Viewing: Literature - View all posts
AN IMMORTALITY FORMULA
“When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance, the most authority and success, is usually the one who gets our momentary allegiance; and we try to pattern our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.”
—Ernest Becker
A BRUTAL TEACHER
"Experience is a brutal teacher.
But you learn -- my God, do you learn."
—C.S. Lewis
"In youth we learn; in age we understand."
—Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
"A learning experience is one that tells you,
You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
—Douglas Adams
HOPE
"Hope is the worst of evils,
for it prolongs the torment of man."
—Friedrich Nietzsche
"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all."
—Emily Dickenson
"I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head.
I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel,
a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.
I hope I can make it across the border.
I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.
I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.
I hope."
—Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding
DESERT LIVING
“I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' -
and one brave deed is worth a thousand.”
—Edward Abbey
"Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert."
—William Gibson
"Welcome to the desert of the real."
—Morpheus
HEAVEN & HELL
"Heaven is right where you are standing,
and that is the place to train."
—Morihei Ueshiba
"Paradise unearned is but a land of shadows!"
—Silver Surfer
"We are in hell right? I mean now when we
meet people, we can tell them we have
actually been to hell."
—Tom Servo
and that is the place to train."
—Morihei Ueshiba
"Paradise unearned is but a land of shadows!"
—Silver Surfer
"We are in hell right? I mean now when we
meet people, we can tell them we have
actually been to hell."
—Tom Servo
THE WORLD OVER
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful,
we must carry it within us or we will find it not."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
CREATE WHAT YOU WILL
"Imagination is the beginning of creation.
You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine
and at last you create what you will."
—George Bernard Shaw
LOSS
"If I am what I have and if I lose what I have, who then am I?"
—Erich Fromm
"Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness,
possesses you. And in this materialistic age, a great many of us are
possessed by our possessions."
—Mildred Lisette Norman
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
—Tyler Durden
INTO THE DARKNESS
"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all."
—Richard Wright
BASIC SKILLS
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
—Robert A. Heinlein
AMBITION
"For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world,
and although ambitions are well worth having,
they are not to be cheaply won."
—Lucille Maud Montgomery
"You'd like to quantify me, Officer Starling.
You're so ambitious, aren't you?
Do you know what you look like to me,
with your good bag and your cheap shoes?
You look like a rube."
—Hannibal Lecter
"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that, but the really great
make you feel that you, too, can become great."
—Mark Twain
WILLIAM JAMES ON RESOLUTIONS
“In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelope your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.”
—William James (1842-1910)
YOU HEAR ?
"When any question starts off, 'Why don't they...',
the answer is -- almost always -- money."
—Robert A. Heinlein
"There's a big difference between wanting to work and having to work.
I had to learn that the hard way. Now money is very important to me.
Because I ain't got it."
—James Caan
"Look, I'm gettin' old, you hear? I spent most of my life hanging around crummy joints with a buncha punks drinkin' the beer, eatin' the hash and the hot dogs and watchin' the other people go off to Florida while I'm sweatin' out how I'm gonna pay the plumber. I done time and I stood up but I can't take no more chances.
Next time, it's gonna be me goin' to Florida."
—Eddie Coyle
WHAT ELSE ?
"The studio is torn down, all the people who played on it are dead, the instruments have been sold off. But you're listening to a moment that happened in time 60 years ago and you're hearing it just as sharp as when it was made. That remains an amazing thing to me."
—Tom Waits
"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it."
—Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding
"As long as I have energy, I'll keep going.
What else can I do? Music is my life."
—Sonny Rollins
THE SURVIVALIST
The Survivalist grows medicinal herbs, stockpiles emergency rations, and stores guns and ammunition in a secret underground bunker. He is vigilant and hyper-prepared in response to the fear and scarcity narratives that dominate our culture.
A SINGULAR CONSPIRACY
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them,
neither persons nor property will be safe."
—Frederick Douglass
"Not conspiracies. Conspiracy. Singular."
—The Question
"Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out...and the corporations sit there in their...in their corporation buildings, and... and, and see, they're all corporationy...and they make money."
—Tim Robbins
DO YOU WRESTLE WITH DREAMS?
Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
—William Gibson
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.
—William Gibson
LEGGER DOWN
"Unthinking respect for authority
is the greatest enemy of truth."
—Albert Einstein
"Irreverence is the champion of liberty
and its only sure defense."
—Mark Twain
"See a broad to get that booty ak 'em,
Legger down and smack 'em, yak 'em."
—Jive Dude
EMBRACE THE RAIN
Be still sad heart and cease repining;
Behind the clouds the sun is shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life a little rain must fall.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Behind the clouds the sun is shining,
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life a little rain must fall.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
KURT VONNEGUT ON THE ARTS
CHARITY
"Pregnant women and Vietnam vets,
beggin' on the freeway, bout as hard as it gets."
—Tom Waits
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity,
nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor
by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."
—Herman Melville
"You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life
before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave."
—Billie Holiday
DETERMINATION
"There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
that can hinder or control the firm resolve
of a determined soul."
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"I was determined to carve out a music of my own.
I didn't want to copy anybody."
—Bill Monroe
"Determined or not, that cat must be long dead.
That's kind of a downer."
—Marge Simpson
IT'S UP TO YOU
"Only you, only you can, you are unique at last.
Alas it is a boring song but it works every time."
—Margaret Atwood
"It's one thing to think that you're the center of the universe.
It's another thing entirely to have this confirmed
by an ancient prophecy."
—Douglas Adams
"What I want to know is, what is this it which is to him up
and which he can perhaps handle?"
—Crow T. Robot
NONE MORE BLACK
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong.
No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has
always gotten there first, and is waiting for it."
—Terry Pratchett
"If you only knew the power of the dark side!"
—Darth Vader
"It's like, how much more black could this be?
And the answer is none. None more black."
—Nigel Tufnel