Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

For women like me, integrity isn't chastity, it isn't fidelity, it isn't any of the old words. Integrity is the orgasm. That is something I haven't any control over.


So, any women like her here?

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty.

My guess: not all of them.

Anna, there's something very arrogant about insisting on the right to be right.

About everything for example.

I am increasingly afflicted by vertigo where words mean nothing.

And, no, believe it or not, not just your words.

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag—and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement.

Starting now, okay?

...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than anything they use for work, that they might be different creatures.

Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes
3] all of the above
Impenitent
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Impenitent »

"I've always been lucky with one-eyed jacks." - Josh Faraday

-Imp
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

Woman Disgusted After Finding Out There Are Over 2,000 Calories In Recommended Daily Intake


And, at times, outraged.

Narrow Line Of Dirt Not Being Swept Into Dustpan Without A Fight

So, how do you handle this?

Man Just Having One Of Those Decades Where He Doesn't Feel Like Doing Anything

We should all be so lucky.

CPAC To Feature Exhibit Where Visitors Can Toss Raw Chicken To Rudy Giuliani

Let's explain this.

City Finally Safe After Every Single Resident Hired As Police

That ought to do it.

European Space Agency Proposes New Time Zone For Moon

No, really: https://apnews.com/article/moon-time-zo ... 1b5ed5362a
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Agent Smith
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Agent Smith »

I am a liar ~ Numerius Negedius
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Ivan Turgenev from Fathers and Sons

We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.


Though sometimes it's the other way around.

Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack...The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist...And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something...What chaos! What a farce!

If only all the way to the grave.

As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly.

And now we all know that too.

So many memories and so little worth remembering, and in front of me a long, long road without a goal...

Praise the Lord?

I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.

Actually, I do see why.

I look up to Heaven only when I want to sneeze.

God bless you.
Gary Childress
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 6:05 pm I look up to Heaven only when I want to sneeze.

God bless you.
Headline:

Man says "God "bless you" to person who only looks to heaven when they sneeze.

EDIT: Sorry, thought that might make a good line for The Onion.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Ken Kesey from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again, so is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic?


How about seven of us here?

When I die pin me up against the sky.

Like a rainbow.

I forget sometimes what laughter can do.

Well, provided of course you're not the butt of it.

...I think apparatus burned out all over the ward trying to adjust to her come busting in like she did---took electronic readings on her and calculated they weren't built to handle something like this on the ward, and just burned out, like machines committing suicide.

Imagine that. No, really.

...she likes a rigged game.

And, so much more to the point, can rig it.

I'm accustomed to being top man. I been a bull goose catskinner for every gyppo logging operation in the Northwest and bull goose gambler all the way from Korea, was even bull goose pea weeder on that pea farm at Pendleton -- so I figure if I'm bound to be a loony, then I'm bound to be a stompdown dadgum good one.

Next up: the bull goose philosopher here.
Gary Childress
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:20 pm
I'm accustomed to being top man. I been a bull goose catskinner for every gyppo logging operation in the Northwest and bull goose gambler all the way from Korea, was even bull goose pea weeder on that pea farm at Pendleton -- so I figure if I'm bound to be a loony, then I'm bound to be a stompdown dadgum good one.

Next up: the bull goose philosopher here.
Interesting set of quotes you chose. Touche! (if that is the intent.) However, none of my jokes that I know of were intended to make you the butt of them. So why do unto me? Or was yours accidental?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

The Onion

Man Was Himself For 27 Minutes Today


How long can you go?

Los Angeles Warns Residents Not To Touch Poisoned Food Left Out To Deal With Homeless Infestation

Let's see if that catches on.

Lori Lightfoot Can’t Believe City She Hates Wouldn’t Vote For Her

By now though it is starting to sink is.

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

That'll do it.

Disney Opens New Immersive ‘Star Wars’-Themed Gay Conversion Camp

May the farce be with them.

Black Employees Board Up Break Room Against Ravenous Horde Of White Coworkers Reaching To Touch Their Hair

Is that still a thing?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Vladimir Nabokov from Pale Fire

Dear Jesus, do something.


Next up: Dear God, do something.

There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me


Sound familiar?

All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.

Unless, of course, poems are peccadilloes too.

All religions are based on obsolete terminology.

That probably explains something.

No free man needs God; but was I free?

Try flipping a coin.

And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.

What did your note say?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.


Who can blame him?

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?

We know how that went.

Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.

We know how that went.

That's what it's going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes.

But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning young earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that call. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lipmusic brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that call.


But then this part:
"In 1962, two versions of Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange were published. One concludes with Alex growing up and turning away from violence, while the second, darker version leaves out that final chapter. Kubrick based his film on this second version."


I was cured all right.

The second version, right?

What I do I do because I like to do.

A sociopath let's call him. And then some.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

Italo Calvino from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

The novels that attract me most...are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.


You list yours, I'll list mine.

It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

Next up: reading his posts.

Don't ask where the rest of this book is! It is a shrill cry that comes from an undefined spot among the shelves. All books continue in the beyond...

You know, like we do.

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice -- they won't hear you otherwise -- "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything: just hope they'll leave you alone.

How'd it go for you?

How well I would write if I were not here!

No getting around being where we are though.

The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.

Hint, hint.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by iambiguous »

George Saunders from Lincoln in the Bardo

No one who has ever done anything worth doing has gone uncriticized.


I challenge you to be the first.

We must see God not as a Him (some linear rewarding fellow) but an IT, a great beast beyond our understanding, who wants something from us, and we must give it, and all we may control is the spirit in which we give it and the ultimate end which the giving serves.

Completely vague enough for you?

Trap. Horrible trap. At one’s birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget. Lord, what is this?

Your Lord, for example.

Why will it not work. What magic word made it work. Who is the keeper of that word. What did it profit Him to switch this one off. What a contraption it is. How did it ever run. What spark ran it. Grand little machine. Set up just so. Receiving the spark, it jumped to life.

Of course: that again.

Doubt will fester as long as we live.
And when one occasion of doubt has been addressed, another and then another will arise in its place.


You know, so far.

None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear.

In other words, go figure.
Gary Childress
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Re: Quote of the day

Post by Gary Childress »

iambiguous wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 8:10 pm George Saunders from Lincoln in the Bardo

No one who has ever done anything worth doing has gone uncriticized.


I challenge you to be the first.
It seems to me we could shorten that to "no one who has ever done anything has gone uncriticized." But I guess that might ruin an otherwise cool quote.
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Agent Smith
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Re: Quote of the day

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wrote:
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