesecretteachingsofallages2/The%20Secret%20Teachings%20Of%20All%20Ages%20-%20Manly%20P.%20Hall.pdf
The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)
Source: From Bethlehem to Calvary (1937), Chapter One
Congressional Record https://books.google.fr/books?id=WhPOxPiWV2YC&q=%22indoctrinated+and+brainwashed+by+left-wing+pressure+groups.%22&dq=%22indoctrinated+and+brainwashed+by+left-wing+pressure+groups.%22&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjiodS__tjkAhWLnhQKHSqcBdoQ6AEIcjAJ, 1956
1950s
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Four, People Changing
May 26 1944 letter as qtd. in “The Law of Armed Conflict: Constraints on the Contemporary Use of Military Force”, edited by Howard M. Hensel, 2007, p. 58.
1940s
Source: First speech as leader at the Conservative Party conference (1991) http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page863.html
Chiu Chui-cheng (2019) cited in " Taiwan could issue travel alert for Hong Kong if proposed extradition update passes https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/03/25/taiwan-issue-travel-alert-hong-kong-proposed-extradition-update-passes/" on Hong Kong Free Press, 25 March 2019
Speech in Barmouth (22 September 1933), quoted in The Times (23 September 1933), p. 7
Later life
Speech to the Trades Union Congress in Bristol (9 September 1915), quoted in The Times (10 September 1915), p. 10
Minister of Munitions
Sir Vince Cable: Governments assume public are 'pretty bigoted' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43941383, BBC News, 29 April 2018
2018
The Theosophist (October 1914)
Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations Are Not Just About Slavery But Also Centuries of Theft & Racial Terror, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)
After lot of exchange of letters with the political people concerned, the issue did not come up before the Parliament, in 1960, in p. 21
Source: First Citizen, p. 16
Dr. Rajendra Prasad addressing the Constituent Assembly of India on Thursday, 4 November 1948. Constituent Assembly Debates, Book No. 2, Volume VII: 4 November 1948—8 January 1949: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1999
Vol. 4, pt. 2, translated by W.P.Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2