Quotes about sign
page 8

“The media is the thought-form of the technological society, and it finds nothing it does to be laughable, a sure sign that it is not human.”

Donald Phillip Verene (1937) philosopher

Source: Philosophy and the Return to Self-Knowledge (1997), p. 169

“Your God still walks in Eden, between the ancient trees,
Where Youth and Love go wading through pools of primroses.
And this is the sign we bring you, before the darkness fall,
That Spring is risen, is risen again,
That Life is risen, is risen again,
That Love is risen, is risen again, and Love is Lord of all.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

The Lord of Misrule
The Lord of Misrule and Other Poems (1915)

Love, Life, God, Youth

“They passed a farmhouse, a simple shack surrounded by animals — a lazy burro, clucking chickens, a litter of pigs. The farmhouse stood alone in the desolate landscape. There was no sign of a living person anywhere. And then it was gone, lost in the swirling dust plume of the car.”

Michael Crichton book Zero Cool

Zero Cool, written under the pseudonym John Lange (1969)

Cars, Animals, Personality

“The WTO was put in place following the signing of a "technical agreement" negotiated behind closed doors by bureaucrats. Even the heads of country-level delegations to Marrakech in 1994 were not informed regarding the statutes of the WTO, which were drafted in separate clossed sessions by technocrats.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 1, The Globalization of Poverty, p. 25

Country

“The meaning of the word “feminist” has not really changed since it first appeared in a book review in the Athenaeum of April 27, 1895, describing a woman who “has in her the capacity of fighting her way back to independence.” It is the basic proposition that, as Nora put it in Ibsen's A Doll's House a century ago, “Before everything else I'm a human being.” It is the simply worded sign hoisted by a little girl in the 1970 Women's Strike for Equality: I AM NOT A BARBIE DOLL. Feminism asks the world to recognize at long last that women aren't decorative ornaments, worthy vessels, members of a “special-interest group”. They are half (in fact, now more than half) of the national population, and just as deserving of rights and opportunities, just as capable of participating in the world's events, as the other half. Feminism's agenda is basic It asks that women not be forced to “choose” between public justice and private happiness. It asks that women be free to define themselves — instead of having their identity defined for them, time and again, by their culture and their men.”

Susan Faludi book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Backlash (1992)

Women, Men, Happiness, Books

“We love the imperfect shapes in nature and in the works of art, look for an intentional error as a sign of the golden key and sincerity found in true mastery.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Mastery http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mastery-2/ From the poems written in English

Love, Art, Error, Nature

“MP3 and peer-to-peer file sharing technology single-handedly disrupted the age-old music business. iTunes and YouTube have displaced record stores and MTV. If we take the cue from Netflix which has successfully produced original content, it will not be long before Apple and Google will sign new artists and rival the record labels.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Digital Da Vinci: Computers in Music, 2014

Age, Music, Business

“Among the signs of a learned man is criticising his own words and being informed of various viewpoints.”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.78, p. 119
Regarding Wisdom

Learning

“The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

J 115
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook J (1789)

Drawing, Perfection

“Dear Rainer Maria Rilke
I thank you for saying that you rather like my painting of 'the little child'... You have brought me the first touch of Paris with this phrase of yours about 'liking and approving', and that alone is a great deal... Will I be seeing you here [in Worpswede] before I leave? I really hope not. The ground is burning a little beneath my feet... And now, I don't even know how I should sign my name. I'm not Modersohn, but I'm no longer Paula Becker anymore either [because she was married with Otto Modersohn, but is now leaving him]. I am Me, and I hope to become Me more and more. That is surely the goal of all our struggles... I am now leaving Friday night and shal arrive in Paris on Saturday. Write a line to 29 Rue Cassette, where I plan to stay..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

quote in a letter from Worpswede, 17 February, 1906 to Rainer Maria Rilke in Paris; as quoted in Modersohn-Becker P, Busch G, Reinken LV: Paula Modersohn-Becker, the Letters and Journals, Taplinger; New York 1983, p. 383-84
1906 + 1907

Hope, Painting, Night

“That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"In enemy territory? An interview with Christopher Hitchens." http://www.johannhari.com/2004/09/23/in-enemy-territory-an-interview-with-christopher-hitchens, Interview with Johann Hari (2004-09-23): On the Bosnian War 2000s, 2004

War, People, Support, Change

“My friend Bonner has just set off to Charlotte Street to pack your picture (an old painting) and forward it; it is a beautiful representation of a summer's evening; calm, warm and delicious; the colour on the man's face is perfect sunshine. The liquid pencil of this school is replete with a beauty peculiar to itself. Nevertheless, I don't believe they had any 'nostrums,' but plain linseed oil; 'honest linseed' as old Wilson called it. But it is always right to remember that the ordinary painters of that day used, as now, the same vehicle as their betters, and also that their works have all received the hardening and enamelling effects of time, so that we must not judge of originality by these signs always.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (20 December 1833), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), pp. 45-46
1830s

School, Beauty, Time, Summer

“Dada is a farce, a legend, a state of myth. A badly behaved myth whose subterranean survival and capricious manifestation upset everyone... The aesthetic of absolute negativity has been changed into methodical doubt, thanks to which it will finally be able to incarnate new signs... After the NO and the ZERO, there is a third position for the myth; the anti-art gesture of Marcel Duchamp has been charged with positive energy. The Dada spirit identifies itself with a method of appropriation of exterior reality of the modern world... The ready-made is no longer the height of negativity or of polemic, but the basis element of a new expressive repertoire. Such is the New Realism: a direct means for getting one's feet back on the ground but at 40 degree above Dada zero.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 41, note 30

World, Art, Reality, Change

“This problem may not occur for several hundred years, but by the time we see the first signs, it will be far too late to do anything about it.”

Tim Flannery book The Weather Makers

Source: The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 20 (p. 186)

Problem, Time

“Say, He Whom God shall make manifest will surely redeem the rights of those who truly believe in God and in His signs, for they are the ones who merit reward from His presence. Say, it is far from the glory of Him Whom God shall make manifest that anyone should in this wise make mention of His name, if ye ponder the Cause of God in your hearts. Say, He shall vindicate the Cause through the potency of His command and shall bring to naught all perversion of truth by virtue of His behest. Verily God is potent over all things.”

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

The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God, Truth, Heart

“With a long slow stride, limping a little from his blistered feet, Bud walked down Broadway, past empty lots where tin cans glittered among grass and sumach bushes and ragweed, between ranks of billboards and Bull Durham signs, past shanties and abandoned squatters’ shacks, past gulches heaped with wheelscarred rubbishpiles where dumpcarts were dumping ashes and clinkers, past knobs of gray outcrop where steamdrills continually tapped and nibbled, past excavations out of which wagons full of rock and clay toiled up plank roads to the street, until he was walking on new sidewalks along a row of yellow brick apartment houses, looking in the windows of grocery stores, Chinese laundries, lunchrooms, flower and vegetable shops, tailors’, delicatessens. (pp. 23-24)”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Manhattan Transfer (1925)

Flowers, Grass, Past, Housing

“Two men dressed in white jeans with white caps on their heads.... climbing over a large sign of white letters. Of course, the words spell something, but that is unimportant. What is important is their white, and the white of the letters.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951

Men

“Messi is a very quick and technically gifted player. When you face him you have to make decisions in an instant. When he approaches you, you have to make the sign of the cross and pray that everything will be alright.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Interview with Globo Esporte, 2011 http://www.football-italia.net/node/13081

Decision

“I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby (1908) SS 80-81

Personality

“[on being LGBT in show business] People in the business are equally as terrified now -- but I really find it a personal thing. And maybe I’m at the end of that era. I wouldn’t even want to stereotype today’s generation. But the majority of the casting departments are gay, and a lot of the executives are. I think it’s a matter of your abilities and how you carry yourself -- I don’t behave any differently toward you right now than when I am with David [Burtka, his boyfriend] in our apartment, watching "American Idol." OK, "So You Think You Can Dance." [Laughs] I can see why an agent wouldn’t want to sign on a real overtly effeminate male actor -- not because I have an aversion to them but because agents might know it limits their job opportunities.”

Neil Patrick Harris (1973) American actor and host

Out Magazine; September 2008.

People, Business, Thinking, Dance

“Take disturbance as an awakening sign that you misunderstand something you assumed you understood.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle

“Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

F. Scott Fitzgerald http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/trilling-fsf.html The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

This is not a statement that has been found in any translation of any of Freud's known works. It is a paraphrase of a statement from the essay "Guns, Murders, and the Constitution" (February 1990) http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_katesreal.html by Don B. Kates, Jr. where Kates summarizes his views of passages in Dreams in Folklore (1958) by Freud and David E. Oppenheim, while disputing statements by Emmanuel Tanay in "Neurotic Attachment to Guns" in a 1976 edition of The Fifty Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales (1955) by Robert Mitchell Lindner: :: Dr. Tanay is perhaps unaware of — in any event, he does not cite — other passages more relevant to his argument. In these other passages Freud associates retarded sexual and emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and loathing of weapons. The probative importance that ought to be attached to the views of Freud is, of course, a matter of opinion. The point here is only that those views provide no support for the penis theory of gun ownership. : After reading of this essay and its citations, this paraphrase of an opinion about Freud's ideas has been attributed to Freud himself, and specifically to his 10th Lecture "Symbolism in Dreams" in General Introduction to Psychoanalysis on some internet forum pages: alt.quotations http://groups.google.com/group/alt.quotations/msg/5fc8dd0f7d56981e, uk.politics.guns http://groups.google.com/group/uk.politics.guns/msg/4ad060e213bc5b6b, talk.politics.guns http://groups.google.com/group/talk.politics.guns/msg/7fbce4b3fa5324a7, can.talk.guns http://groups.google.com/group/can.talk.guns/msg/a57bc07124e64fba , etc. : One of the statements by Freud which Kates summarized from in Dreams in Folklore (1958), p. 33, reads: "The representation of the penis as a weapon, cutting knife, dagger etc., is familiar to us from the anxiety dreams of abstinent women in particular and also lies at the root of numerous phobias in neurotic people." Misattributed

Fear

“From behind the Iron Curtain, there are signs that tyranny is in trouble and reminders that its structure is as brittle as its surface is hard.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

State of the Union Address to Congress http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/avwebsite/PDF/54text.pdf (7 January 1954) 1950s

“"It is an evil, sir, an unmitigated evil," Lincoln said. "I shall never forget the group of chained Negroes I saw going down the river to be sold close to a quarter of a century ago. Never was there so much misery, all in one place. If your secession triumphs, the South will be a pariah among nations." "We shall be recognized as what we are, a nation among nations," Lee returned. "And, let me repeat, my being here is a sign secession has triumphed. What I would seek to do now, subject to the ratification of my superiors, is suggest terms to halt the war between the United States and Confederate States." Lincoln refused to call Lee's country by its proper name. As a small measure of revenge, Lee put extra weight on that name. Lincoln sighed. This was the moment he had tried to evade, but there was no evading it, not with the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in his parlor. "Name your terms, General," he said in a voice full of ashes.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 176-177

War, Revenge, Evil, Country

“Compassion isn’t a sign of weakness, but a mark of civilization.”

Nicholas D. Kristof (1959) journalist, author, columnist

" Where is the Love? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/opinion/kristof-where-is-the-love.html?src=recg", New York Times, 27 November 2013

“The emergence of abstract art is a sign that there are still men of feeling in the world. Men who know how to respect and follow their inner feelings, no matter how irrational or absurd they may first appear. From their perspective, it is the social world that tends to appear irrational and absurd.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

1951; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker' https://www.theartstory.org/artist-motherwell-robert-life-and-legacy.htm#writings_and_ideas_header, on 'Artstory' from his responding at the 1951 MoMA symposium, in which several artists were asked to respond to the prompt 'What Abstract Art Means to Me' 1950s

Men, World, Art, Feeling

“In a word, CLEANTHES, a man who follows your hypothesis is able perhaps to assert, or conjecture, that the universe, sometime, arose from something like design: but beyond that position he cannot ascertain one single circumstance; and is left afterwards to fix every point of his theology by the utmost license of fancy and hypothesis. This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him. You justly give signs of horror, DEMEA, at these strange suppositions; but these, and a thousand more of the same kind, are CLEANTHES’s suppositions, not mine. From the moment the attributes of the Deity are supposed finite, all these have place. And I cannot, for my part, think that so wild and unsettled a system of theology is, in any respect, preferable to none at all.”

David Hume book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Philo to Demea, Part V
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

Death, Age, World, Thinking

“Those not able to work were marched to the farmhouses. These were a good kilometer from the side track. There they were made to undress. At first they had to undress in the open, where we had erected walls made of straw and branches of trees that kept them from onlookers. After a while we built barracks. We had big signs, all of which read 'To Disinfection' or 'Baths.' That was in order to give the people the impression that they would merely receive a bath or be disinfected, in order not to have any technical difficulty in the extermination processes.”

Rudolf Höss (1901–1947) German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp

To Leon Goldensohn, April 9, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

People, Tree, Reading

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”

Samuel Johnson book A Dictionary of the English Language

Preface http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/preface.html A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Idea, Science, Daughters, Forgetting

“It was the devout hope of Macaulay… and of many others, that the diffusion of new learning among the higher classes would see the dissolution of Hinduism and the widespread acceptance of Christianity. The missionaries were of the same view, and they entered the education field with enthusiasm, providing schools and colleges in many parts of India where education in the Christian Bible was compulsory for Hindu students. The middle classes accepted Western education with avidity and willingly studied Christian scriptures, but neither the dissolution of Hindu society so hopefully predicted nor the conversion of the intellectuals so devoutly hoped for showed any sign of materialization. On the other hand, Hinduism assimilated the new learning, and the effects were soon visible all over India in a revival of a universalistic religion based on the Vedanta.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Education, School, Religion, Hope

“Your iron industry is dead; dead as mutton. Your coal industries, which depend greatly upon the iron industries, are languishing. Your silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Your woollen industry is in articulo mortis, gasping, struggling. Your cotton industry is seriously sick. The shipbuilding industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eyes where you like, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease. The self-satisfied Radical philosophers will tell you it is nothing; they point to the great volume of British trade. Yes, the volume of British trade is still large, but it is a volume which is no longer profitable; it is working and struggling. So do the muscles and nerves of the body of a man who has been hanged twitch and work violently for a short time after the operation. But death is there all the same, life has utterly departed, and suddenly comes the rigot mortis…But what has produced this state of things? Free imports? I am not sure; I should like an inquiry; but I suspect free imports of the murder of our industries much in the same way as if I found a man standing over a corpse and plunging his knife into it I should suspect that man of homicide, and I should recommend a coroner's inquest and a trial by jury…”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Speech in Blackpool (24 January 1884), quoted in Robert Rhodes James, Lord Randolph Churchill (London: Phoenix, 1994), p. 137

Life, Death, Disease, Way

“I've always said you that need to keep it on the table and you need to look at these things because now people are dying because of this administration. And, you know, that's what -- that's the truth. And they won't change course. They're ignoring the Congress. They keep signing -- these signing statements, which mean that he's decided not to enforce the law. This is as close as we've ever come to a dictatorship.”

Barbara Boxer (1940) American politician

On the possibility of George W. Bush's impeachment CNN, July 13, 2007. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/13/sitroom.02.html

People, Truth, Law, Change

“THERE rests a shade above yon town,
A dark funereal shroud:
'Tis not the tempest hurrying down,
'Tis not a summer cloud.
The smoke that rises on the air
Is as a type and sign;
A shadow flung by the despair
Within those streets of thine.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Summer, Despair

“Lysenkoism is held up by bourgeois commentators as the supreme demonstration that conscious ideology cannot inform scientific practice and that "ideology has no place in science." On the other hand, some writers are even now maintaining a Lysenkoist position because they believe that the principles of dialectical materialism contradict the claims of genetics. Both of these claims stem from a vulgarisation of Marxist philosophy through deliberate hostility, in the first case, or ignorance, in the second. Nothing in Marx, Lenin or Mao contradicts the particular physical facts and processes of a particular set of natural phenomena in the objective world, because what they wrote about nature was at a high level of abstraction. The error of the Lysenkoist claim arises from attempting to apply a dialectical analysis of physical problems from the wrong end. Dialectical materialism is not, and has never been, a programmatic method for solving particular physical problems. Rather, dialectical analysis provides an overview and a set of warning signs against particular forms of dogmatism and narrowness of thought. It tells us, "Remember that history may leave an important trace. Remember that being and becoming are dual aspects of nature. Remember that conditions change and that the conditions necessary to the initiation of some process may be destroyed by the process itself. Remember to pay attention to real objects in space and time and not lose them utterly in idealized abstractions. Remember that qualitative effects of context and interaction may be lost when phenomena are isolated."”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

And above all else, "Remember that all the other caveats are only reminders and warning signs whose application to different circumstances of the real world is contingent."
"The Problem of Lysenkoism" by Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, in Hilary and Steven Rose (eds.), The Radicalisation of Science, Macmillan, 1976, p. 58.

Hostility, World, Error, History

“Ask yourself: "Do I police what people say for political propriety? … do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Joan Rivers – antidote to PC totalitarianism,” http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=2781 The Quarterly Review, July 11, 2014. 2010s, 2014

People, Books, Law, Art

“In the store, Bill is buying some pants.
Clerk: You gonna buy these?
Engvall: Nope, gonna steal 'em. Just wanted you to see them before I walked out of the store. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie (2003)
Here's Your Sign

“If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question or the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object. But the historian would be deceived if he came to this pass: by the very act of considering the structuralist invasion as an object he would forget its meaning and would forget that what is at stake, first of all,, is an adventure of vision, a conversion of the way of putting questions to any object posed before us, to historical objects-his own- in particular. And, unexpectedly among these, the literary objects.”

Jacques Derrida book Writing and Difference

Force and Signification
Writing and Difference (1978)

Way, Idea, Question, Forgetting

“14:06> …Of course I made it quite clear to the women that I thought that that the way that they had been abused was terrible and completely unjustifiable. However, I thought that it was very important that they should understand their own complicity in it; so that, for example, they understood that the way they chose men, and their refusal to see signs (which they were capable of seeing) resulted in their misery… <14:40> To give you a concrete example, I would say to them, ‘This man of yours, who’s very nasty to you, and drags you across the floor, and puts your head through the window, and sometimes even hangs you out of the window by your ankles: How long do you think it would take me to realise he was no good, as he came through the door? Would it take me a second, or half a second, or an eighth of a second, or would I not notice that there was anything wrong with him at all?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, an eighth of a second, you’d know immediately.’ And I would say to them, ‘Well, if you know that I would know immediately, then you knew immediately as well.’ It’s a logical consequence, really. And they would accept that. ‘And yet, you chose to associate with him, knowing full well that he was no good; and I tell you this, because it’s very necessary you should understand your own part in the predicament you now find yourself in, because if you don’t understand it, or don’t think about it, you’re just going to repeat it.’ which is of course, a very, very common pattern.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Daniels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Daniels_(psychiatrist) on helping victims of abuse understand how they can help to break the cycle. CBC Ideas Interview (podcast) (September 25, 2006)

Women, Men, Way, Understanding

“Starkey put his fingers under the man's chin and pushed his head back. As he did so, the man's eyeballs fell back into his head with a meaty little thud. The words on the sign had been written in red Magic Marker. NOW YOU KNOW IT WORKS, the sign said, ANY QUESTIONS?”

Stephen King book The Stand

The Stand (1978)

Question

“Broca’s famous observation was in itself very simple. There had in 1831 been admitted at the Bicêtre, an insane hospital near Paris, a man whose sole defect seemed to be that he could not talk. He communicated intelligently by signs and was otherwise mentally normal. He remained at the Bicêtre for thirty years with this defect and on April 12, 1861, was put under the care of Broca, the surgeon, because of a gangrenous infection. Broca for five days subjected him to a careful examination, in which he satisfied himself that the musculature of the larynx and articulatory organs was not hindered in normal movements, that there was no other paralysis that could interfere with speech, and that the man was intelligent enough to speak. On April 17 the patient— fortunately, it must have seemed, for science—died; and within a day Broca had performed an autopsy, discovering a lesion in the third frontal convolution of the left cerebral hemisphere, and had presented the brain in alcohol to the Société d’Anthropologie.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: A History of Experimental Psychology, 1929, p. 71: As cited in: Hergenhahn (2008;248)

Alcohol, Intelligence, Communication, Science

“Lack of clarity is always a sign of dishonesty.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Quoted in Essays in Zoosemiotics (1990) by Thomas A. Sebeok

Universe

“Recently I was visited by a very good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods, and I asked her what she had observed. “Nothing in particular,” she replied. I might have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Three Days to See (1933)

Feeling, Search, Spring, Flowers

“Every revolution has its counterrevolution — that is a sign the revolution is for real. And every revolution must defend itself against this counterrevolution, or the revolution will fail.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

Listen Yankee (1960), pp. 54.
1960s

“I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and independence. Instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, July, (21 July 2016)

Freedom, Hurt, Country

“Gilt-tooled on yard-square panels of green leather—imitation, of course—the zodiacal signs looked down from the walls of the executive lunch-room. The air was full of the chatter of voices and the clink of ice-cubes. Waiting to be attacked when the president of the company joined them (he had promised to show at one sharp) was a table laden with expensive food: hard-boiled eggs, shells intact so that it could be seen they were brown, free-range, rich in carotene; lettuces whose outer leaves had been rasped by slugs; apples and pears wearing their maggot-marks like dueling scars, in this case presumably genuine ones though it had been known for fruit growers to fake them with red-hot wires in areas where insects were no longer found; whole hams, very lean, proud of their immunity from antibiotics and copper sulphate; scrawny chickens; bread as coarse as sandstone, dark as mud and nubbled with wheat grains...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “HOUSE TO HOUSE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Food, Waiting

“Self-love, my friend, bewitches parents to give too much indulgence to infantine foibles;- the constant cry is, "Poor little soul, it knows no better!" If it swears, that's a sign of wit and spirit; if it fibs, it's so cunning and comical; if it steals, 'tis only a paw trick- and the mother exultingly cries, "My Jacky is so sharp, we can keep nothing from him!"”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 1, letter 28: 4 Oct 1775, to Miss L___ ).

Love, Soul, Parent, Cry

“Beloved, I sought you
here and there,
asked for news of you
from all I met;
then saw you through myself
and found we were identical.
Now I blush to think I ever
searched for signs of you.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Lama’at (Divine Flashes)

Search, Thinking

“Sharing horizons that are new to us,
Watching the signs along the way,
Talking it over just the two of us,
Working together day to day
Together.”

Paul Williams (songwriter) (1940) American composer, singer, songwriter and actor

"We've Only Just Begun" (1970).

Way

“According to the teaching of the Church, men and women with homosexual tendencies 'must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided'. They are called, like other Christians, to live the virtue of chastity. The homosexual inclination is however 'objectively disordered' and homosexual practices are 'sins gravely contrary to chastity'.In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

Doctrinal document Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons, July 31, 2003
2003

Women, Men, Marriage, Law

“"Listen," she said. "I get off in an hour. Sit in the back. I'll see you then."
As though they'd agreed to this a long time ago. That was the sign, he was as yet unused to noticing it but he was learning: that sensation that the future has already happened and is only bringing itself about in staging these present moments.”

John Crowley book Four Freedoms

Part Two, Chapter 7
Four Freedoms (2009)

Learning, Time, Future

“the reality beyond language is not completely reality, a reality that does not speak or say is not reality;
and the moment I say that, the moment I write, letter by letter, that a reality stripped of names is not reality, the names evaporate, they are air, they are a sound encased in another sound and in another and another, a murmur, a faint cascade of meanings that fade away to nothingness:
the tree that I say is not the tree that I see, tree does not say tree, the tree is beyond its name, a leafy, woody reality: impenetrable, untouchable, a reality beyond signs, immersed in itself, firmly planted in its own reality: I can touch it but I cannot name it, I can set fire to it but if I name it I dissolve it:
the tree that is there among the trees is not the tree that I name but a reality that is beyond names, beyond the word reality, it is simply reality just as it is, the abolition of differences and also the abolition of similarities;
the tree that I name is not the tree, and the other one, the one that I do not name and that is there, on the other side of my window, its trunk now black and its foliage still inflamed by the setting sun, is not the tree either, but, rather, the inaccessible reality in which it is planted:
between the one and the other there appears the single tree of sensation which is the perception of the sensation of tree that is vanishing, but
who perceives, who senses, who vanishes as sensations and perceptions vanish?”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 9

Reality, Sense, Tree, Appearance

“If you can read this sign, you can get a good job in the fast-paced, high-paying world of Latin!”
Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinis alacribus et fructuosis potiri potes!

Henry N. Beard book Latin for All Occasions

Latin for All Occasions (1990)

World, Reading

“Kind sir, if the truth I must tell,
At the sign of Basin of Water I dwell.”

Joseph Jacobs book English Fairy Tales

(said by Princess Catskin).
English Fairy Tales (1890), Preface to English Fairy Tales, Catskin

Truth, Water

“Shortly after the ignominious expulsion of the Texas invaders, General J. H. Carleton was appointed to the command of this Department, and with the greatest promptitude he turned his attention to the freeing of the Territory from these lawless savages. To this great work he brought many years' experience and a perfect knowledge of the means to effect that end. He saw that the thirty (30) millions of dollars expended and the many lives lost in the former attempts at the subjugation, would not have been profitless, had not there been something radically wrong in the policy pursued. He was not long in ascertaining that treaties were as promises written in sand. nor in discovering that they had no recognized 'Head' authority to represent them; that each chief's influence and authority was immediately confined to his own followers or people; that any treaty signed by one or more of these chiefs had no binding effect on the remainder, and that there were a large number of the worst characters who acknowledged no chief at all. Hence it was that on all occasions when treaties were made, one party were continuing their depredations, whilst the other were making peace. And hence it was apparent that treaties were absolutely powerless for good. He adopted a new policy, i. e., placing them on a reservation (the wisdom of which is already manifest); a new era dawned on New Mexico, and the dying hope of the people was again revived; never more I trust, to meet with disappointment. He first organized a force against the Mescalero Apaches, which I had the honor to command. After a short and inexpensive campaign, the Mescaleros were placed on their present reservation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864)

Wisdom, People, Peace, Hope

“Many of us are gravely suspicious about the influence of freemasonry. I am utterly opposed to it and to the influence of other secret organisations because I believe them to be a deeply corrupting influence on society. That influence has been highlighted by the case of Chief Inspector Woollard who investigated allegations of incompetence and misconduct by a building contractor working for the London borough of Islington. During his investigation, he discerned considerable masonic influence among officials in the company and in the local authority. As he came closer to concluding that the influence of freemasonry in the administration of the contract had been great, he was removed from the case and sent to the Metropolitan police's equivalent of running a power station in Siberia. Masonic influence is serious…We need a clear statement from the Home Secretary an which he makes it clear that he opposes masonic influences of any sort and that police officers should be asked to sign a declaration of interests and membership of organisations such as many local authority officers and councillors are asked to sign, Freemasonry is incompatible with being a police officer.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/jun/24/policing-london in the House of Commons (24 June 1988). 1980s

Secret, Home

“A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 43, “The Taglian Shadowlands: The Shadowgate” (p. 514)

Age, Time

“Each night the Amir visits a particular wife, or mahal, and receives a very warm welcome from her and from the slaves (i. e. slave girls), who (are) dressed specially for the occasion… If it is the hot weather, they… rub his body with pounded sandalwood and rosewater. Fans are kept going steadily. Some of the slaves chafe the master’s hand and feet, some sit and sing, or play music and dance, or provide other recreation, the wife sitting near him all the time. Then if one of the pretty slave girls takes his fancy, he calls her to him and enjoys her, his wife not daring to show any signs of displeasure, but dissembling, though she will take it out on the slave girls later on.”

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Francisco Pelsaert, Pelsaert, Francisco, Jahangir’s India, trs. by W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl, Cambridge, 1925. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 12.
Jahangir’s India

Music, Girl, Singing, Time

“A “discerning person” (anthropos diakritikos), according to the Orthodox Greeks, is someone perpetually mindful or watchful of God working in all things and at all times. Ever conscious of God’s Love, which is God’s Will, a vigilant Christian is never taken unawares by circumstances. In the eschatological discourses of the Gospels, Jesus advises us to read the cosmic signs that announce God’s recurrent visitations and thus remain watchful and awake every hour of the day and night, that is to say, remain perpetually mindful. Hence there is no better description of biblical spirituality than ceaseless vigilance or perpetual mindfulness.”

Aloysius Pieris (1934) Sri Lankan Jesuit priest

Source: "Spirituality as Mindfulness: Biblical and Buddhist Approaches", p. 39

Love, God, Time, Reading

“The question… is whether Upper Paleolithic art bears the telltale signs of Lewis-Williams' three stage neuropsychological model, and could thus be shamanistic art.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art, Question

“By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

A Futile Occurrence or A Trivial Incident (1886)

People, Nature, Appearance

“For Witold Doroszewski, at the root of semantic analysis lies the philosophical issue of the relationship between the general and the particular, the starting point being the analysis of the function of the copula "is". Doroszewski analyses the problem of meaning as closely linked with denotation. It is in that question that he sees the focal point of semantics.
According to Doroszewski, the history of meaning consists in the growth of a "gap" between the sign and its designatum. and the cause of changes in meanings lies in the conflict between the general character of the sign and the need for its being made to rise to the occasion whenever it is concretely embodied.
The attitude of Doroszewski, a representative of linguistic semantics, is of interest not only because he draws concrete conclusions from the general definition of semantics, but also because of his reflections on the relationship between semantics as pursued by linguists, and semantics as pursued by logicians. By touching here upon that issue, I anticipate further analysis. This does not advance the clarity of exposition, but is, unfortunately, often inevitable. In this case, it is justified in so far as it helps us to realize better the specific traits of linguistic semantics and its research objectives.”

Adam Schaff (1913–2006) Polish Marxist philosopher and theorist

Source: Introduction to semantics, 1962, p. 6

History, Question, Problem, Change

“(Shortly after Germany forced Denmark to sign a non-aggression pact in 1939) How nice. Now the Germans can sleep in peace, knowing that they will not be invaded by us.”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician

From the obit in The Independent.
Quotations from Borge's performances

Peace, Sleep

“These are strange times, when we are healthier than ever but more anxious about our health. According to all the standard benchmarks, we've never had it so healthy. Longevity in the West continues to rise -- a typical British woman can now expect to live to seventy-nine, eight years more than just half a century ago, and over double the life expectation when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. Break the figures down a bit and you find other encouraging signs even in the recent past; in 1950, the UK experienced 26,000 infant deaths; within half a century that had fallen by 80 per cent. Deaths in the UK from infectious diseases nearly halved between 1970 and 1992; between 1971 and 1991 stroke deaths dropped by 40 per cent and coronary heart disease fatalities by 19 per cent -- and those are diseases widely perceived to be worsening.”

Roy Porter (1946–2002) British historian

Introduction, lead paragraph; as cited nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/porter-benefit.html 1998 The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (1997)

Life, Death, Health, Disease

“The confrontation would be better and cheaper for us than to sign that we accept U. N. forces in Darfur.”

Omar al-Bashir (1944) Sudanese president

About the Darfur conflict, Sudanese President Confrontation Is Million Times Better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQuFZaswX0M August 2006

“Instead of the joblessness, instead of the millions forced into part-time work, instead of the millions who’ve lost their health insurance, lost their doctors, have faced skyrocketing health insurance premiums, imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

Presidential declaration speech, Ted Cruz declaration speech: Full transcript http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ted-cruz-declaration-speech-full-transcript-10128614.html, Independant.co.uk (March 23, 2015) 2010s

Health, Imagination, Time, Parting

“The reason everybody signed up for a computer was that everybody else was signing up for a computer.”

George Goodman (1930–2014) American author and economics commentator

Source: The Money Game (1968), Chapter 12, Computers And Computeers, p. 169

“The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign… After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-1997 of I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 October 1997) Reviews, One-star reviews

Light

“(Signs on refrigerator) Could be a leftover tuna casserole inside…Or one of those pesky, black…U. N. helicopters.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 51

“And if our future
Lies on the final line
Are we brave enough
To see the signals and the signs?”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

I Wonder What Would Happen to this World
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)

Future

“I wanted to join the Army. The sign said "Be all that you can be." They told me it wasn't enough.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

“Once again, Apple has seized the early lead, launching a revolutionary product that is taking the world by storm. … In its short life, Google's Android operating system has captivated developers and stolen mindshare from Apple… [Apple] is coming under increasing scrutiny for being a domineering control freak hell-bent on secretly undermining its competitors … the movie is starting the same way. And so far, at least, Apple is showing no signs of doing anything differently.”

Henry Blodget (1966) American equity research analyst

Hey, Apple, Wake Up — It's Happening Again http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-hey-apple-wake-up-it-2010-1 in Business Insider (5 January 2010)

Life, World, Way, Hell

“An ounce of perception, a pound of obscure
Process information at half speed
Pause, rewind, replay
Warm memory chip
Random sample, hold the one you need
-- Vital Signs (1981)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Memory, Speed

“At one campus where I was lecturing, I asked a friend, "How many of my colleagues know I'm gay?" He answered, "All of them." I wasn't surprised. But, just the same, it was kind of spooky, because not one of them had ever given me the faintest sign that he or she knew. If I had spoken about it myself, most of them would have felt it was in bad taste.”

Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) English novelist

As quoted in "Christopher Isherwood Interview" with Winston Leyland (1973), from Conversations with Christopher Isherwood, ed. James J. Berg and Chris Freeman (2001), p. 108

“What of the term 'meaning'? In the preceding discussion the term 'meaning' has been deliberately avoided. In general it is well to avoid this term in discussions of signs; theoretically, it can be dispensed with entirely and should not be incorporated into the language of semiotic. But since the term has had such a notorious history, and since in its consideration certain important implications of the present account can be made clear, the present section is devoted to its discussion.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 43

History

“Why did you sign up for this job if you are not prepared to use it — if you're not prepared to use it to try to solve big problems?”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

Powerful Moments From Chris Murphy’s Senate Filibuster on Gun Legislation" https://sojo.net/articles/5-powerful-moments-chris-murphy-s-senate-filibuster-gun-violence/"5, Sojourners, 15 June 2016.

Problem

“What is more, let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, [he] who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

The Confession (c. 452?)

Time

“(Stoop) if you are abcedminded, to this claybook, what curios of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed! Can you rede (since We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. Tieckle.”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake (1939)

World

“There is no paradise, in the estimation of the believers in the Divine Unity, more exalted than to obey God’s commandments, and there is no fire in the eyes of those who have known God and His signs, fiercer than to transgress His laws and to oppress another soul, even to the extent of a mustard seed. On the Day of Resurrection God will, in truth, judge all men, and we all verily plead for His grace.”

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

V, 19
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Truth, Law

“If he had told the voters in 1980 that truth, would American voters have signed the loan certificate for him on Election Day? Of course not! That was an election won under false pretenses. It was won with smoke and mirrors and illusions. And that's the kind of recovery we have now as well.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Democratic National Convention Address (1984)

Truth, Falseness

“She soon found the door the alethiometer had told her about. The sign on it said DARK MATTER RESEARCH UNIT, and under it someone had scribbled R. I. P. Another hand had added in pencil DIRECTOR: LAZARUS.
Lyra made nothing of that. She knocked, and a woman's voice said, "Come in."”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 4 : Trepanning

“It isn't all about signing autographs and banging broads.”

Dana White (1969) President of the UFC

Dana White, The Ultimate Fighter, Season One of The Ultimate Fighter (2005).

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People, Hope, Way, Home

“We call ourselves a “capacity building” organization; self-motivated and self-initiated capacity building. For example, in 30 years, I don’t think I have signed a check for the company.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

December 2006, Interview with Jordan Business magazine entitled “The Grass is Greener … On Both Sides”.

Motivation, Thinking

“A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a hammer?)”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)

Question, Christ

“At home, the public has come to accept torture as a legitimate instrument of government, something that the Founding Fathers would have been aghast at. We have come to accept that the president is not bound by habeas corpus, if he decides he isn't. He can sign laws and say they don't apply to him. We know that an American citizen can be detained for years without charges and tortured and abused — and then critical evidence of his torture will be "lost." We have come to accept our phones being tapped without a warrant and without our even knowing about it. These huge surrenders of liberty have occurred without much public outcry. When the next major terrorist attack comes, the question will simply be how much liberty Americans have left. That is a victory al Qaeda could not have achieved by force of arms. It is something they have achieved with our witting and conscious help.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Re-Thinking The War II," The Daily Dish (8 May 2007)

Law, Home, Question, Victory

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Love, Life, Death, Pleasure

“A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass of thought engenders a system of values.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 120

Idea

“The faces that were young once were old as mine but everyone remembered how we were. The eyes had not changed and nobody was fat. No mouths were bitter no matter what the eyes had seen. Bitter lines around the mouth are the first sign of defeat. Nobody was defeated.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

It is July 1959 and Hemingway is in Marceliano's bar in Pamplona, where he has not been since before the Spanish Civil War. In the following paragraph Hemingway mentions for contrast an unpleasant American journalist in his early twenties whose 'handsome young face already showed the traced lines of bitterness around the upper lips.'
Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 9

Change

“Something funny I have noticed—perhaps you have noticed it, too. You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of every stripe want for themselves? They want exactly what they tell you you no longer need, you pathetic, overweight, disembodied Kindle reader. They want white linen tablecloths on trestle tables in the middle of vineyards on soft blowy afternoons. (You can click your bottle of wine online. Cheaper.) They want to go shopping on Saturday afternoons on the Avenue Victor Hugo; they want the pages of their New York Times all kind of greasy from croissant crumbs and butter at a café table in Aspen; they want to see their names in hard copy in the “New Establishment” issue of Vanity Fair; they want a nineteenth-century bookshop; they want to see the plays in London; they want to float down the Nile in a felucca; they want five-star bricks and mortar and Do Not Disturb signs and views of the park. And in order to reserve these things for themselves they will plug up your eyes and your ears and your mouth, and if they can figure out a way to pump episodes of The Simpsons through the darkening corridors of your brain as you expire (ADD TO SHOPPING CART), they will do it.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)
Variant: Something funny I have noticed—perhaps you have noticed it, too. You know what futurists and online-ists and cut-out-the-middle-man-ists and Davos-ists and deconstructionists of every stripe want for themselves? They want exactly what they tell you you no longer need, you pathetic, overweight, disembodied Kindle reader. They want white linen tablecloths on trestle tables in the middle of vineyards on soft blowy afternoons. (You can click your bottle of wine online. Cheaper.) They want to go shopping on Saturday afternoons on the Avenue Victor Hugo; they want the pages of their New York Times all kind of greasy from croissant crumbs and butter at a café table in Aspen; they want to see their names in hard copy in the “New Establishment” issue of Vanity Fair; they want a nineteenth-century bookshop; they want to see the plays in London; they want to float down the Nile in a felucca; they want five-star bricks and mortar and Do Not Disturb signs and views of the park. And in order to reserve these things for themselves they will plug up your eyes and your ears and your mouth, and if they can figure out a way to pump episodes of The Simpsons through the darkening corridors of your brain as you expire (ADD TO SHOPPING CART), they will do it.

Way, Star, Wine, Time

“Our experience shows that today the West is commendably eager to encourage the slightest sign of independence within the Soviet bloc. Let's take advantage of their eagerness… We must make cleverness our national trait… Stop showing a sullen, frowning face and clenched fist to the West. Start making it feel compassion for us, and you'll see how fast Western boycotts change into magnanimity. Let's present Romania as a Latin island in the Slavic sea… Our millenia-old traditions of independence are now up against Moscow's political centrism… A pawn between two superpowers.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Source: Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, p. 8 on 22 February 1972

Feeling, Change, Sea

“…NAFTA, signed by her husband, is perhaps the greatest disaster trade deal in the history of the world.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

World, History

“I am old enough to remember when there was no Amnesty International. I am also old enough to remember a Cuba before Fidel Castro. Indeed, my seemingly simple life trajectory dramatically changed course right as the two were coming into existence. In 1960, at the age of 23, I was taken away at gunpoint in the night for refusing to place a sign on my desk that read, “I’m with Fidel.” One year later, Amnesty International was founded, and I became one of their first prisoners of conscience.”

Armando Valladares (1937) American diplomat and former Cuban prisoner

Armando Valladares. " Against All Hope: My 22 Years In Castro’s Gulags http://www.huffingtonpost.com/armando-valladares-/against-all-hope-my-22-ye_b_9933328.html," at huffingtonpost.com 05/13/2016.

Life, Age, Change, Reading