Quote of the day

General chit-chat

Moderators: AMod, iMod

User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Margaret Atwood from The Handmaid's Tale

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.


Any compensations left here?

I feel like the word shatter.

I feel like shattering more words myself.

It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.

Way too many.

Knowing was a temptation. What you don't know won't tempt you.

My guess: for better or for worse.

Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion...Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.

She means if the time comes, of course.

All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.

For some here of course it is all but effortless.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

Woman Pepper Spraying Assailant Makes Sure To Save Enough For Rest Of Walk Home


This modern world, let's call it.

Police Apologize For Tasing Innocent Man They Meant To Shoot

Incredibly enough, a white man.

Dirt: After 75 Years, Why It’s Still One Of The Top Destinations For Bugs

75 million years actually. At least.

Vegetarian Option Just Iceberg Lettuce On Bread

Breakfast, lunch and dinner for example.

What To Say To Someone Who Has Fallen For A Conspiracy Theory

Like anyone ever does these days.

Study Finds Falling To Knees And Screaming To Sky Remains Best Way Of Forsaking One’s God

Well, of course.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

David Foster Wallace from Infinite Jest

I read, I say. 'I study and read. I bet I've read everything you've read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, 'The library, and step on it.'


And look where that got him.

What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?

Me? Never happened. Why? Just lucky, I guess.

He suddenly felt nothing, or rather Nothing, a pre-tornadic stillness of zero sensation, as if he were the very space he occupied.

And what about now for him?

The man who knows his limitations, has none.

Well that's bullshit of course.

Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith. . . . Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.

Or, sure, as with most, become just another run-of-the-mill objectivist.

Please learn the pragmatics of expressing fear: sometimes words that seem to express really invoke.
This can be tricky.


Take gaping down into the abyss, for example.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

Seagull With Diarrhea Barely Makes It To Crowded Beach In Time


I think we get the picture.

New Study Finds It Is Impossible To Lose Weight, No One Has Ever Done It, And Those Who Are Trying Should Give Up

Well, that settles that then. At least until the next new study. Something along the lines of this: https://youtu.be/JB2di69FmhE

Far-Right Republican Wondering What He Has To Do To Get Media To Stop Calling Him Moderate

Yo, pinheads! Tell him!!

Worm Feels Conflicted About Feasting On Monarch Who Symbolized So Much Oppression

Any worms here?

Scientists Announce Earth’s Sewage No Longer Drinkable

Well, that was no surprise, right?

Aspiring Politician Hopes Government Leaves Some Women’s Rights For Him To Gut One Day

Not many of them left, right?
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

Word Search On Box Of Frosted Mini-Wheats Fucking Impossible


You tell me.

U.S. Approves Billions To Fund Struggling Russian Military

See! The military industial complex!!

Greg Abbott Sends Hundreds Of Migrants To DeSantis’ House To Teach Him Lesson About Stealing Idea

So, did it work?

Reality Of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned On Man Until He Held Newborn Son’s Hospital Bill

That'll do it.

Brett Favre Defends Use Of State Welfare Money To Build Shelter For Homeless Volleyballs

Talk about a "piece of shit!"
Note to Copper Fit: your call.
[they're sticking with him]


Roger Federer Hopes Career Inspired Little White Boys To See Themselves Playing Tennis

A long shot, sure, but we'll see.
Impenitent
Posts: 4305
Joined: Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:04 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by Impenitent »

Joe Biden: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Ohio Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan: “We’ve got to kill and confront that movement.”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/shannon-bran ... ingson-suv

utopia on the way

-Imp
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Markus Zusak

Two weeks to change the world, fourteen days to destroy it.


Too close to call?

Please, trust me, I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's. Just don't ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me.

Amiable. Agreeable. Affable. Sounds like nice to me. Though, sure, point taken.

You’re a human, you should understand self-obsession.

A human or a stinking capitalist.

When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.

Or, sure, for some, anything.

I'm just another stupid human.

If not necessarily a pinhead.

HERE IS A SMALL FACT: You are going to die.

Well, if getting larger and larger.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Randall Munroe

But I’ve never seen the Icarus story as a lesson about the limitations of humans. I see it as a lesson about the limitations of wax as an adhesive.


Tell that to the Sun.

There’s no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were, it would just be the word “NO” scrawled over and over in charred blood.

This stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astatine# ... .1%20hours.

I got in touch with a friend of mine who works at a research reactor, and asked him what he thought would happen to someone who tried to swim in their radiation containment pool. “In our reactor?” He thought about it for a moment. “You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds."

That's good enough for me.

They say there are no stupid questions. That’s obviously wrong; I think my question about hard and soft things, for example, is pretty stupid. But it turns out that trying to thoroughly answer a stupid question can take you to some pretty interesting places.

Next up: really, really, really stupid pinhead answers. And that's just here.

The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.

Simple: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

Your plane would fly pretty well, except it would be on fire the whole time, and then it would stop flying, and then stop being a plane.

Was that your own experience?
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Philosophy Tweets

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment." Gabriel Garcia Marquez


That ever happen to you? Me? Once or twice.

"No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing." Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Clever, maybe. But you either have money or you don't.

"A happy life consists in the tranquility of mind." Cicero

It would have yo be that, wouldn't it?

"...Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean." William Faulkner

My guess: some women do, some women don't.
Same with some men.


"I discovered to my joy, that it is life, not death, that has no limits." Gabriel García Márquez

Right, life has no limits.

"It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams." Gabriel García Márquez

Right, like it can't be both.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Colin Wilson from The Outsider

...the Buddhist scripture expresses it: Those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead.


Just out of curiosity, he asked, discriminate regarding what exactly?

Steppenwolf knows well enough why he is unhappy and drifting, bored and tired; it is because he will not recognize his purpose and follow it with his whole being.

And to think I actually believed bullshit like this!!

I love life and I want to live, to cry but cannot—I feel such a pain in my soul—a pain which frightens me. My soul is ill. My soul, not my mind. The doctors do not understand my illness.... Everybody who reads these lines will suffer.... My body is not ill, it is my soul that is ill.

And to think I actually believed bullshit like this!!

'I think everyone should love life above everything else in the world,’ Alyosha tells him.
‘Love life regardless of the meaning of it?’
‘Certainly—it must be regardless of logic—’it’s only then one can understand its meaning'.


Hint: there isn't one.

The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretence, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for Truth.

Scratch the last part of course.

It is a long way from Mr. Polly’s discovery (If you don’t like your life you can change it) to: There is no way out or round or through.

This guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Mr_Polly
And getting longer everyday.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Philosophy Tweets:

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez


My guess: It is clearly both.

"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think they are." Epictetus

Of course: the pinheads!!!

“No matter what happens, it is within my power to turn it to my advantage.” Epictetus

:lol:

"Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it." Epictetus

You know what's coming: Sieg Heil!!

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Albert Einstein

And, in regard to your day to day interactions with others, that explains what exactly?

"In mathematics, you don’t understand things. You just get used to them." John von Neumann

Not counting 1 + 1 = 2 of course.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Matt Haig

To be human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.


Next up: to be pinheads.

...that the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.

Unless of course it happens to be both.

Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you.

No cellar? Then the attic.

Why want another universe if this one has dogs?

True, but then again not true.

You can have everything and feel nothing.

Or you can have everything and feel great.

Nora wanted to live in a world where no cruelty existed, but the only worlds she had available to her were worlds with humans in them.

Yo, Ecmandu!
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Werner Twertzog

There is only pain, and the false hope of change, as we all know.


Or as we will all find out eventually.

Amazon's "Rings of Power" looks like something commissioned by Kim Jong-il to commemorate his glorious nativity and rise to Supreme Leadership.

Yo, Astro Cat!

Entire galaxies are reduced to elementary particles every day, and you want me to sign your Fitzcarraldo DVD?

No, my Aguirre, the Wrath of God DVD.

A billion sentient lives are extinguished every second, on the galactic level, and multiply that by a trillion trillion galaxies, that we know of, and you want me to buy you ice cream?

Let's decide: should he?

In 2046, the mechanized, flesh-eating war dogs will become self-replicating.
In 2053, the last earth-bound human will be devoured.
But for one.


Nope, not me.

If Friday comes, can Monday be far behind?

Or Saturday where you are.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.


The darker the better.

If you love her, I said, you'll love somebody else someday.

Not many will go there, right?

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of stories, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.

Plenty of places to avoid that, right?

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.

Or, like me, just not know anyone.

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

Let's not go there, okay?

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.

Tell that to a coal miner.

At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day.
Then I knew what the problem was.
I needed experience.
How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?


Let's just say she figured it out.
User avatar
iambiguous
Posts: 7106
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

God

You're a fucking shit show.


I guess You shouldn't have created us in Your image then.

Any government threatened by a woman not wearing a hijab is a government of teeny, tiny men.

Okay, Mr. Omnipotent, do something about it.

You really have no fucking idea what you’re doing down there, do you.

Or: You really have no fucking idea what You’re doing up there, do You?

There are no "special places in hell".
The whole place is pretty special.


What, no circles?

I only masturbated once and I'm still cleaning up the mess.

Uh, more than we need to know?

Religion is just like organized crime except it kills many more people and makes much more money.

And He ought to know.
Post Reply