Thread: Memorable Passages

“To stand by yourself -- that was also part of dignity. That way, a person could get through a public flaying with dignity. Galileo. Luther. Even somebody who admitted his guilt and resisted the temptation to deny it. Something politicians couldn't do. Honesty, the courage for honesty. With others and yourself.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“A man who will steal for me will steal from me." Theodore Roosevelt, dismissing on the spot one of his best cowhands who was about to claim for his boss an unmarked animal.
― David McCullough, Mornings on Horseback

“...Helen sipped peppermint schnapps and considered the world made of her design. My religion is keeping peace, she thought. It hadn't begun that way, was nothing she'd planned, but now she saw that's how it was. I just ran a grocery, she thought. I don't want this. I ain't the one to make the world right.”
― Alan Heathcock, Volt

“She asked if I loved another woman, so I answered honestly and said, “Dinner was great, but I could go for dessert.”
”
― Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.

“When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...

So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, Science And Christian Tradition

Got this gem off the t/v series "Veep" with Julia Louis-Dreyfus

One of the characters said,

"You're such jerk! How do you stop from punching yourself in the face?"

“From such crooked timber as humanity is made of, no straight thing was ever constructed.”
― Immanuel Kant

“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Literary Remains, Vol. 1

“Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer).”
― Albert Camus

“The ball laughs, radiant, in the air. He brings her down, puts her to sleep, showers her with compliments, dances with her, and seeing such things never before seen his admirers pity their unborn grandchildren who will never see them.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“And one fine day the goddess of the wind kisses the foot of man, that mistreated, scorned foot, and from that kiss the soccer idol is born. He is born in a straw crib in a tin-roofed shack and he enters the world clinging to a ball.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“Almost nothing is as dull as guys who pretend to be soccer experts, they're almost as dull as the poetry ones. All this crazy talk about 'soccer strategies' its just a silly ballgame. Hardly any strategy possible. You either put 4 or 5 guys in the middle of the field, that's about it. And yet they talk about it as if it the most complex philosophical problem ever invented.”
― Martinus Hendrikus Benders

“As the Protestants celebrate a goal, they're egged on by the team captain, a long-haired Italian called Lorenzo Amoruso, who has the look of a 1980s male model. Flailing his arms, he urges them to sing their anti-Catholic songs louder. The irony is obvious: Amoruso is a Catholic. For that matter, so are most of the Rangers players. Since the late nineties, Rangers routinely field nearly as many Catholics as Celtic. Their players come from Georgia, Argentina, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Holland, because money can buy no better ones. Championships mean more than religious purity.”
― Franklin Foer, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization

“Your talent determines what you can do. Your motivation determines how much you are willing to do. Your attitude determines how well you do it.”
― Lou Holtz

“We want different things. Men want to have sex with a woman. Then they want to have sex with another woman. And then another. Then they want to eat cornflakes and sleep for a while, and then they want to have sex with another woman, and another, until they die. Women,’ and I thought I’d better pick my words carefully when describing a gender I didn’t belong to, ‘want a relationship. They may not get it, or they may sleep with a lot of men before they do get it, but ultimately that’s what they want. That’s the goal. Men do not have goals. Natural ones. So they invent them, and put them at either end of a football pitch. And then they invent football. Or they pick fights, or try and get rich, or start wars, or come up with any number of daft bloody things to make up for the fact that they have no real goals.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Ronnie.
‘That, of course, is the other main difference.”
― Hugh Laurie, The Gun Seller

“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I crawled back to bed, knowing I was done for. Hours later, the phone in our room started ringing. It was George. He was not happy.
"Room 312. Now!" he shouted.
Bouldy got up. I tried to pull myself together, splashing my face with water and hauling on my shorts and flip flops. It was a lovely day outside, the sun was scorching hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but it might as well have been a pissing wet morning in St Albans for all I cared. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach as we made the Walk of Death to Room 312, which I knew was Paul and Gus's room.
When we walked in, I thought I'd arrived in downtown Baghdad. Water dripped from the ceiling. The board games were in pieces and all the plastic parts were scattered over the floor. The balcony window was wide open and I could see a bed upended by the pool outside.”
― Paul Merson, How Not to Be a Professional Footballer

“Football is the ballet of the masses.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich

“An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn't care who wins.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I eat footballs, and I shit touchdowns. And I always wear a helmet when I make love."

― Jarod Kintz, Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.

“Who you looking for
What is his name
you can prob'ly find him
at the football game
it's a small town
you know what I mean
it's a small town, son
and we all support the team”
― James McMurtry

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
― Mother Teresa

“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.”
― Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― William Shakespeare