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The Bishop, Anton Chekhov
Quote:
"You know, your holiness, your mamma arrived while you were away," the lay brother informed the bishop as he went into his cell.
"My mother? When did she come?"
"Before the evening service. She asked first where you were and then she went to the convent."
"Then it was her I saw in the church, just now! Oh, Lord!"
And the bishop laughed with joy.
"Sir Walter, without hesitation, declared the Admiral to be
the best-looking sailor he had ever met with, and went so far as to say,
that if his own man might have had the arranging of his hair,
he should not be ashamed of being seen with him any where;"
Persuasion by Jane Austen
From A History of God by Karen Armstrong.Quote:
The oft-quoted credo ut intellegam is not an intellectual abdication. Anselm was not claiming to embrace the creed blindly in the hope of it making sense one day.
What would it be like, he wondered, to really know the Tao? The Tao is that which first
lets the light, then the dark. Occasions the interplay of the two primal forces so that there
is always renewal. It is that which keeps it all from wearing down. The universe will never
be extinguished because just when the darkness seems to have smothered all, to be truly
transcendent, the new seeds of light are reborn in the very depths. That is the Way. When
the seed falls, it falls into the earth, into the soil. And beneath, out of sight, it comes to life. (p.k.dick- the man in the high castle)
The Fountainhead - Ayn RandQuote:
"If I found a job, a project an idea or a person that I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting and we're all pushed into it by one single desire."
Sejanus was a liar but so fine a general of lies that he knew how to marshall them into an alert and disciplined formation... Tiberius envied him this talent as he envied Neva his honesty: for although he had progressed far in the direction of evil, he still felt hampered by unaccountable impulses towards the good.
--I, Claudius by Robert Graves
"A prayer. Sure, one prayer: for sentimental reasons. Almighty God, I am sorry I am now an atheist, but have You read Nietzsche? Ah, such a book!" - John Fante, Ask the Dust
:lol:
``Oh! certainly,'' cried his faithful assistant, ``no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.''
``All this she must possess,'' added Darcy, ``and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.'' (j.austen - pride and prejudice)
we must be clowns to entertain the monkeys!
*takes notes*
Apuleius, at the end of the God of Socrates, expresses his wonder at seeing the carelessness of his contemporaries with regard to themselves: "All men should desire to live most happily, and should know that they cannot so live in any other way than by cultivating the soul, and yet leave the soul uncultivated [animum suum non colunt]. If, however, anyone wishes to see acutely, it is requisite that he should pay attention to his eyes, through which he sees; if you desire to run with celerity, attention must be paid to the feet, by which you run... In a similar manner, in all the other members, attention to each must be paid according to one's preferences. And, as all men may easily see that this is true, I cannot sufficienty... wonder, in such a way as the thing deserves wonder, why they do not also cultivate their soul by reason [cur non etiam animum suum ratione excolant].
(..) it is good to want to correct one's friends, if need be, but reproof is too extreme and gives offense instead of helping: it is good to convince those who don't know, but it is necessary first to choose such people as are capable of being taught.
(foucault, history of sexuality v.3)
From Fifith Business by Robertson Davies
Quote:
She knew she was in disgrace with the world, but did not feel disgraced; she knew she was jeered at but felt no humiliation. She lived by a light that arose within; I could not comprehend it, except that it seemed to be somewhat to the splendors I found in books, though not in any way bookish. It was as though she were an excile from a world that saw things her way, and thought she was sorry Deptford did not understand her she was not resentful. When you got past her shyness she had quite posistive opinions, but the queerest thing about her was that she had no fear.
death's merciless love - slavoj zizek
"Why did Christ die on the cross?
How, then, are we to break out of the deadlock of the thrifty consumption, if these two exits are false? Perhaps, it is the Christian notion of agape that points towards the way out: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."(John 3:16) How, exactly, are we to conceive of this basic tenet of the Christian faith?11 Problems emerge the moment we comprehend this "giving of his one and only Son," i.e. the death of Christ, as a sacrificial gesture in the exchange between God and man. If we claim that, by sacrificing that which is most precious to Him, His own son, God redeems humanity, buying off its sins, then there are ultimately only two ways to explain this act: either God himself demands this retribution, i.e. Christ sacrifices himself as the representative of humanity to satisfy the retributive need of God his father; or God is not omnipotent, i.e. He is, like a Greek tragic hero, subordinated to a higher Destiny: His act of creation, like the fateful deed of a Greek hero, brings about unwanted dire consequences, and the only way for Him to reestablish the balance of Justice is to sacrifice what is most precious to Him, His own son - in this sense, God Himself is the ultimate Abraham. The fundamental problem of Christology is how to avoid these two readings of Christ's sacrifice that impose themselves as obvious:
"Any idea that Gods 'needs' reparation either from us or from our representative should be banished, as should the idea that there is some kind of moral order which is above God and to which God must conform by requiring reparation."12
The problem, of course, is how exactly to avoid these two options, when the very wording of the Bible seems to support their common premise: Christ's act is repeatedly designated as "ransom," by the words of Christ himself, by other biblical texts, as well as by the most prominent commentators of the Bible. Jesus himself says that he came "to give his life as a ransom for many"(Mark 10:45); Timothy 2:5-6 speaks of Christ as the "mediator between God and humanity /.../ who gave his life as a ransom for all"; St Paul himself, when he states that Christians are slaves who have been "bought at a price" (Corinthians 6:20), implies the notion that the death of Christ should be concieved as purchasing our freedom. So we have a Christ who, through his suffering and death, pays the price for setting us free, redeeming us from the burden of sin; if, then, we have been liberated from captivity to sin and the fear of death through the death and resaurrection of Christ, who demanded this price? To whom was the ransom paid? Some early Christian writers, clearly perceiving this problem, proposed a logical, if heretic, solution: since Christ's sacrifice delivered us from the power of the Devil (Satan), then Christ's death was the price God had to pay to the Devil, our "owner" when we live in sin, in order that the Devil set us free. Again, therein resides the deadlock: if Christ is offered as a sacrifice to God himself, the question arises why did God demand this sacrifice. Was he still the cruel jealous God who wanted a heavy price for his reconciliation with humanity which betrayed him? If the sacrifice of Christ was offered to someone else (the Devil), then we get the strange spectacle of God and Devil as partners in an exchange."
He believed himself to be a pillar of strength, destined to do great things; and with that subtle, selfish, ambiguous sophistry to which the minds of all men are so subject, he had taught himself to think that in doing much for the promotion of his own interests, he was doing much also for the promotion of religion.
--Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
I have to say the latest book I've read is filled with some great language. I love A Clockwork Orange and I just love the plain oddness of the Nadsat/Cockney slang.
"The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence."
"Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?"
"Appy-polly-loggies. I had something of a pain in my gulliver so I had to sleep. I was not awakened when I gave orders for awakening."
Swann's Way-Marcel ProustQuote:
How often we sacrifice the fulfillment of a possible happiness to our impatience for an immediate pleasure!
I couldn't agree more.
There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.
--Samuel Beckett, Texts For Nothing, 4