Thread: Memorable Passages

“When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

[Thoughts on Various Subjects]”
― Jonathan Swift, Abolishing Christianity and Other Essays

I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“If you're lucky enough to fall in love, that's one thing. Otherwise all that was ever truly beautiful to me was boyhood. It's the meal we sup on for the rest of our lives. Love puts the icing on life. But if you don't find it...you must call on your childhood memories over and over till you do.”
― Leon Uris, Trinity

“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.”
― Gautama Buddha

“Said Buddha to the hot dog vendor, "make me one with everything.”
― New York Magazine

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

The Cremation of Sam McGee
By Robert W. Service 1874–1958


There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucius

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.


SIGMUND FREUD, The Educator's Book of Quotes

“Everything is more beautiful
because we’re doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now.
We will never be here again.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don't like that. This is by the way.”
― H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines

“The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”
― C.G. Jung

“Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.”
― Thor Heyerdahl

It is at least scientifically respectable to postulate that at the centre of a black hole the laws of nature no longer apply. Since most scientists are just a bit religious and most religious are seldom wholly unscientific we find humanity in a comical position. His scientific intellect believes in the possibility of miracles inside a black hole while his religious intellect believes in them outside it.


WILLIAM GOLDING, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 7, 1983

“I was making frequent use of cocaine at that time ... I had been the first to recommend the use of cocaine, in 1885, and this recommendation had brought serious reproaches down on me.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

“Jim said that bees won't sting idiots, but I didn't believe that, because I tried them lots of times myself and they wouldn't sting me.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Charles Darwin

"I predict there will be a forum in the future that will hand out awards based on my good name. And a lot of these awards shall be posthumous in nature. Just saying, like..."

With apologies to Charles Darwin...BB...

“Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”
― Aristotle

“The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
― Plato

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard