Thread: Memorable Passages

“He considered himself a sort of esoteric martyr, who'd sacrificed everything for principle. Apparently that little book had set him on a course towards political extremism, culminating in the loss of his job at the community college, as well as the breakup of his previously stable marriage. By the time he met Old Hoss, a few years later, Hiram Buckley was one of those unfortunates the normal and untroubled point at in scorn and laugh at derisively; a veritable dog that's kicked while it's down. He was, under such circumstances, a perfect companion for Abner "Old Hoss" Billingsly, one of the few people who didn't consider him a prime candidate for St. Elizabeth's, the infamous mental hospital located in the District of Columbia. Since his career in education had been so rudely interrupted, the Professor had worked his way through a series of menial, low paying jobs, which he inevitably lost due to his proclivity for preaching unwelcome and unpopular political ideas to his fellow employees.”

― Donald Jeffries, The Unreals

“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

“If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.”

― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever. And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor.”

― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply.
Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

― Clive Barker, Days of Magic, Nights of War

The day misspent,
the love misplaced,
has inside it
the seed of redemption.
Nothing is exempt
from resurrection.

― Kay Ryan, Say Uncle

“Don't forget - you're the one who swam across the freezing sea at night.”

― Haruki Murakami

“When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can't really fully and honestly take those back, you know? I mean, there are highlights. And there are streaks. And then there are skunk stripes.”

― John Green, Paper Towns

“I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure.”

― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Brad Green, almost overnight, became the poster boy for the common Wall Street tale - proving once again that greed, most definitely, kills. Giving away about 99% of his fortune was also front page news, but Green barely blinked at having to scrape by with only $200 million. The government seized all five of his homes, his three boats, two jets, a helicopter, 14 cars, and all of his assets except the $200 million he stashed for a rainy day in an offshore bank account.”

― Phil Wohl, Organic Nation

Yes Yes

when God created love he didn't help most
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs
when God created plants that was average
when God created hate we had a standard utility
when God created me He created me
when God created the monkey He was asleep
when He created the giraffe He was drunk
when He created narcotics He was high
and when He created suicide He was low

when He created you lying in bed
He knew what He was doing
He was drunk and He was high
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time

He made some mistakes
but when He created you lying in bed
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

― Charles Bukowski

“Like anybody can tell you, I am not a very nice man. I don't know the word. I have
always admired the villain, the outlaw, the son of a bitch. I don't like the clean-shaven
boy with the necktie and the good job. I like desperate men, men with broken teeth
and broken minds and broken ways. They interest me. They are full of surprises and
explosions. I also like vile women, drunk cursing bitches with loose stockings and
sloppy mascara faces. I'm more interested in perverts than saints. I can relax with
bums because I am a bum. I don't like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don't like to be
shaped by society.”

― Charles Bukowski, South of No North

Gray Room

Although you sit in a room that is gray,
Except for the silver
Of the straw-paper,
And pick
At your pale white gown;
Or lift one of the green beads
Of your necklace,
To let it fall;
Or gaze at your green fan
Printed with the red branches of a red willow;
Or, with one finger,
Move the leaf in the bowl--
The leaf that has fallen from the branches of the forsythia
Beside you...
What is all this?
I know how furiously your heart is beating.

Wallace Stevens

THE COMPLAINT OF CHAUCER TO HIS PURSE


To you, my purse, and to none other wight,
Complain I, for ye be my lady dear!
I am sorry now that ye be so light,
For certes ye now make me heavy cheer;
Me were as lief be laid upon my bier.
For which unto your mercy thus I cry,
Be heavy again, or elles must I die!

Now vouchesafe this day, ere it be night,
That I of you the blissful sound may hear,
Or see your colour like the sunne bright,
That of yellowness hadde peer.
Ye be my life! Ye be my hearte's steer!* *rudder
Queen of comfort and of good company!
Be heavy again, or elles must I die!

Now, purse! that art to me my life's light
And savour, as down in this worlde here,
Out of this towne help me through your might,
Since that you will not be my treasurere;
For I am shave as nigh as any frere.
But now I pray unto your courtesy,
Be heavy again, or elles must I die!


Geoffrey Chaucer

“I'm afraid that sometimes you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you.”

― Dr. Seuss

“I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.”

― Søren Kierkegaard

“One time I took my knife and sliced off the end of a hog’s nose, just like a piece of salami. The hog went crazy for a few seconds. Then it sat there looking kind of stupid. So I took a handful of salt and rubbed it on the wound. Now that hog really went nuts. It was my way of taking out frustration. Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn’t done anything wrong, wasn’t even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn’t stop. And when I finally did stop, I’d expended all this energy and frustration, and I’m thinking what in God’s sweet name did I do.”

― Gail A. Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, And Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry

“As a rule, theologians know nothing of this world, and far less of the next; but they have the power of stating the most absurd propositions with faces solemn as stupidity touched by fear.

It is a part of their business to malign and vilify the Voltaires, Humes, Paines, Humboldts, Tyndalls, Haeckels, Darwins, Spencers, and Drapers, and to bow with uncovered heads before the murderers, adulterers, and persecutors of the world. They are, for the most part, engaged in poisoning the minds of the young, prejudicing children against science, teaching the astronomy and geology of the bible, and inducing all to desert the sublime standard of reason.”

― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.

― Shel Silverstein

When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?

― Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

Underneath my outside face
There's a face that none can see.
A little less smiley,
A little less sure,
But a whole lot more like me.

― Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems and Drawings of Shel Silverstein

“You know, some people got no choice, and they can never find a voice, to talk with that they can even call their own. So the first thing that they see, that allows them the right to be, why they follow it, you know, it’s called bad luck..”

― Lou Reed