Aww. I'm going to interupt all this intelligence, and I'm probably going to regret it later. But for now, eh.

Jade Puget wrote:

I was sitting here without a shirt on, absentmindedly scratching my back with a pen for about five minutes and I just looked in the mirror and saw that I had drawn a nice mural on my back. It looks kind of like a map of Wyoming, with all the rivers and mountain ranges, or maybe a portrait of Bob Marley. Yes. Tablature.

...Alright, I'll say something worth hearing as well.

Davey Havok wrote:

Hate humanity? Yep, sure do. There's such a lack of responsibility for one's actions in the world, selfishness, and a great destruction in the way people live their lives. It's all instant gratification, and who cares how my instant gratification affects those around me, or on a small personal level or a global level. The way people treat each other is truly disgusting, and we've created an environment through advances in science and technology that allows for a very septic society to thrive. And we breed and breed, and all the wrong people breed while all the right people don't want to have children because they don't want to place them in this world.

And, yes, I'm going to take Stormcrow's place for a moment.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.

Last edited by dollface (06-09-2007 12:34:56 PM)

My favourite excerpt from Ne me quitte pas, by Jacques Brel. I keep it in French, I will try to find a proper translation later, ok?

Moi, je t'offrirai
des perles de pluie
venues de pays
où il ne pleut pas.
Je creuserai la terre
jusqu'après ma mort
pour couvrir ton corps
d'or, et de lumière.
Je ferai un domaine
où l'amour sera roi
où l'amour sera loi
où tu seras reine.
Ne me quitte pas.
Ne me quitte pas.

Translation:
I’ll bring back to you
the clear pearls of rain
from a distant domain
where rain never fell.
And though I grow old
I’ll keep mining the ground
to deck you around
in sunlight and gold.
I’ll build you a desmene
where love will be king
where love will be law
where you will be queen.
Don’t leave me now.
Don’t leave me now.

Anyway: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEAGoLHMMoA


And Bertolt Brecht, excerpt from Questions from A Worker Who Reads:

"Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the name of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?"


Stormcrow, does your quote come from El corazón amarillo?
Maybe you have also read Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada? Poem n. 20 is just...

Last edited by Asfalolh (06-09-2007 01:11:33 PM)

Asfalolh wrote:

Stormcrow, does your quote come from El corazón amarillo?
Maybe you have also read Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada? Poem n. 20 is just...

I'm afraid I don't know where it was originally published, by familiarity with it comes from the soundtrack to Il Postino.  I have read Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, but you'll have to refresh my memory regarding which poem you refer to, as it's been some time and I don't have a copy handy.  I'm sure I loved it though, since Neruda never wrote a bad poem.

Another quote, I can't help myself:

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of those good and honored things resides precisely in their being artfully related, knotted and crocheted to these wicked, apparently antithetical things, perhaps even in their being essentially identical with them.  Perhaps! - But who is willing to concern himself with such dangerous perhapses!

EDIT: Nice one Gio, I love Carl "billions and billions" Sagan!

Last edited by Stormcrow (06-09-2007 01:14:14 PM)

Stormcrow wrote:

Asfalolh wrote:

Stormcrow, does your quote come from El corazón amarillo?
Maybe you have also read Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada? Poem n. 20 is just...

I'm afraid I don't know where it was originally published, by familiarity with it comes from the soundtrack to Il Postino.  I have read Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, but you'll have to refresh my memory regarding which poem you refer to, as it's been some time and I don't have a copy handy.  I'm sure I loved it though, since Neruda never wrote a bad poem.

Oh, I should have thought! I haven't seen El cartero de Neruda, but I've been told it's a great film. I think I will try to find that old VHS


Poema 20
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche esta estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos".

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
[...]

But there are so many wonderful quotes!    This little blue dot has been home to a lot of people with big brains, big souls, and big vocabularies.  For now I'll limit myself to two.

The first one saw use (at my advice) on a paper written by one of my tutees, about whether the Founding Fathers were afraid of democracy.  A wonderful topic, and a wonderful quote.

Winston Churchill wrote:

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

God, that man could speak.  This sums up my own feelings about democracy perfectly.  "I wish I had said that..."

The second is one-thirteenth of my favorite poem.

Wallace Stevens wrote:

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

Brings tears to my eyes.  When I forget that I'm surrounded by beauty, these lines bring me back to it.

I suppose I have to quote all the Oscar Wilde's aforism

I've got one... it's part of a song lyric.  And, appropriate for an SKU forum, it's a metaphor.

It's a Genesis song from 1980 called Heathaze, and it's one of my alltime favorites.  I've put my favorite lines in italics.

Tony Banks wrote:

No cloud, a sleepy calm,
Sunbaked earth that's cooled by gentle breeze,
And trees with rustling leaves,
Only endless days without a care,
Nothing must be done.

Silent as a day can be,
Far-off sounds of others on their chosen run
As they do all those things they feel give life some meaning,
Even if they're dull.

Time to stop this dreaming, must rejoin the real world
As revealed by orange lights and a smokey atmosphere.
The trees and I are shaken by the same winds but whereas
The trees will lose their withered leaves,
I just can't seem to let them loose.
And they can't refresh me those hot winds of the south.
I feel like an alien, a stranger in an alien place.

Now the light is fading fast,
Chances slip away, a time will come to pass
When there'll be none,
Then addicted to a perfumed poison,
Betrayed by its aftertaste,
We shall lose the wonder and find nothing in return.
Many are the substitutes but they're powerless on their own.

Beware the fisherman who's casting out his line
Into a dried up river bed,
But don't try to tell him 'cos he won't believe you.
Throw some bread to the ducks instead, it's easier that way.
I feel like an alien, a stranger in an alien place.

Last edited by Imaginary Bad Bug (06-09-2007 03:10:21 PM)

Stormcrow wrote:

Asfalolh wrote:

Oh, I should have thought! I haven't seen El cartero de Neruda, but I've been told it's a great film. I think I will try to find that old VHS


Poema 20
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Yes yes yes!  That one is my favorite, I'd have quoted it, but I wasn't in that mood right then!  Try to find a copy of the movie soundtrack, it features this poem being read by Andy Garcia.  Granted it's in English, but Garcia truly has a sexy man-voice, and the translation is alright.  And the movie is beautiful, well worth the effort of tracking down.

I will try! I know you would love that poem

Stormcrow wrote:

And a quote:

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

How's that for being a Christian nation?

How about:
"The neer to the church, the further from God"
John Heywood

or: "It's the church we have lit upon, Sancho." (Don Quixote, again)

Time for some Babylon 5! I don't care if you don't like it, and I don't care if you don't even like science fiction, J Michael Straczynski is one of the best writers and architechts of long term plotting. Five years of a television show and things that are said in the first episode come back to haunt you in the last one.


The universe began with a word. But which came first: the word or the thought behind the word? You can't create language without thought, and you can't conceive a thought without language, so which created the other, and thus created the universe?

If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth... for understanding. Too often, we assume that the light on the wall is God, but the light is not the goal of the search, it is the result of the search. The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall. The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it. Similarly, someone who does not search - who does not bring a lantern - sees nothing. What we perceive as God is the by-product of our search for God. It may simply be an appreciation of the light... pure and unblemished... not understanding that it comes from us. Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe - God looks astonishingly like we do - or we turn to look at our shadow and assume that all is darkness. If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose, which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty and in all its flaws; and in so doing, better understand the world around us.

We are star-stuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out. But, as we have learned, sometimes the universe requires a change in perspective.

mefisto767 wrote:

Calvin and Hobbes has good quotes!. Here is one of them:

The problem with people is that they don’t look at the big picture. Eventually, we’re each going to die, our species will go extinct, the sun will explode, and the universe will collapse. Existence isn’t only temporary, it’s pointless! We’re all doomed, and worse, nothing matters!

And therefore, Calvin shouldn't have to learn subtraction, or shouldn't be punished for throwing pinecones at Susie, or what have you.  Calvin and Hobbes remains my favorite comic strip of all time. 

"Forged in the fire, and the fire burns in me." -- You Are The Judas Of The Cheerleading Squad by House of Heroes

"Darkness spends it lonely wings/On the high horizons of our hopes and dreams. / As long shadows grow, now they're fading,
in the twilight of our hopeful waiting. / The tide is rising. " -- Metaphor in Parentheses by House of Heroes

Along the same lines:

"I am that I will be." -Yahweh

"Iyam what Iyam." -Popeye

Do people still even remember Popeye?

And: "I think, therefore I am" -Descartes

"I think I can, I think I can" -The little engine that could