Thread: Memorable Passages

“Today I will walk in the sun. I will simply walk in the sun.”

― Charles Bukowski, Screams from the Balcony

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

Mutations :: J. L. Borges

I saw in a hall an arrow pointing the way and I thought that this inoffensive symbol had once been a thing of iron, an inescapable and fatal projectile that pierced the flesh of men and of lions and clouded the sun at Thermopolae and gave Harald Sigurdarson six feet of English earth forever.

Some days later someone showed me a photograph of a Magyar horseman. A coiled lasso circled the breast of his mount. I learned that the lasso, which once whipped through the air and brought down the bulls of the prairie, was now nothing more than a haughty trapping of Sunday harness.

In the west cemetery I saw a runic cross, chiseled in red marble. The arms curved as they widened out, and a circle encompassed them. That limited, circumscribed cross represented the other one, the free-armed cross, which in its turn represents the gallows where a god suffered, the “vile machine” railed at by Lucian of Samosata.

Cross, lasso, and arrow–former tools of man, debased or exalted now to the status of symbols. Why should I marvel at them, when there is not a single thing on earth that oblivion does not erase or memory change, and when no one knows into what images he himself will be transmuted by the future.

- Jorge Luis Borges, from Dreamtigers

What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite?

- Borges, Dreamtigers

Almost every man, unfortunately. Borges occasionally needed to get outside the vast environs of his ow mind but never quite managed.

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

“Today I will walk in the sun. I will simply walk in the sun.”

Just curious, what is it about this that makes you consider it memorable?

“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

The Puppet

If for a moment God would forget that I am a rag doll and give me a scrap of life, possibly I would not say everything that I think, but I would definitely think everything that I say.

I would value things not for how much they are worth but rather for what they mean.

I would sleep little, dream more. I know that for each minute that we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light.

I would walk when the others loiter; I would awaken when the others sleep.

I would listen when the others speak, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream.

If God would bestow on me a scrap of life, I would dress simply, I would throw myself flat under the sun, exposing not only my body but also my soul.

My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hatred on ice and wait for the sun to come out. With a dream of Van Gogh I would paint on the stars a poem by Benedetti, and a song by Serrat would be my serenade to the moon.

With my tears I would water the roses, to feel the pain of their thorns and the incarnated kiss of their petals…My God, if I only had a scrap of life…
I wouldn’t let a single day go by without saying to people I love, that I love them.

I would convince each woman or man that they are my favourites and I would live in love with love.

I would prove to the men how mistaken they are in thinking that they no longer fall in love when they grow old–not knowing that they grow old when they stop falling in love. To a child I would give wings, but I would let him learn how to fly by himself. To the old I would teach that death comes not with old age but with forgetting. I have learned so much from you men….

I have learned that everybody wants to live at the top of the mountain without realizing that true happiness lies in the way we climb the slope.

I have learned that when a newborn first squeezes his father’s finger in his tiny fist, he has caught him forever.

I have learned that a man only has the right to look down on another man when it is to help him to stand up. I have learned so many things from you, but in the end most of it will be no use because when they put me inside that suitcase, unfortunately I will be dying.

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“No matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”

― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“Redemption, n. Deliverance of sinners from the penalty of their sin through their murder of the deity against whom they sinned. The doctrine of Redemption is the fundamental mystery of our holy religions, and whoso believeth in it shall not perish, but have everlasting life in which to try to understand it.”

― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature.

I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time.

I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”

― Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

― Leonard Cohen

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”

― Hunter S. Thompson

“I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them.”

― Roger Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos

“When I said I wanted to die in my sleep, I meant I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.”

― Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Amber

God, Nine Princes in Amber. Last read it when I was 13. What dross!

“Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.”

― Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death?

If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation.

It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.”

― Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's

Buffalo Soldier

Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlocked Rasta
There was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival

I mean it, when I analyze the stench -
To me it makes a lot of sense
How the Dreadlocked Rasta was a Buffalo Soldier
And he was taken from Africa, brought to America
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival

Said it was a Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlocked Rasta -
Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America

If you know your history
Then you would know where you're coming from
Then you wouldn't have to ask me
Who the heck do I think I am

I'm just a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America
Stolen from Africa, brought to America
Said he was fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier win the war for America

Said he, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!

Buffalo Soldier troddin' through the land, wo-ho-ooh!
Said he wanna ran, then you wanna hand
Troddin' through the land, yea-hea, yea-ea

Said he was a Buffalo Soldier win the war for America
Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlocked Rasta
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean

Singing, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!

Troddin' through San Juan in the arms of America
Troddin' through Jamaica, a Buffalo Soldier -
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival
Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlocked Rasta

Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!


- Bob Marley

May have been done before on this thread, but a verse I have always quoted when feeling romatic and nature-yearning.
From The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayam.

A flask of wine beneath the bough.
A loaf of bread, a book of verse and Thou,
Beside me in the wilderness.
And the wilderness is Paradise enow.


To me it encapsulates great joy; Out in nature, food, alcohol, musical entertainment, and your lover.

(add a spliff and it's bliss )

“I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man’s puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one.”

― Robertson Davies

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.”

― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!”

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“We go naked because we want nothing of this world; for we came into the world naked and unclothed. As for not being ashamed to show our members, the fact is that we do no sin with them and therefore have no more shame in them than you have when you show your hand or face or the other parts of your body that do not lead you into carnal sin; whereas you use your members to commit sin and lechery, and so you cover them up and are ashamed of them. But we are no more ashamed of showing them than we are of showing our fingers, because we do not sin with them.”

― Marco Polo, The Travels