# Excerpts of things you read that you like



## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Classic case of projection of the shadow. This was said by Hitler about Churchill.


"For over five years this man has been chasing around Europe like a mad man in search of something he could set on fire."


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

"I think I would say that the universe has a purpose, it's not somehow just there by chance ... some people, I think, take the view that the universe is just there and it runs along – it's a bit like it just sort of computes, and we happen somehow by accident to find ourselves in this thing. But I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe, I think that there is something much deeper about it."

-Roger Penrose


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Here is the painting of a landscape
But the artist who painted that picture says
- Something is missing. What is it?
It is I myself who was a part of the landscape I painted
So he mentally takes a step backward
- or 'regresses' -- and paints...

...a picture of the artist painting
A picture of the landscape
And still something is missing. And that
Something is still his real self
Painting the second picture. So he
'regresses' further and paints a third...

...a picture of the artist painting a
Picture of the artist painting a
Picture of the landscape. And because
Something is still missing, he paints a
Fourth and fifth picture...

...until there is a picture of
The artist painting a picture of the
Artist painting a picture of the
Artist painting a picture of the
Artist painting the landscape

So infinite regression is--

--It is the moment when our artist
Having regressed to the point of
Infinity, himself becomes a part
Of the picture he has painted and
Is both the Observer and the observed


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

did you hurt her?
she was already hurt.
what happened?
it took us to where the water is the deepest, darkest blue you've ever seen.
and we were happy, swimming amongst the fishes. 
and i was scared.
but actually, for me, not for her.
she knew exactly what she was doing,
where she was going.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

"I wonder how many families and physicians secretly help patients over the edge into death in the face of such severe suffering. I wonder how many severely ill or dying patients secretly take their lives, dying alone in despair. I wonder...whether the Hemlock Society's way of death by suicide is the most benign."


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## Tamehagane (Sep 2, 2014)

“Black and grizzly bears alike love sheep, he said.
"They eat them like popcorn."”


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

"There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one’s idea for thirty-five years; there’s something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas."


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## cuddlyone (Nov 24, 2015)

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship." - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

"Hope is the only thing stronger than fear." - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

"Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it is because I am afraid and he gives me courage." - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

The savage wars of peace—
Fill full the mouth of Famine 
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest 
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hopes to nought.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
And whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore, make peace with your god,
Whatever you perceive him to be - hairy thunderer, or cosmic muffin.
With all its hopes, dreams, promises, and urban renewal,
The world continues to deteriorate.
Give up!

[I like the verse that says "you have no right to be here", we don't have any intrinsic value that gives us any right to anything over anything or anyone. It's all created by us but it's not _of_ us, not inherently.]


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains—cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

“How do you say 'We come in peace' when the very words are an act of war?”


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

“I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. 
I am the curtain.”


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Centuries of navel-gazing. Millennia of masturbation. Plato to Descartes to Dawkins to Rhanda. Souls and zombie agents and qualia. Kolmogorov complexity. Consciousness as Divine Spark. Consciousness as electromagnetic field. Consciousness as functional cluster.

I explored it all.

Wegner thought it was an executive summary. Penrose heard it in the singing of caged electrons. Nirretranders said it was a fraud; Kazim called it leakage from a parallel universe. Metzinger wouldn't even admit it existed. The AIs claimed to have worked it out, then announced they couldn't explain it to us. Gödel was right after all: no system can fully understand itself.

Not even the synthesists had been able to rotate it down. The load-bearing beams just couldn't take the strain.

All of them, I began to realize, had missed the point. All those theories, all those drugdreams and experiments and models trying to prove what consciousness was: none to explain what it was good for. None needed: obviously, consciousness makes us what we are. It lets us see the beauty and the ugliness. It elevates us into the exalted realm of the spiritual. Oh, a few outsiders—Dawkins, Keogh, the occasional writer of hackwork fiction who barely achieved obscurity—wondered briefly at the why of it: why not soft computers, and no more? Why should nonsentient systems be inherently inferior? But they never really raised their voices above the crowd. The value of what we are was too trivially self-evident to ever call into serious question.

Yet the questions persisted, in the minds of the laureates, in the angst of every horny fifteen-year-old on the planet. Am I nothing but sparking chemistry? Am I a magnet in the ether? I am more than my eyes, my ears, my tongue; I am the little thing behind those things, the thing looking out from inside. But who looks out from its eyes? What does it reduce to? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

What a stupid fucking question. I could have answered it in a second, if Sarasti hadn't forced me to understand it first.”


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

I've posted this before but:

_"She is so beautiful". He thought to himself. He loved her so much. Her hot silky body, the way she tucks her hair behind her ear, her ever so loving voice; but most of all he adored her sweet innocent face. He knew all its lines and creases. Its many soft curves and sharp angles. Sometimes late at night he would lay awake for hours staring at her while she lay peacefully at her pillow, gazing lovingly at her features; memorizing its contours with the tips of his fingers. The brow was an impressive brow, high and prominent. He'd always thought that a strong brow was a sign of a strong mind. Sometimes he wondered what thoughts went on behind that brow and whether he could ever understand them all. 

His own brow was not so extravagant and so he guessed neither were his thoughts, but he too had thoughts that were not so easily understood either. He knew he did, he had surprised his lover with them once, that was proof enough. Her eyes were so innocent and pure. The sockets deep set but level to give them a penetrating gaze, behind the shut lids were the brightest blue green eyes he'd ever seen, baby blue he’d call them. But there was nothing remarkable about them. The almost imperceptible wrinkles born from the stress of life drawn at the corner were a clue to their witness, these were eyes with experience, they had seen quite a lot - not a lot of it pleasant.

Sometimes he’d thought those eyes could look right into his soul, yet there was still innocence within her look, for he knew they could not see everything. His lover’s nose was a man made marble sculpture, a Grecian ideal of beauty of man made flesh, it helped to accentuate the sharp cheekbones and divided the face with geometric precision in absolutely perfect halves. There are two equal sides to everything, just look at at my lovers face.

The lips were perhaps the most remarkable features, thin but not so thin. They did not feel full and inviting when pressed against his own. More than the brow, more than the eyes, more than the nose it was the lips that best captures the expression of his lover; relaxed they were a study of contentment turned down they were a road map of dissatisfaction

He preferred to think of them turned up in absolute happiness and laughter, it was these lips so sweet and gentle in the line that shape the words his lover spoke to him. Those words would often amaze him, they spoke of important things he sometimes did not understand. They spoke tenderly of him and the affection his lover felt towards him

Once they had spoken harshly, once they had called him sick, but only once. He realized that one cruel insult helped him to remember his lovers kinder words more sweetly, he would spend all night gazing at his lovers face that way and thinking thoughts of true love and devotion. Until the alarm clock rang, reminding him that he had to go to work. Reluctantly he would put his lovers head back into the refrigerator where he kept it safe and secure while he was gone. This time however he was feeling hungry, wanting a snack he went to the kitchen silverware drawer, reached inside and pulled out a fork, he then used the fork to impale one of the squirming maggots that had made its home on his lovers dead face. He plucked the maggot into his mouth and gulped it down, then he placed his lovers severed head back inside the safety of the refrigerator. He walked into his garage where his lover’s headless body was sprawled across his work table. He looked down at it admiringly.

He then reached over and grabbed the blood caked bow saw and went to work dismembering her remains one piece at a time. It was an orgy of flying limbs and gore he remembered to remove her private parts and kept them in the trashcan to play with later. After his work was done he placed the severed body parts in several trash bags and dragged them to his back yard, outside the moon was full and shining bright in the night sky making the stars twinkle. He walked out to the large hole he dug a few days earlier and piled the trash bags into the hole. The shoveling of dirt was the only noise heard in the stillness of the night.

When he was done he cleaned his tools and put them away he went back inside his house to take a hot relaxing shower. The rest of his day would be an empty and unfulfilling one until the evening when he could return home to his beloved, to embrace his lover, to make love to her and have sex with her rotting severed head once again. Just the thought of performing this act made him hard then he would lay her on the pillow beside him so he could contemplate his lovers face again.

Sick _


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## bleghc (Jan 2, 2015)

If my heart is poetry, then the last love poem i wrote is a crumpled up memo and you are a journal i was hoping to fill my days with until the space ran out. but i must’ve cramped my writing hand because even muscle memory has forgotten how i used it. were you thinking of her then too?when i flipped through your pages, did you remember her fingerprints on your surface edges?was i just a creased corner pointing backwards for the place you saved for her?and when she broke your heart, did she also crack your spine so you would always fall in her direction? i admit i never left you open on my nightstand, but i guess you were already stolen in someone else’s secrets and affection. there’s a reason i stopped using notebooks and pencils; at least the backspace is relatively painless when you enter into a document knowing it’s only temporary. and no, i’m not afraid of her ink stains. 

just my habit to Rorschach their meaning into tea leaf and palm-line predictions, reminders that all stories must have endings becausei will always believe in the portraits of disaster, even if it never begins. so when did i become so bold that i scrawled my thoughts in marker, hoping they would bleed through your body and become permanent. but you marked hers first.

you said that you would always be her diary, andi guess that makes me an entry on an off day. but see, i don’t care how many libraries there are in the world; i’d still look for you.but i can’t find the right synonym for beautiful when other men touch me. i am searching for your plot lines. your papercuts are the first thing i was willing to bleed for in so long. 

buti’m not blaming you. i’m blaming me. because if my heart is poetry, then i only want you to remember the lines about love lingering like my scent on your t-shirt that night you asked me over, even though we both had to get up early the next morning. do you remember? you said you’d put it on later just to be close to me again.

but i’m not trying to be more than your friend, nor am i postponing an inevitable end. after all, they say if you truly love someone, let them go. so please know that i’m willing to paper crane all your pages until they papyrus the sky like the stars we’ll finally discover when they turn out all the lights. and i may never be the one who sleeps next to you at night, but at least let me be the love letter tucked beneath your pillowcase to remind you that no matter what, you will always, always be worth the read, my love.


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## Paradox1987 (Oct 9, 2010)

_...To beguile the time,
Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue. Look like th' innocent flower,
But be the serpent under ’t... _

Macbeth: Act 1 Sc. 5


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## 33778 (Feb 26, 2012)

"There are only so many of us born at a time and we are thrown into the world to find each other, to find the other ones who don't think you're strange, who understand your jokes, your smile, the way you talk.

There are only so many of us born at a time and we only have so long to find each other before we die.

But we have to try.”

Iain Thomas from 'I wrote this for you'


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Acceptance

God in His infinite wisdom
Did not make me very wise-
So when my actions are stupid
They hardly take God by surprise

Dinner Guest: Me

I know I am
The ***** Problem
Being wined and dined,
Answering the usual questions
That come to white mind
Which seeks demurely
To Probe in polite way
The why and wherewithal
Of darkness U.S.A.—
Wondering how things got this way
In current democratic night,
Murmuring gently
Over fraises du bois,
"I'm so ashamed of being white."

The lobster is delicious,
The wine divine,
And center of attention
At the damask table, mine.
To be a Problem on
Park Avenue at eight
Is not so bad.
Solutions to the Problem,
Of course, wait.


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


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## cuddlyone (Nov 24, 2015)

"Who being loved, is poor?" - Oscar Wilde

"It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still love it." - Oscar Wilde

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway

"We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us." - L. M. Montgomery

"One can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?" - L. M. Montgomery


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## cuddlyone (Nov 24, 2015)

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” - Alfred Tennyson

"My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure." - Alfred Tennyson


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## cuddlyone (Nov 24, 2015)

"What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate the beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Interesting. To you, most people are just a passing face. I don't think we tend to consider ourselves this way,
in regards to what others think. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. There are some people who probably do consider themselves random specks within a mass.


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## onmyown23 (Apr 25, 2017)

cuddlyone said:


> "Who being loved, is poor?" - Oscar Wilde
> 
> "It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still love it." - Oscar Wilde
> 
> ...


beautiful quotes, especially the first one!


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## Tamehagane (Sep 2, 2014)

_"...A list of fifteen articles of old clothing, dated June 10, 1942, given by Goebbels to a charity collection. A note was appended that Mrs. Goebbels could do nothing about getting her donation together until she had talked with her husband."
_
There's something about imagining a Nazi walking into a WWII-era charity with a basket of clothes... :laughing:


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

"Human beings are forgetting how to give gifts. Violations of the exchange-principle have something mad and unbelievable about them; here and there even children size up the gift-giver mistrustfully, as if the gift were only a trick, to sell them a brush or soap. For that, one doles out charity, administered well-being, which papers over the visible wounds of society in coordinated fashion. In its organized bustle, the human impulse no longer has any room, indeed even donations to the needy are necessarily connected with the humiliation of delivery, the correct measure, in short through the treatment of the recipient as an object. Even private gift-giving has degenerated into a social function, which one carries out with a reluctant will, with tight control over the pocketbook, a skeptical evaluation of the other and with the most minimal effort. Real gift-giving had its happiness in imagining the happiness of the receiver. It meant choosing, spending time, going out of one’s way, thinking of the other as a subject: the opposite of forgetfulness. Hardly anyone is still capable of this. In the best of cases, they give what they themselves would have wished for, only a few shades of nuance worse. The decline of gift-giving is mirrored in the embarrassing invention of gift articles, which are based on the fact that one no longer knows what one should give, because one no longer really wants to. These goods are as relationless as their purchasers. They were shelf warmers from the first day. Likewise with the right to exchange the gift, which signifies to the receiver: here’s your stuff, do what you want with it, if you don’t like it, I don’t care, get something else if you want. In contrast to the embarrassment of the usual gifts, their pure fungibility still represents something which is more humane, because they at least permit the receiver to give themselves something, which is to be sure simultaneously in absolute contradiction to the gift.

In relation of the greater abundance of goods, which are available even to the poor, the decline of gift-giving may appear unimportant, and considerations on such as sentimental. However, even if it became superfluous in a condition of superfluity – and this is a lie, privately as well as socially, for there is no-one today whose imagination could not find exactly what would make them thoroughly happy – those who no longer gave would still be in need of gift-giving. In them wither away those irreplaceable capacities which cannot bloom in the isolated cell of pure interiority, but only in contact with the warmth of things. Coldness envelops everything which they do, the friendly word which remains unspoken, the consideration which remains unpracticed. Such iciness recoils back on those from which it spread. All relations which are not distorted, indeed perhaps what is reconciliatory in organic life itself, is a gift. Those who become incapable of this through the logic of stringency, make themselves into things and freeze."


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## LittleDreamer (Dec 11, 2016)

"He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.”


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping 
than you can understand.

W. B. Yeats


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## piano (May 21, 2015)

listen, he said, you ever seen a bunch of crabs in a 
bucket? 
no, I told him.
well, what happens is that now and then one crab
will climb up on top of the others
and begin to climb toward the top of the bucket,
then, just as he's about to escape
another crab grabs him and pulls him back
down.
really? I asked.
really, he said, and this job is just like that, none
of the others want anybody to get out of 
here. that's just the way it is
in the postal service! 
I believe you, I said.
just then the supervisor walked up and said,
you fellows were talking.
there is no talking allowed on this
job.
I had been there for eleven and one-half
years.
I got up off my stool and climbed right up the 
supervisor
and then I reached up and pulled myself right
out of there.
it was so easy it was unbelievable.
but none of the others followed me.
and after that, whenever I had crab legs
I thought about that place.
I must have thought about that place
maybe 5 or 6 times
before I switched to lobster.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

“Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.” 
― Matthew Lewis, The Monk


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Screw unto others before they screw unto you.” 
― William Hoffman, A Place For My Head


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## josnorgren (May 17, 2017)

“I look up at the sky, wondering if I'll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don't. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. Clouds are always taciturn. I probably shouldn't be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative often self-centered nature that still doubts itself--that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect.” 
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running


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## Rafiki (Mar 11, 2012)

This thread could be called Favorite Passages... or something, it was hard to read first lol. Tripped me up, almost didn't see it.


Anyway, this isn't a whole passage, but in The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald writes, "A silver curve of the moon hovered already in the western sky." 
(It's page 120 in Scribner's 2004 paperback.)

"Silver curve" stands out as both words are of a similar color and texture for me. Both are like the shiny blade of a sickle, and I can picture the blade reflecting the moonlight in a sharp gleam. I like when words are as visually decadent as they are orthographically.


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## Rafiki (Mar 11, 2012)

"Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." (Scriber, 2004, 136)


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## Introvertia (Feb 6, 2016)

"And no matter how much the gray people in power despise knowledge, they can’t do anything about historical objectivity; they can slow it down, but they can’t stop it. Despising and fearing knowledge, they will nonetheless inevitably decide to promote it in order to survive. 

Sooner or later they will be forced to allow universities and scientific societies, to create research centers, observatories, and laboratories, and thus to create a cadre of people of thought and knowledge: people who are completely beyond their control, people with a completely different psychology and with completely different needs. And these people cannot exist and certainly cannot function in the former atmosphere of low self-interest, banal preoccupations, dull self-satisfaction, and purely carnal needs. They need a new atmosphere- an atmosphere of comprehensive and inclusive learning, permeated with creative tension; they need writers, artists, composers- and the gray people in power are forced to make this concession too. 

The obstinate ones will be swept aside by their more cunning opponents in the struggle for power, but those who make this concession are, inevitably and paradoxically, digging their own graves against their will. For fatal to the ignorant egoists and fanatics is the growth of a full range of culture in the people- from research in the natural sciences to the ability to marvel at great music. And then comes the associated process of the broad intellectualization of society: an era in which grayness fights its last battles with a brutality that takes humanity back to the middle ages, loses these battles, and forever disappears as an actual force."

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, _Hard to Be a God_


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

From Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy:

But when we come to Spinoza's ethics, we feel—or at least I feel—that something, though not everything, can be accepted even when the metaphysical foundation has been rejected. Broadly speaking, Spinoza is concerned to show how it is possible to live nobly even when we recognize the limits of human power. He himself, by his doctrine of necessity, makes these limits narrower than they are; but when they indubitably exist, Spinoza's maxims are probably the best possible. Take, for instance, death: nothing that a man can do will make him immortal, and it is therefore futile to spend time in fears and lamentations over the fact that we must die. To be obsessed by the fear of death is a kind of slavery; Spinoza is right in saying that 'the free man thinks of nothing less than of death'. But even in this case, it is only death in general that should be so treated; death of any particular disease should, if possible, be averted by submitting to medical care. What should, even in this case, be avoided, is a certain kind of anxiety or terror; the necessary measures should be taken calmly, and our thoughts should, as far as possible, be then directed to other matters. The same considerations apply to all other purely personal misfortunes.

But how about misfortunes to people whom you love? Let us think of some of the things that are likely to happen in our time to inhabitants of Europe or China. Suppose you are a Jew, and your family has been massacred. Suppose you are an underground worker against the Nazis, and your wife has been shot because you could not be caught. Suppose your husband, for some purely imaginary crime, has been sent to forced labour in the Arctic, and has died of cruelty and starvation. Suppose your daughter has been raped and then killed by enemy soldiers. Ought you, in these circumstances, to preserve a philosophic calm?

If you follow Christ's teaching, you will say 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' I have known Quakers who could have said this sincerely and profoundly, and whom I admired because they could. But before giving admiration one must be very sure that the misfortune is felt as deeply as it should be. One cannot accept the attitude of some among the Stoics, who said, 'What does it matter to me if my family suffer? I can still be virtuous.' The Christian principle, 'Love your enemies,' is good, but the Stoic principle, 'Be indifferent to your friends,' is bad. And the Christian principle does not inculcate calm, but an ardent love even towards the worst of men. There is nothing to be said against it except that it is too difficult for most of us to practise sincerely.

The primitive reaction to such disasters is revenge. When Macduff learns that his wife and children have been killed by Macbeth, he resolves to kill the tyrant himself. This reaction is still admired by most people, when the injury is great, and such as to arouse moral horror in disinterested people. Nor can it be wholly condemned, for it is one of the forces generating punishment, and punishment is sometimes necessary. Moreover, from the point of view of mental health, the impulse to revenge is likely to be so strong that, if it is allowed no outlet, a man's whole outlook on life may become distorted and more or less insane. This is not true universally, but it is true in a large percentage of cases. But on the other side it must be said that revenge is a very dangerous motive. In so far as society admits it, it allows a man to be the judge in his own case, which is exactly what the law tries to prevent. Moreover it is usually an excessive motive; it seeks to inflict more punishment than is desirable. Torture, for example, should not be punished by torture, but the man maddened by lust for vengeance will think a painless death too good for the object of his hate. Moreover—and it is here that Spinoza is in the right—a life dominated by a single passion is a narrow life, incompatible with every kind of wisdom. Revenge as such is therefore not the best reaction to injury.

Spinoza would say what the Christian says, and also something more. For him, all sin is due to ignorance; he would 'forgive them, for they know not what they do'. But he would have you avoid the limited purview from which, in his opinion, sin springs, and would urge you, even under the greatest misfortunes, to avoid being shut up in the world of your sorrow; he would have you understand it by seeing it in relation to its causes and as a part of the whole order of nature. As we saw, he believes that hatred can be overcome by love: 'Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than if hatred had not preceded it.' I wish I could believe this, but I cannot, except in exceptional cases where the person hating is completely in the power of the person who refuses to hate in return. In such cases, surprise at being not punished may have a reforming effect. But so long as the wicked have power, it is not much use assuring them that you do not hate them, since they will attribute your words to the wrong motive. And you cannot deprive them of power by non-resistance.

The problem for Spinoza is easier than it is for one who has no belief in the ultimate goodness of the universe. Spinoza thinks that, if you see your misfortunes as they are in reality, as part of the concatenation of causes stretching from the beginning of time to the end, you will see that they are only misfortunes to you, not to the universe, to which they are merely passing discords heightening an ultimate harmony. I cannot accept this; I think that particular events are what they are, and do not become different by absorption into a whole. Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe; nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.

Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that it contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair.


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## Rafiki (Mar 11, 2012)

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Bible! Matthew 7:2


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## WhereverIMayRoam (Jan 16, 2011)

The Shadow: The History and Mystery of the Radio Program, 1930-1954, by Martin Grams Jr.


MARGOT: I'm serious, Lamont Cranston. When I foolishly let you know that - do you remember what you said? It will be exactly five years next week.
LAMONT: But there's still so much to do, Margot.
MARGOT: Well, then let somebody else do it. Don't you realize that you can't keep on like this forever? Someone is certain to identify you and when that someone does, that someone else is certain to kill you.
LAMONT: Perhaps, but until they do... Oh darling, stop frowning.
MARGOT: I don't necessarily mean for you to give up your work, Lamont. But this 'other'... let the Shadow just disappear and come out openly. You and the organized forces of law and police.
LAMONT: Don't you realize Margot, my entire usefulness to the organized forces of the law and police lies in my remaining outside those forces. Remaining always as The Shadow. Would they approve my methods? Would they believe in my science?
MARGOT: You would make them believe. You could make them approve.
LAMONT: And in doing so revealing my secrets. My knowledge. Reveal them and eventually let them fall into the hands of organized crime. No Margot, no one must ever know. No one but you.

MARGOT: Oh Lamont, why do you take these chances? Won't you ever give it up - this masquerade as The Shadow?
LAMONT: And then what?
MARGOT: Then perhaps - you could settle down - and be like other people. We might even - oh, I don't know.
LAMONT: You mean - get married?
MARGOT: Yes.
LAMONT: My dear, that is something that has been close to my heart for a long time. You know that. But until the Shadow finishes his work - I cannot allow myself to think of anything else! Just be patient, dearest. Some day - (CHANGE OF BRISK MANNER) Well - I'm afraid I've got to run off now -

RUTH: But - we're not important.
MARGOT: Every human being is important, Mrs. Adams. Lamont Cranston knows that.
RUTH: He must - love people very much.
MARGOT: He does - love people. (ACID) In the plural.

LAMONT: They're a nice couple.
MARGOT: Ruth and Joe? Wonderful.
LAMONT: They'll have a good life. I envy Joe.
SOUND: (CUT STEPS)
MARGOT: (QUICKLY) You do?
LAMONT: Uh-huh.
MARGOT: (HER BIG CHANCE) You mean - because of his wife, and his home?
LAMONT: Yes.
MARGOT: But Lamont - you can have them. (SO SOFT) If you want.
LAMONT: (TRAPPED) Well, I - I - (THEN SUDDENLY) No. I can't. I can't have Joe Adams' wife and home.
MARGOT: Why not?
LAMONT: Because, Margot - (LAUGHS TEASINGLY) They're his.
MUSIC: (CURTAIN)

MARGOT: (HUSKILY) You did it. Out by Christmas.
LAMONT: Yes.
MARGOT: A good job of earning your four dollars and eighty three cents.
LAMONT: Do I get a bonus?
MARGOT: What do you mean?
LAMONT: From you. After all, it's Christmas.
MARGOT: Oh. (PAUSE. THEY KISS.)
JIMMY: (COMING IN) Say, there's some ice skates under the tree. Isn't Christmas swell? Gee, I wish it'd come every day in the year, don't you?
MARGOT: I certainly do, Jimmy - I certainly do.

MARGOT: I knew that man couldn't have been you. He paid me compliments, he got me out in the moonlight - he even started to propose.
CRANSTON: He did? Good Lord! That's terrible.
MARGOT: Terrible? (SHE STARTS TO LAUGH)
CRANSTON: What's so funny?
MARGOT: Brand new year - same old Lamont.

MARGOT: (SOFT) Hey, Mr. Cranston - you know something, Mr. Cranston?
LAMONT: What's that?
MARGOT: You're a pretty nice kind of a type fella.
LAMONT: So's Santa Claus. The old gentleman gave me the steer I needed in this case.
MARGOT: Thats just peachy and I'm real grateful to him, but the old gentleman doesn't happen to be here right now.
LAMONT: Huh?
MARGOT: He's not here, but I am.
LAMONT: Oh - I see what you mean. (SOFT) You're a very forward girl, Miss Lane.
MARGOT: You're a very backward lad, Mr. Cranston.
LAMONT: (GRRR) Oh, yeah?
BIZ: (KISS)
LAMONT: (COMING OUT OF IT. WEAKLY) Merry Christmas, darling.
MARGOT: (THREE FEET OFF THE GROUND) Oh, Merry, Merry Christmas!









Martin Grams: Margot Lane: A Character Study


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## koalamort (Dec 21, 2012)

"At the end of the meal appeared a rum jelly. This was the Prince's favourite pudding, and the Princess had been careful to order it early that morning in gratitude for favours granted. It was rather threatening at first shaped like a tower with bastions and battlements and smooth slippery walls impossible to scale, and garrisoned by red and green cherries and pistachio nuts; but into its transparent and quivering flanks a spoon plunged with astounding ease. By the time the amber-coloured fortress reached Francesco Paolo, the sixteen-year-old who was served last, it consisted only of shattered walls and hunks of wobbly rubble. Exhilarated by the aroma of rum and the delicate flavour of the multicoloured garrison, the Prince enjoyed watching the rapid demolishing of the fortress beneath the assault of his family's appetites."

- _The Leopard_, Giuseppe di Lampedusa


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

"From a young age, we are taught that we should be able to control our feelings. When you were growing up, you probably heard a number of expressions like, ‘Don’t cry, or I’ll give you something to cry about’, ‘Don’t be so gloomy; look on the bright side’, ‘Take that frown off your face’, ‘You’re a big boy now. Big boys don’t cry’, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself’, ‘Don’t worry, there’s no need to be frightened.’ With words such as these, the adults around us sent out the message, again and again, that we ought to be able to control our feelings. And certainly it appeared to us as if they controlled theirs. But what was going on behind closed doors?"

- The Happiness Trap


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## Energumen (Apr 24, 2015)

"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

—Cheshire Cat, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

*instance
*
i have this theory
i'm in the middle of a car crash
right now 
i'm seven years old
i'm coming back from florida
i'm in the passenger seat
and the car is swerving left
there is a truck coming towards us
the truck is not stopping
the car is not stopping
my eyes are closed
i am thinking hard
the giant hamster wheels in my brain are spinning really fast
in my head i am eighteen years old
i have no friends and no future prospects and i'm poor and feel inferior to everyone and my life is shit
i am writing a poetry collection to express how sad i am and to maybe come to terms with it and embark on the long process of self-acceptance and rehabilitation
i am opening my eyes
i am smiling 
the grille of the truck is smiling back
things could have been worse


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

*I Long to Hold Some Lady* from _The Spice Box of Earth_


I long to hold some lady
For my love is far away,
And will not come tomorrow
And was not here today.

There is no flesh so perfect
As on my lady's bone,
And yet it seems so distant
When I am all alone:

As though she were a masterpiece
In some castled town,
That pilgrims come to visit
And priests to copy down.

Alas, I cannot travel
To a love I have so deep
Or sleep too close beside
A love I want to keep.

But I long to hold some lady,
For flesh is warm and sweet.
Cold skeletons go marching
Each night beside my feet.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Excerpt of *Beneath My Hands* from _The Spice-Box of the Earth_


I dread the time 
when your mouth 
begins to call me hunter. 

When you call me close 
to tell me 
your body is not beautiful 
I want to summon 
the eyes and hidden mouths 
of stone and light and water 
to testify against you. 

I want them 
to surrender before you 
the trembling rhyme of your face 
from their deep caskets. 

When you call me close 
to tell me 
your body is not beautiful 
I want my body and my hands 
to be pools 
for your looking and laughing.


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## Penny (Mar 24, 2016)

from - THE GREAT PRACTICAL SECRETS; OR,
REALISATIONS OF MAGICAL SCIENCE. 

“To separate that which is ethereal from that which is 
gross, in the first operation, which is wholly interior, is to 
emancipate the soul from every vice and prejudice, which 
is accomplished by the use of the philosophic salt, namely, 
wisdom ; of mercury which is personal skill and toil ; 
finally, of sulphur which represents vital energy and the 
warmth of will. By this means is achieved the transmuta- 
tion of the least precious things, even the refuse of the 
earth, into spiritual gold.”

“Temperance, tranquillity of soul, simplicity of 
character, calmness and reasonableness of will,not only 
make us happy but strong and healthy It is by becoming 
good and rational that man makes himself immortajj we 
are all the authors of our destinies, and God does not save 
us without our own concurrence.” 

-Eliphas Levi


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## Doccium (May 29, 2016)

Both from *The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time*:



> “And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something.”





> “And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. *And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster*, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.”


The part about them moving towards us was straight up hilarious. They are... written in a very pleasant way, it's easy to imagine Christopher's passion behind the things he thinks/says.


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## Electra (Oct 24, 2014)

"Where did the spiral come from?
In all kinds of decorations we find- over and over again; the spiral. It is in belt-buckets, on necklases, on armrings, on axses and swordsmouths. It curls together and looses up, runs back and forward again. In egypt was the same spiral. Did it come from there? No (...)"

(Ok so I am not sure we find the spiral in all kinds of decorations, but it sure was used a lot.)
This was from my art history book.


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## Gossip Goat (Nov 19, 2013)

Before the days that never ended descended to a day job
The Enemy was Public, the Soul spoke De La
Broke like a clay vase when charity left town
So we were on our own til our reality checks bounced
Well ain't nothing like a little bit of rain
Just to wash away the rust from the swing set chains
Faint for a sudden til it all comes rushing
Like "Was that the way it was back then?"
Cause back then dedication meant you kept it on the grind
Til the first slice of sunshine bled through the blinds
I thought that we were kings, I thought she was in love with me
I thought I knew the world til the summer we were twenty three


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## Folsom (Jun 20, 2018)

I saw this on a post on this forum where a user called AR LaBaere appeared to be posting pieces of an essay about a weird fiction book called House of Leaves.
In it, he discussed the world-view breaking experience of one of the characters, 'Navidson', and related it to how we might feel about similar situations in reality like this:

_"While Navidson has previously constructed a rational system for explanation, it is plausible that any human must fall prey to supernatural ritual. The fetishism of the hallowed ground must intrude upon trauma. Do we not feel, upon the anniversary, upon the place, a need to recall the intrusion? Do we not become so perseverated as to gnaw our own failings of that evil hour, and revisit the spectral link? The grave compels us. We compel ourselves with violent cycles of grief. In the bolide of the event, in that final crash, we are imprinted to relive it again, again, and again, and to howl for the one instant in which we might have saved. We yawn forth, and spill into the vagrancy of the obscene. We lose our kith and kin, and we shudder into no healing. In sooth, we are the ghouls of the haunting; we the traumatized vicambulate our own Houses. Here, too, we are the inhabitants of both universes."_

I remarked in the thread that it reminded me of something that Lovecraft or Ligotti might write, the whole piece was filled with this kind of language.

https://www.personalitycafe.com/intj-forum-scientists/1282485-house-leaves-evolution-horror.html


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## BenevolentBitterBleeding (Mar 16, 2015)

_"I don’t cry, I don’t sigh, but every moment I say:
Cursed be he who invented the art of putting a price on common material by tinting it scarlet. Cursed be the precious garment that I revere. Where is my old, my humble, my comfortable rag of common cloth?

My friends, keep your old friends.

My friends, fear the touch of wealth. Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles. O Diogenes! How you would laugh if you saw your disciple beneath...

I left behind the barrel in which I ruled in order to serve a tyrant."_ *- Denis Diderot*


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## kimjongethan (Feb 16, 2019)

Excerpt from *War as I Knew It* by George S. Patton Jr

“When the Assouan Dam was constructed, it gave a certain type of fresh-water snail a chance to develop in large numbers. This snail is the host for a sort of hookworm, which, since the construction of the dam, has become a menace. As a result of this hookworm, the Egyptian peasant constantly suffers from the bellyache and has his sexual vigor reduced. In order to relieve his pain and restore his vigor, he has taken to smoking hashish.” 

My sense of humor must be weird but I thought this was funny.


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## Octavarium (Nov 27, 2012)

From Arthur C. Clarke’s foreword to his Collected Stories:

By mapping out possible futures, as well as a good many improbable ones, the science fiction writer does a great service to the community. He encourages in his readers flexibility of mind, readiness to accept and even welcome change – in one word, adaptability. Perhaps no attribute is more important in this age. The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to their changing environment. We shall disappear if we cannot adapt to an environment that now contains spaceships, computers – and thermonuclear weapons. 

Nothing could be more ridiculous, therefore, than the accusation sometimes made against science fiction that it is escapist. That charge can indeed be made against much fantasy – but so what? There are times (this century has provided a more than ample supply) when some form of escape is essential, and any art form that supplies it is not to be despised. And as C.S.Lewis (creator of both superb science fiction and fantasy) once remarked to me: ‘Who are the people most opposed to escapism ? Jailors!’


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## Aridela (Mar 14, 2015)

_“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.” _

*― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go*


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## Hexigoon (Mar 12, 2018)

This section from Watchmen takes my breath away when I read it. It became my favourite book, or at least comic.


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## Eugenia Shepherd (Nov 10, 2017)

Hexigoon said:


> This section from Watchmen takes my breath away when I read it. It became my favourite book, or at least comic.


Beautiful. (_claps approvingly_)


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## Forest Nymph (Aug 25, 2018)

"...they ran amuck, and made it their purpose to destroy life - in this case harmless feathered creatures, brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify these propensities - at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards their weaker fellows in Nature's teeming family..."Poor darlings - to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly. "And not a twinge of bodily pain about me! I be not mangled and I be not bleeding, and I have two hands to feed and clothe me." She was ashamed of herself for the gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature."

_Tess of the D'urbervilles_ by Thomas Hardy. 1891. 

Part of what makes the sentiments of Tess, WH, and Air Conditioned Nightmare so extraordinary to me is the insights of such people in so early a year.


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## Penny (Mar 24, 2016)

So I am reading Secret The Power by Rhonda Byrne, and one chapter in particular really made a lot of sense and has affected my thinking. Basically she is saying- "Turn away from the things you don't love and don't give them any feeling." It gets more in depth in the book, but I really liked that. Sorry I can't be bothered to transcribe more of it so it makes more sense for you.


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## Forest Nymph (Aug 25, 2018)

Chapters I-III of _Wuthering Heights._ There is so much more to recommend it, but it's so ironic and contextual as a novel that it's difficult to quote out of context without losing something. Except for Cathy's soliloquy on Heathcliff to Nelly Dean. But I fear if you don't "get" the first three chapters you'll be lost for the book entirely. 

Wuthering Heights is like the Twin Peaks of the 19th century. Weird, funny, scary, cool, comforting, what is this and if you miss an episode you're lost. That's why most film adaptations are utterly sub par. Except for the near silent one where Heathcliff is black. It's the weirdest interpretation possibly but actually does the Big Concepts of the novel the most justice.


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## Morpheus83 (Oct 17, 2008)

From Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water:

Loss, in time, became a physical sensation; and from there, over more time, a puzzle -- fading, at last, until it could no longer be held. The train streaked north. Alongside the track, steep hills of an aqueous green hue climbed to the west, fields of tea or perhaps winter wheat that rose to tiny towns peeking like castle mounts through the thick covering of pines. Greenery, water, settlement; the enduring journey of children; the world was the same in every corner of its reach.


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## Astroglorious (Apr 13, 2020)

_"Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought."_ 
- Alexander Hamilton


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## lostkokiri (Apr 23, 2020)

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


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## Kazuma Ikezawa (Oct 21, 2011)

lostkokiri said:


> "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


I really like that quote. I also love your username. It reminds me of the awesomeness of the best videogame ever created. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I wish I was a kokiri. And Saria's song is amazing.


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## lostkokiri (Apr 23, 2020)

Kazuma Ikezawa said:


> I really like that quote. I also love your username. It reminds me of the awesomeness of the best videogame ever created. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I wish I was a kokiri. And Saria's song is amazing.


Thank you.  This quote has stayed with me ever since the first time I read The Little Prince (one of my all-time favourite books). I agree that Ocarina of Time is one of the most amazing video games ever created, and the soundtrack is wonderful too. Don't you think those little forest kokiris embody the INFP spirit? Saria's Song is my favourite, and I plan to learn it on piano someday.


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## Kazuma Ikezawa (Oct 21, 2011)

lostkokiri said:


> Thank you.  This quote has stayed with me ever since the first time I read The Little Prince (one of my all-time favourite books). I agree that Ocarina of Time is one of the most amazing video games ever created, and the soundtrack is wonderful too. Don't you think those little forest kokiris embody the INFP spirit? Saria's Song is my favourite, and I plan to learn it on piano someday.


Your Welcome.
Yeah the music in Ocarina of Time is great. For me, a great fantasy like videogame has to have great music. I haven't played the Ocarina of Time since it first came out so I don't remember the kokiri that much, and how infpish they were like. I just looked them up quickly because your username remind me of them. I do remember that they were adorable and friendly children.

Speaking of piano, I used to play the piano when I was younger. I memorized the main tune to the Song of Storms from Ocarina of Time on the piano and I also learned a few other Ocarina of Time tunes on the piano. Good luck with learning to play Saria's song on the piano.


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## Glitch_ (Dec 7, 2017)

"(..)The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless" 

Preface of The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde.


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## bleghc (Jan 2, 2015)

"For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene."

“The traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, but the more remote past.”
“Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice. Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or, perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

- Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino)
​


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## BenevolentBitterBleeding (Mar 16, 2015)

_*Petrol Fuzz:*_ This man got so depressed that he was going to take his Rook that he got some cigarettes and went to the bar lmao 💀😭

_*i require loops:*_ I'd be bamboozled as well if after 45 minutes you decide to protect a pawn over a rook. He definitely thought you mapped out all the possible outcomes to trap his queen.

*John Palermo:* Stockfish says it was a blunder to move the queen away ​
_*wohooooooooooo:*_ Maybe his opponent was like: wtf he made me wait 45 mins to defend a damn pawn over a rook? Ill just let him sit 55 minutes and then take nothing just to troll him​
😂😂


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## BenevolentBitterBleeding (Mar 16, 2015)

_"__Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."_ - *Ralph Waldo Emerson*


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## impulsenine (Oct 18, 2020)

"_The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits, and starts of generosity. But when you have chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic. Yet we have the weakness to expect the sympathy of people in those actions whose excellence is that they outrun sympathy, and appeal to a tardy justice. If you would serve your brother, because it is fit for you to serve him, do not take back your words when you find that prudent people do not commend you. Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age. It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person,--"Always do what you are afraid to do." A simple, manly character need never make an apology, but should regard its past action with the calmness of Phocion, when he admitted that the event of the battle was happy, yet did not regret his dissuasion from the battle._ " - *Heroism, Ralph Waldo Emerson*


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## BenevolentBitterBleeding (Mar 16, 2015)

> Nice. Some thoughts:
> 
> Maybe you could make this simpler still. If your present moment experience was like a dream, how would you change it? Would you _think-about_ the future?
> No, you'd _imagine_ the dream into a new form, directly. If you wanted a vase to appear on the table, you would imagine it there and it would take shape. If you wanted to change the whole scene, you could do that - because the _whole experience is your imagjnation_. It is in this sense that we operate from I AM.
> ...



tbh
kinda gave me goosebumps reading this lmao​


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## BenevolentBitterBleeding (Mar 16, 2015)

_The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. _- Noam Chomsky

kno idea what it mean but snded kew (・_・ヾ​


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## BenevolentBitterBleeding (Mar 16, 2015)

_"__People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."_ - Søren Kierkegaard

oof. sick burn​


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## TheCosmicHeart (Jun 24, 2015)

“Many times in my life I have felt like I was missing something, some essential piece of the puzzle that everybody else carried around with them without thinking about it. I don’t usually mind, since most of those times it turns out to be an astonishingly stupid piece of humania like understanding the infield fly rule or not going all the way on the first date.”

An excerpt from Darkly dreaming Dexter


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## Miharu (Apr 1, 2015)

I’m rereading Nabokov’s _Lolita _in my spare time_. _Vile, but I do so love the prose.

_You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style_. (Indeed!)
_Humbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether Humbert Humbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither._
_A poet à mes heures, I composed a madrigal to the soot-black lashes of her pale-gray vacant eyes, to the blond down of her brown limbs, but I tore it up and cannot recall it today._
_Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do not hate me in your eternal heaven among an eternal alchemy of asphalt and rubber and metal and stone—but thank God, not water, not water! _(I found this portion so satisfying to read—his relief at her death not being by his hand—after he’d nearly drowned her in the past chapter or so.)
_Behind the brashness of little Haze, and the poise of big Haze, a trickle of shy life ran that tasted the same, that murmured the same. _


The writing is _chef’s kiss_.


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