Least common denominator
Least common denominator
According to Fleetfin's research, if you sun-dry the sexual organs of a male and female squid and bring them into contact at the rate of three hundred fifty feet per fifteen seconds or less (the average running speed of a third-year junior high school student), you'll create an explosion surpassing dynamite.
Kobo Abe, Kangaroo Notebook (1991)
Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his, which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism! And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make it out at all."
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
"A strange metaphysical question arises: Whether, when the object of an impassioned love has herself faded into a shadow, the fiery passion itself canstill survive as an abstraction, still mourn over its wrongs, still clamour for redress."
"Even now thy conscience speaks against it in sullen whispers: but at the other end of thy long life-gallery that same conscience will speak to thee in volleying thunders" - personal favorite
"Despite my Dutch education, a blue hill to me is as a friend, and a roaring torrent like the sound of a domestic song that hath soothed my infancy. I never felt the impulse so strongly as in this land of lakes and mountains, and nothing grieves me so much as that duty prevents your being with me in my numerous excursions among its recesses."
From Scott's Guy Mannering
On the Sunday afternoon she stood at her bedroom window, looking across at the oak-trees of the wood, in whose branches a twilight was tangled, below the bright sky of the afternoon. Grey-green rosettes of honeysuckle leaves hung before the window, some already, she fancied, showing bud. It was spring, which she loved and dreaded.
Sons and Lovers - D. H. Lawrence
"Zakhar Fyodorovich was used to doing business in the crazy city of Rostov-but not that sort of business. His usual reason for going there was machinery: all the latest machines turned up Rostov. You could take a good look at them, run a hand across them, and someone would explain how they worked in a way you could understand."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn August 1914
edit
I meant to add this one as well from The Travels of Marco Polo:
(click on thumbnail)
Last edited by Gilliatt Gurgle; 08-05-2012 at 12:28 PM.
"But as de old folks always say, Ah'm born but Ah ain't dead. No tellin' what Ah'm liable tuh do yet."
--------------------------------------------------------------
It was inevitable that she should accept any inconsistency and cruelty from her deity as all good worshippers do from theirs. All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.
--------------------------------------------------------------
"If you kin see de light at daybreak, you don't keer if you die at dusk. It's so many people never seen de light at all."
Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
This one is interesting. Ulau shutting himself in the tower amongst his wealth.Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle
"Zakhar Fyodorovich was used to doing business in the crazy city of Rostov-but not that sort of business. His usual reason for going there was machinery: all the latest machines turned up Rostov. You could take a good look at them, run a hand across them, and someone would explain how they worked in a way you could understand."
Alexander Solzhenitsyn August 1914
edit
I meant to add this one as well from The Travels of Marco Polo:
(click on thumbnail)
Why on earth would he do such a thing?
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
from The Day The Earth Stood Still
''Barnhardt: Have you tested this theory?
Klaatu: I find it works well enough to get me from one planet to another.''
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
It wasn’t Ulaù that was shut in the tower. In fact it was Ulaù that ordered the khalif be “shut up” in the tower filled with gold as punishment against the khalif for not employing his great wealth to form a greater defense against Ulaù’s attack and subsequent capture of Baldach.
Another quote - of a quote:
From Anthony Cave Brown Bodyguard of Lies Vol I includes this quote of British RAF Group Captain John Stagg speaking about Eisenhower who had just been appointed as the Supreme Commander of the Allied invasion of Europe:
“With a broad smile, an athletic movement like a gymnastic instructor about to give his first lesson and in a trim, well tailored battledress and well ironed creases all in the right places he looked in the first class mental and physical condition”.
Eisenhower’s grin, they began to say, was worth an army.
.
“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"
"I give."
"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“Why did god create a dual universe?
So he might say
‘Be not like me. I am alone.'
And it might be heard.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
'As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, as I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure - or even intellectual treasure - and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are.'
----------------------------------------------------------------
'There are nice things in the world - and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.'
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
There is hope, but not for us.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
