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i know full well the earthly view of man
The yonder view is blocked to mortal ken.
The fool who squints beyond with blinking eye,
Imagining his like above the sky.
Let him stand firm and gaze about alert.
To able man the world is not inert.
What need for him to seek eternities.
What he may seek, that he may seize.
When spirits haunt, let him not change his pace.
Find bliss and torment in the onward stride.
Aye, every moment stay unsatisfied.
--Goethe, Faust Part II, Act V
"'Man makes plans . . . And God laughs.'"
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"Because you and I, we know, . . . that the story is whatever we decide it is, and however nice and neat we make it, in the end a story is never going to make a damn bit of difference to the dead."
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I would rather fight to take a prize however doubtful than wait to see what scraps I may be fed
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"'Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.' Right? I mean, those are Jesus, words. The man could be fairly harsh when he needed to be. . . He was kick-***."
"But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid."
- Satan
To drink is nothing, what's important is to get drunk
- For Whom The Bells Toll
We are not to judge of the feelings of others by what we might feel in their place. However dark the habitation of the mole to our eyes, yet the animal itself finds the apartment sufficiently lightsome.
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'I never learned Greek, and I don't find that I've ever missed it. I have had a Doctor's cap and gown without Greek; I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek; I eat heartily without Greek; and, in short, as I don't know Greek, I do not believe there is any good in it.'
It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.
The Hare with Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal
How objects are handed on is all about story-telling. I am giving you this because I love you. Or because it was given to me. Because I bought it somewhere special. Because you will care for it. Because it will complicate your life. Because it will make someone else envious. There is no easy story in legacy. What is remembered and what is forgotten? There can be a chain of forgetting, the rubbing away of precious ownership as much as the slow accretion of stories. What is being passed on to me with all these small Japanese objects ?
“I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
"Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms and little wildflowers." - Roberto Bolaño, 2666.
The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others
indication of insanity they do not notice in themselves.
The Devil - Leo Tolstoy
It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'.
My mother is a fish.
To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.
~Far From the Madding Crowd -Thomas Hardy
Water was a state of mind. If you think it your friend when you swim in the river or wash away the dirt, why call it your enemy when it comes from the heavens? From the cup of the gods themselves.
The Russian Concubine ~ Kate Furnivall