-
21 Feb 2017 12:36 AM
#351
Member
"We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children's children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln." - Theodore Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, 1905
-
22 Feb 2017 06:03 PM
#352
Oliphaunt
"Difficult to believe that I had ever been that little shit. That voice! Jesus! And those aspirations! (Brief laughter in which Krapp joins in) And these resolutions! Drink less, notably. (Brief laugh of Krapp alone). Statistics. Seventeen hundred hours out of the eight-thousand and some volatie precedents only debits of drinks. More than 20%, let's say 40% of one's adult life. (Pause). Plans for a sexual life less... (he hesitates...absorbing."
--Beckett, *Krapp's Last Tape* (unfortunately I only have his own translation into French as «La dernière bande», which I was forced to retranslate into English, and I'm not as good a Francophile as Beckett, probably, so you'll take it and you'll like it).
-
23 Feb 2017 12:02 AM
#353
Member
Washington’s Monument, February 1885
by Walt Whitman
Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:
Far from its base and shaft expanding—the round zones circling,
comprehending,
Thou, Washington, art all the world’s, the continents’ entire—
not yours alone, America,
Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot,
Or frozen North, or sultry South—the African’s—the Arab’s in
his tent,
Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;
( Greets the antique the hero new? ‘tis but the same—the heir
legitimate, continued ever,
The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken line,
Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e’en in defeat
defeated not, the same: )
Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,
Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,
Now, or to come, or past—where patriot wills existed or exist,
Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,
Stands or is rising thy true monument.
-
23 Feb 2017 01:35 PM
#354
Oliphaunt
"However for we should draw from those things which are composite our knowledge of simple things, and arrive on the basis of what is posterior to that which is anterior, in the fashion that in beginning by the easiest study be made easier, one must thus go from from the meaning of the "being" to to meaning of "essence."
--Aquinas, De ente et essentia.
I'll give you one guess who translated it. Translation is fucking hard and I suck at it. I want to make women do it, so I don't have to.
-
23 Feb 2017 05:35 PM
#355
Member
"She's just sixteen years old
Leave her alone, they say
Separated by fools
Who don't know what love is yet
But I want you to know
If I could fly
I'd pick you up
I'd take you into the night
And show you a love
Like you've never seen - ever seen
It's like having a dream
Where nobody has a heart
It's like having it all
And watching it fall apart
And I would wait 'til the end of time for you
And do it again, it's true...."
"Into the Night," Benny Mardones
-
28 Feb 2017 12:35 PM
#356
Oliphaunt
"But if I am to be REALLY redeemed,– I need certainty–not wisdom, dreams, speculation–and this certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what my heart, my soul, needs, not my speculative intellect. For my soul, with its passions, as it were with its flesh and blood, must be redeemed, not my abstract mind. Perhaps one may say: Only love can believe the Resurrection. Or: it is love that believes the Resurrection"
--Wittgenstein, *Culture and Value*
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
"You and that big nose of your starting to get on my nerves. Snorting around the place like a goddamned anteater. I've about had it with you: give me that drink." -- John Waters, *Polyester*
-
28 Feb 2017 03:22 PM
#357
Member
"So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?...."
Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
-
28 Feb 2017 04:06 PM
#358
Oliphaunt
"It was the tendency of Symbolism -- that second swing of the pendulum away from a mechanistic view of nature and from a social conception of man -- to make poetry even more a matter of the sensations and emotions of the individual than had been the case wih Romanticism: Symbolism, indeed, sometimes had the result of making poetry so much a private concern of the poet's that it turned to to be incommunicable to the reader."
--Edmund Wilson, *Axel's Castle*
-
28 Feb 2017 11:43 PM
#359
Member
"Well, I love her
But I love to fish
I spend all day out on this lake
And hell is all I catch
Today she met me at the door
Said I would have to choose
If I hit that fishin' hole today
She'd be packin' all her things
And she'd be gone by noon
Well, I'm gonna miss her
When I get home
But right now I'm on this lakeshore
And I'm sittin' in the sun
I'm sure it'll hit me
When I walk through that door tonight
Yeah, I'm gonna miss her
Oh, lookie there, I've got a bite...."
Brad Paisley, "I'm Gonna Miss Her"
-
04 Mar 2017 05:59 PM
#360
Oliphaunt
"Ya want a guy that comes to play. This guy [Jackie Robinson] didn't just come to play. He come to beat ya. He come to stuff the goddamn bat right up your ass."
--Leo Durocher
-
05 Mar 2017 12:20 AM
#361
Member
"The intoxication of power rapidly sobers off in the knowledge of its restrictions and under the prompt reminder of an ever-present and not always considerate press, as well as the kindly suggestions that not infrequently come from Congress." - William Howard Taft, 1912
-
05 Mar 2017 03:43 AM
#362
Oliphaunt
"One dark young beauty I recall particularly, all white and starch, incomparable bosom, with a big black hooded perambulator, most funereal thing. Whenever I looked in her direction she had her eyes on me. And yet when I was bold enough to speak to her--not having been introduced--she threatened to call a policeman. As if I had designs on her virtue!" -- Beckett, *Krapp's Last Tape*
-
07 Mar 2017 10:45 AM
#363
Member
"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future." - Sonmi-451, Cloud Atlas
-
07 Mar 2017 12:30 PM
#364
Oliphaunt
"Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good."
--AE Houseman, "Terence, this is stupid stuff"
-
08 Mar 2017 02:04 PM
#365
Member
"I yield to no one precedence in love for the South. But because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy." - Woodrow Wilson (1880)
-
11 Mar 2017 05:35 PM
#366
Oliphaunt
"The overall content of the speeches suggested a fundamental difference between the German nationalism of the 1830s and the French nationalism of the July Revolution: the focus of German nationalism lay in the education of the people; once the populace was educated as to what was needed, they would accomplish it. The Hambach rhetoric emphasized the overall peaceable nature of German nationalism: the point was not to build barricades, a very "French" form of nationalism, but to build emotional bridges between groups."
--Wikipedia, "Unification of Germany"
-
11 Mar 2017 11:37 PM
#367
Member
"A republic worth living in is worth fighting for, and sacrificing for, and dying for." - Warren G. Harding (1917)
-
16 Mar 2017 01:45 PM
#368
Oliphaunt
"Nothing will better make us realize how nearly true this is than an hour spent in the treasury. How incredibly much we understand if only we can mobilize our understanding." --IA Richards, Introduction to Pocket Books edition of Roget's Pocket Thesaurus
-
16 Mar 2017 03:21 PM
#369
Member
"You lose." - attributed to Calvin Coolidge, when seated next to a woman at a dinner party who playfully said she'd made a bet that she could get him to say more than two words that night
-
16 Mar 2017 04:16 PM
#370
Oliphaunt
"'That is an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would be a great loss to *me* to have many such acquaintances. I dearly love a laugh." --spoken by Elizabeth in *Pride and Prejudice*
-
16 Mar 2017 09:32 PM
#371
Member
"Ours is a practical people, to whom ideals furnish the theory of political action, upon which they want not only firm assurance, but also effective practice. They want programs, but they want action to flow from them. They want constructive common sense. They want the development of the common will, not the views of a single individual. They are beginning to realize that words without action are the assassins of idealism. On the other side, they are equally disgusted with seeking for power by destructive criticism, demagoguery, specious promises and sham." - Herbert Hoover, 1920
-
19 Mar 2017 05:19 PM
#372
Oliphaunt
"In the interval [between the reign of terror and the ... I think he returned to France under the Directory or the Consulate period...sometime in there] Chateaubriand's youthful mind had been contaminated by the anti-Christian spirit then pervading France, by the reading of dangerous books, especially those of J.-J. Rousseau, and by his association with the infidel literary men of Paris between 1787 and 1791. When, at the age of twenty-one, he sailed for America, his faith was but a flickering flame likely to be extinguished at any moment. Finally, the miserable life that he was afterwards obliged to lead in London so harassed his soul as to turn him against everything, both institutions and men."
--*The Catholic Encyclopedia*, entry on Chateaubriand.
-
19 Mar 2017 10:16 PM
#373
Member
"We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order... Throughout the world, change is the order of the day. In every nation economic problems, long in the making, have brought crises of many kinds for which the masters of old practice and theory were unprepared. In most nations social justice, no longer a distant ideal, has become a definite goal, and ancient governments are beginning to heed the call. Thus, the American people do not stand alone in the world in their desire for change. We seek it through tested liberal traditions, through processes which retain all of the deep essentials of that republican form of representative government first given to a troubled world by the United States." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1935
-
22 Mar 2017 06:30 PM
#374
Oliphaunt
“Nature is filled with words of love, but how can we listen to them amid constant noise, interminable and nerve-wracking distractions, or the cult of appearances?”--Francis, "Laudato Si"
-
22 Mar 2017 11:05 PM
#375
Member
"Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty. The external threat to liberty should not drive us into suppressing liberty at home. Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination." - Harry Truman, 1952
-
25 Mar 2017 06:32 PM
#376
Oliphaunt
"If they [Christian reformers] condemned celibacy in the priests, and opened the gates of the convents, it was only to turn all society into a convent." --Voltaire
-
25 Mar 2017 10:32 PM
#377
Member
"Don't think sorry's easily said
Don't try turning tables instead
You've taken lots of chances before
But I ain't gonna give any more
Don't ask me
That's how it goes
'cause part of me knows what you're thinking
Don't say words you're gonna regret
Don't let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusation before
And I ain't gonna take any more
Believe me
The sun in your eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that I can read your mind...."
"Eye in the Sky," The Alan Parsons Project
-
27 Mar 2017 07:23 PM
#378
Oliphaunt
"There is no society. A man does not count for filling and occupying his life on the happiness he pulls, each day, from two hours of conversation and vanity-games in such a house. The word causerie does not exist in Italian. One speaks when one has something to say to serve some passion, but rarely does one speak to speak well and on all the subjects that come up [pour bien parler et sur tous les sujets venus]."
--Stendhal, *De l'amour*, Chapt. XLIX "One Day in Florence"
Last edited by Jizzelbin; 27 Mar 2017 at 07:26 PM.
-
28 Mar 2017 10:24 AM
#379
Member
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God,
trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills
and the breaking of day in the lone East....
"God Knows" by Minnie Louise Haskins
-
04 Apr 2017 11:08 PM
#380
Oliphaunt
"'However, I shall very quickly test the matter when I am once upon the spot, and until then I cannot really see how we can get much further than our present position.'"
--Holmes speaking in Doyle, "Silver Blaze"
-
05 Apr 2017 01:52 PM
#381
Member
"When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a river bank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real Major League baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
-
07 Apr 2017 03:55 PM
#382
Oliphaunt
“I would not insult a female dog by calling you the son of such an animal. your conduct was beneath the social standing of and would be unbecoming and below the moral perception of a bastard son of a motherless whore. . . . you, if you were not a carbuncle on the rump of degenerate theatrical performers, would, as an effort toward making partial amends for your consummate act of asininity, never again appear on the stage or before the radio, except for the purpose of announcing your withdrawal.” November 1, 1938, Probate Judge A.G. Kennedy of Union, SC on Orson Welles's *War of the Worlds* broadcast (welles mss., correspondence, lilly library).
-
07 Apr 2017 11:24 PM
#383
Member
"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say that we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too." - John F. Kennedy, 1962
-
08 Apr 2017 12:57 PM
#384
Oliphaunt
“The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off! He made himself a list of virtues, which he trotted inside like a grey nag in a paddock.”--DH Lawrence on Benjamin Franklin
-
08 Apr 2017 11:47 PM
#385
Member
"We know that most people's intentions are good. We don't question their motives; we've never said they're unpatriotic, although they say some pretty ugly things about us. And we believe very strongly on preserving the right to differ in this country, and the right to dissent; and if I have done a good job of anything since I've been President, it's to ensure that there are plenty of dissenters." - Lyndon B. Johnson, 1967
-
16 Apr 2017 05:02 PM
#386
Oliphaunt
"Oh, the knower of men! He places himself as a child among children,
but the tree and the the child search for what is above them."
--Hölderlin, "Falsche Popularität"
"Have you Reason and Heart? Then, show us one or the other;
One should condemn them both, if you were to show them together."
--Hölderlin, "Guter Rat [i.e., "Good Advice," or whatever]"
Two little epigrams, I guess you'd call them that just happened to be on the same page of the Hölderlin book I have on me and opened at random. I find it irritating to type the umlaut using compose-key + " + vowel, so I will be substituting as per my usual the "oe" for all "ö" in any future reason I should have to type in German here. Pain in my fucking ass, is what it is. Happy Easter, celebrants.
Last edited by Jizzelbin; 16 Apr 2017 at 05:06 PM.
-
16 Apr 2017 09:38 PM
#387
Member
"Wherever beauty called me into lonely places,
Where dark Remembrance haunts me with eternal smart,
Remembrance, the unmerciful, the well of love,
Recalling the far dances, the far-distant faces,
Whispering me ‘What does this—and this—remind you of?’
How can I cease from knocking or forget to watch—’"
C.S. Lewis, "Launcelot"
-
17 Apr 2017 07:30 PM
#388
Oliphaunt
"In religion things should be such, that each level of religiosity should have a corresponding form of expression, which would have no meaning to a lower level....For example, the pauline doctrine of predestination is for me -- at my own level -- pure and simple irreligiosity, a contemptible nonsense. It is thus not for me, since I could only make an incorrect use of the image which is given to me by it." -- Wittgenstein, notebook entry from 1937
-
17 Apr 2017 09:05 PM
#389
Member
"Many Jews [were] in the Communist conspiracy. Chambers and Hiss were the only non-Jews. Many thought that Hiss was. He could have been a half. Every other one was a Jew - and it raised hell for us. But in this case, I hope to God he's not a Jew." - Richard M. Nixon, Oval Office conversation (June 17, 1971)
-
17 Apr 2017 10:16 PM
#390
Oliphaunt
"Wittgenstein was baptized as an infant by a Catholic priest and received formal instruction in Catholic doctrine as a child. In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein says that their grandfather's "strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity" was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children. It was while he was at the Realschule that he decided he had lost his faith in God. He nevertheless believed in the importance of the idea of confession."
--anonymous, Wikipedia, "Ludwig Wittgenstein," retrieved now
-
17 Apr 2017 10:18 PM
#391
Oliphaunt
"good Republican cloth coat hammer hammer yar yar Checkers"
--Dick Nixon
-
18 Apr 2017 10:10 AM
#392
Member
"I'm meetin' my buddies out on the lake
We're headed out to a special place (we love!)
That just a few folks know
There's no signin' up, no monthly dues
Take your Johnson, your Mercury or your Evinrude and fire it up
Meet us out at Party Cove
Come on in, the waters fine
Just idle on over, and toss us a line
Basstrackers, Bayliners and a party barge,
Strung together like a floatin' trailer park
Anchored out and gettin' loud all summer long
Side by side there's five houseboat front porches
Astroturf, lawn chairs and tiki torches
Regular joes, rockin' the boat, that's us...."
"Redneck Yacht Club," Craig Morgan
-
20 Apr 2017 08:37 PM
#393
Oliphaunt
Q: "We've had more beefing from the French than from the Germans . We are always quarreling with them . They criticize everything . They have to put their two cents in . But the Germans - they just do what you tell them to . They're co-operative, the French aren't ."
A: "There is a saying that in France everything is permitted that is not strictly forbidden - but in Germany everything is verboten. that is not strictly permitted, We are in the French, not the German tradition."
--*112 Gripes About the French*, a pamphlet published and distributed to US GIs stationed in France after the liberation of WWII, in question and answer format.
-
23 Apr 2017 09:53 PM
#394
Member
"An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; conviction results from whatever offense or offenses two-thirds of the other body considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office." - Gerald R. Ford (1970)
-
26 Apr 2017 05:06 PM
#395
Oliphaunt
"But if [Debussy] welcomed diversions from the difficulties of composition, it was not from his musical colleagues, for he always preferred discussing the other arts. He could be charming (especially when cultivating wealthy potential patrons), but in the main he was shy and reclusive, not a fluent conversationalist, and often appeared grumpy and opinionated."
--*Cambridge Companion to Debussy* essay #1
-
26 Apr 2017 11:34 PM
#396
Member
"Here we are
In a room full of strangers
Standing in the dark
Where your eyes couldn't see me
Well, I had to follow you
Though you did not want me to
But that won't stop my lovin' you
I can't stay away
Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway
Singin' them love songs
Singin' them straight to the heart songs
Blamin' it all on the nights on Broadway
Singin' them sweet sounds
To that crazy, crazy town...."
"Nights on Broadway," Bee Gees
-
29 Apr 2017 09:07 PM
#397
Oliphaunt
"dicimus enim quod affirmatio est opposita negationi, et quod caecitas est in oculo."
--Aquinas, D.Ente&Essent.
-
29 Apr 2017 10:23 PM
#398
Member
Translations of non-English phrases are always appreciated, Jizz.
"Hello world
Hope you're listening
Forgive me if I'm young
For speaking out of turn
There's someone I've been missing
I think that they could be
The better half of me
They're in the in the wrong place trying to make it right
But I'm tired of justifying
So I say to you
Come home
Come home
'Cause I've been waiting for you
For so long
For so long
And right now there's a war between the vanities
But all I see is you and me
The fight for you is all I've ever known
So come home...
I get lost in the beauty
Of everything I see
The world ain't as half as bad
As they paint it to be
If all the sons
If all the daughters
Stopped to take it in
Well hopefully the hate subsides and the love can begin
It might start now yeah
Well maybe I'm just dreaming out loud
Until then
Come home...."
"Come Home," OneRepublic
-
05 May 2017 08:33 PM
#399
Oliphaunt
Quid me interrogas de hoc? Non audeo pandere secreta nostra.
--Aelfric, abbot of Eynsham, 1005
"what are you talking about? one doesn't share one's secrets."
cited in Keith Sidwell, *Reading Medieval Latin*
Google is actually a pretty good tool for translating different languages, as well as for finding out about all kinds of secret topics.
-
05 May 2017 11:07 PM
#400
Member
I ran the Aquinas bit through Google and only got cites to it - no actual translation.
"Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right. The American dream endures. We must once again have full faith in our country - and in one another. I believe America can be better. We can be even stronger than before. Let our recent mistakes bring a resurgent commitment to the basic principles of our Nation, for we know that if we despise our own government, we have no future. We recall in special times when we have stood briefly, but magnificently, united. In those times no prize was beyond our grasp. But we cannot dwell upon remembered glory. We cannot afford to drift. We reject the prospect of failure or mediocrity or an inferior quality of life for any person. Our Government must at the same time be both competent and compassionate." - Jimmy Carter, Inaugural Address (1977)
Posting rules
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
Forum rules