Post brief quotes from fiction/narrative/whatever

[Elendil's Heir]

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin (attrib.)

[Jizzelbin]

"Most of Bach’s counterpoint actually sounds best when the parts are evenly balanced. It is never a mere combinations of melodies. It is quite different, for instance, from the famous three-fold combination in the Meistersinger Vorspiel." --Tovey, some guy.

[Elendil's Heir]

...And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Edgar Allan Poe, "To One in Paradise" (1833)

[Jizzelbin]

"Great tits sing at a higher frequency in noise polluted urban surroundings than quieter ones to help overcome the auditory masking that would otherwise impair other birds hearing their song." Anonymous, "Lombard Effect" in *Wikipedia* etc.

[Elendil's Heir]

Say what you say
But give me that bomb beat from Dre
Let me serenade the streets of L.A.
From Oakland to Sacktown
The Bay Area and back down
Cali is where they put they mack down
Gimme love...!

Tupac Shakur, "California Love"

[Jizzelbin]

"Another [psychological factor] is a sense of coherence, meaning that on some level you have a strong sense of coherence what's happening to you, no matter how horrible it is. That is related to self-efficacy: you believe that you can somehow endure and find meaning in the experience." Sharon Salzberg and Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Mindfulness as Medicine"

[Elendil's Heir]

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." - John Adams (attrib.)

[Jizzelbin]

"The private section has to commit itself to how to hold the data.... However, the public data should hide the exact representation." -- Steve Prata, *C++ Primer Plus*

[Elendil's Heir]

...Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

from "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold

[Jizzelbin]

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!
--Browning, "A Toccata of Galuppi VII"

[Elendil's Heir]

...I can see the world in a different light
Now it's easy to say
Where I went wrong
What I did right
I can hear the beat of a different drum
Take it all in my stride
Hold my head high
Second to none
Holding on wasn't always easy
Nothing can change my mind
Limelight, you were all I ever wanted since it all began....

"Limelight," The Alan Parsons Project

[Jizzelbin]

"You put a greased, naked woman on all fours with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man's arm extended out up to here holding on to the leash and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it, you don't find that offensive?

--No, I don't

You don't find that sexist?

--This is 1982!

That's right it's 1982: get out of the sixties. We don't have this mentality anymore.

--Well you should have seen the cover they wanted to do. It wasn't a glove, believe me."

--*This is Spinal Tap*!!!!!!

[Elendil's Heir]

“Do as adversaries do in law – strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.” – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

[Jizzelbin]

"Now that I overcame the strongest of giants,
Found my way home from darkest of lands
Led by a pale fairy-tale hand [Ma:rchenhand] ~
The bells toll heavy."
a song by Mombert, unknown Engl. translator

[Elendil's Heir]

...These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration....

William Wordsworth, "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

[Jizzelbin]

"Surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle. Losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's all the battle."
--from the motion picture *The Untouchables*

[Elendil's Heir]

Back in 1876 an ol' boy named Bell
Invented a contraption that we know so well
By the 1950's they were in everybody's home
As a crazy little thing they call the telephone
Now there's one on every corner, in the back of every bar
You can get one in your briefcase, on a plane or in your car
So tell me why, haven't I heard from you?
Tell me why, haven't I heard from you?
I say now: Darlin', honey, what is your excuse?
Why haven't I heard from you?....

Reba McEntire, "Why Haven't I Heard From You"

[Jizzelbin]

The active, exacting ego, no longer able to master its alien world and almost never able to reach another state, is thrown back upon itself, loves itself in ecstasy and loathes itself unto death just as does that lost world; and, like the phantasmagoria of that world that it is, a vegetative soul, it thrives as in a hothouse: luxuriant illusion. In the songs more than anywhere else Berg approaches the addictive erotic loneliness of Jugendstil.
--Adorno *Berg Master of the Smallest Link*

[Elendil's Heir]

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – attrib. to Voltaire

[Jizzelbin]

"And I love dogs, so I understand it, but babies are the only types of humans that can be compared to an animal and its OK. Like you could never be like 'heard you're getting married. I know how you feel, I used to have a pig. Bit of advice: on a hot day, hose that bride down. She'll love it, because they can't breathe, their skin can't.'"

--Jim Gaffigan, from the album *Obsessed*

[Jizzelbin]

"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified mob. D--- rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a facsimile." -- Poe, "Purloined"

[Elendil's Heir]

Hail Columbia, happy land!
Hail, ye heroes, heaven-born band,
Who fought and bled in freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone
Enjoy'd the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies.

Firm, united let us be,
Rallying round our liberty,
As a band of brothers joined,
Peace and safety we shall find....

"Hail Columbia" (1798)

[Jizzelbin]

"Well, you see Willard... In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. Out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be god. Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature." --from the movie *Apocalypse Now*

[Elendil's Heir]

...getting Vaughan to say he might go back, he beckoned me down into our boat. As we lay back in the stern-sheets and the men gave way, he said to me,—"Youngster, let that show you what it is to be without a family, without a home, and without a country. And if you are ever tempted to say a word or to do a thing that shall put a bar between you and your family, your home, and your country, pray God in His mercy to take you that instant home to His own heaven. Stick by your family, boy; forget you have a self, while you do everything for them. Think of your home, boy; write and send, and talk about it. Let it be nearer and nearer to your thought, the farther you have to travel from it; and rush back to it, when you are free, as that poor black slave is doing now. And for your country, boy," and the words rattled in his throat, "and for that flag," and he pointed to the ship, "never dream a dream but of serving her as she bids you, though the service carry you through a thousand hells. No matter what happens to you, no matter who flatters you or who abuses you, never look at another flag, never let a night pass but you pray God to bless that flag. Remember, boy, that behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to Her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by Her, boy, as you would stand by your mother, if those devils there had got hold of her to-day!"

I was frightened to death by his calm, hard passion; but I blundered out, that I would, by all that was holy, and that I had never thought of doing anything else. He hardly seemed to hear me; but he did, almost in a whisper, say,—"Oh, if anybody had said so to me when I was of your age....!"

From The Man Without A Country by Edward Everett Hale (1863)

[Jizzelbin]

"Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable ... and when it happens to someone often ... he ends up ... hating everyone." --Plato, *Phaedo*

[Elendil's Heir]

I really do appreciate the fact you're sittin' here
Your voice sounds so wonderful
But your face don't look too clear
So, barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew
Honey, why don't we get drunk and screw?
Why don't we get drunk and screw
I just bought a waterbed filled up for me and you
They say you are a scum queen, honey, I don't think that's true
So, why don't we get drunk and screw...?

"Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw," Jimmy Buffett

[Jizzelbin]

Most megacities have minimum parking rules, which specify how many parking spaces must be provided whenever a new shop, office or block of flats is built. Lagos insists on one parking space for every 40 square metres of “worshipping area” in a church. These laws greatly encourage driving and, in effect, impose a tax on non-drivers, because businesses pass on the cost of building the spaces to all their customers.
--from The Economist magazine 27th Feb

[Elendil's Heir]

“The law is reason free from passion.” – Aristotle

[Jizzelbin]

"Redundant links between switches are important to have in place because they help prevent nasty network failures in the event that one link stops working." --Todd Lammle

[Elendil's Heir]

This land is your land and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
And I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me....

- Woody Guthrie

[Jizzelbin]

"--Don't you know that marriage has always been the most beautiful setup between the sexes? Don't you know that a man without a wife is like a coat without a pants, like a pig without a poke? --Why don't you try it? --Because I ain't running for mayor. --Well, I ain't neither. Poke that in your pig."

--Akim Tamiroff and (Donlevy?) in *The Great McGinty*

[Elendil's Heir]

"Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where your strength and your power are needed. But always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son." - Jor-El (Marlon Brando), Superman, 1978

[Jizzelbin]

"Many basic science researchers do not consider the research performed in cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, and behavioral neurology as sciences because cognitive systems neuroscientists, unlike basic scientists, do not discover new proteins, neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, genes, or new structures.... Perhaps these same basic scientists would argue that, since Dickens did not invent words, he should not be given credit for his great novel [sic]."
--Chatterjee and Coslett, eds., *The Roots of Cognitive Neuroscience*

[Elendil's Heir]

“The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men.” – Plato

[Jizzelbin]

"A riot is an ugly thing. But, I think it's about time that we had one!"

--*Young Frankenstein*

[Elendil's Heir]

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.

[Jizzelbin]

"But this phlegmatic disposition, which can reason so well,
never gets mad at anything?
And if somebody betrays you, to get right, start fronting, or what if someone talks shit about you, take it lying down like a puss?
--Alceste, from *The Misanthrope* Act I Sc 1

"Mais ce phlegme, Monsieur, qui raisonne si bien, / Ce flegme pourra-t-il ne s'e'chauffer de rien? / Et s'il faut, par hasard, qu'un ami vous trahisse, / Que, pour avoir des biens, on dresse un artifice, / Ou qu'on ta^che a` semer de me'chants bruits de vous, / Verrez-vous tout cela sans vous mettre en courroux?" Some English-major nerd can translate into rhyming alexandrines -- I got better to do than be counting syllables and shit.

[Elendil's Heir]

THE KING: ...If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day....

William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act IV, Scene 3

[Jizzelbin]

Sir, I beseech thee, but honor requires a bit more.
I wager it bemsirches everyone's honor to call you out.
Light, taste, this union is born.


blah blah

monsieur, c'est trop d'honneur que vous me voulez faire
Mais l'aimitie' demande un peu plus de myste`re,
Et c'est assurement en profaner le nom
Que de vouloir le metttre a' toute occasion/
Avec lumie`ere et choix cette union veut nai^itre;;
Et nous pourrions avoir telles complexions
Que tous deux marche' nous nous repentions
Avant que nous lier, il faut nous connai^itre

[Elendil's Heir]

Dean Vernon Wormer: Here are your grade point averages. Mr. Kroger: two C's, two D's and an F. That's a 1.2. Congratulations, Kroger. You're at the top of the Delta pledge class. Mr. Dorfman?

Flounder: [drunk] Hello!

Dean Vernon Wormer: 0.2... Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. Mr. Hoover, president of Delta House? 1.6; four C's and an F. A fine example you set! Daniel Simpson Day... HAS no grade point average. All courses incomplete. Mr. Blu...

[sees Bluto with a pair of pencils in his nostrils]

Dean Vernon Wormer: Mr. Blutarsky... zero... point... zero.

[Bluto shrugs]

From Animal House (1978)

[Jizzelbin]

"However, this is an extraordinary composition that can work equally well in a huge space. Initially it may sound small and distant but the listeners’ ears will gradually become attuned to it. One of my great musical experiences was a recital by Andrés Segovia at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. At the beginning, the public was so noisy it sounded like Grand Central Station during rush hour. After a few seconds, though, you could have heard a pin drop: he tamed them."
-- from an interview with Andras Schiff.

[Elendil's Heir]

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Second Coming," William Butler Yeats

[Jizzelbin]

That's right, Jack. The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. Oh, yeah. He's dying, I think. He hates all this. He hates it! But the man's a... He reads poetry out loud, all right? And a voice... He likes you because you're still alive. He's got plans for you. No, I'm not gonna help you. You're gonna help him, man. You're gonna help him. I mean, what are they gonna say when he's gone? 'Cause he dies when it dies, when it dies, he dies! What are they gonna say about him? He was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit, man! And am I gonna be the one that's gonna set them straight? Look at me! Look at me! Wrong!

--from the motion picture *Apocalypse Now*

[Elendil's Heir]

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like... victory."

Col. Kilgore, Apocalypse Now

[Jizzelbin]

"Do you want to surf, soldier? Good, because it's either surf or fight!"

--Kilgore

[Elendil's Heir]

When I was a boy, I had a dream
All about the things I'd like to be
Soon as I was in my bed
Music played inside my head
When I was a boy, I had a dream

When I was a boy, I learned to play
Far into the night and drift away
Don't want to work on the milk or the bread
Just want to play my guitar instead
When I was a boy, I had a dream

And radio waves kept me company
In those beautiful days when there was no money
When I was a boy, I had a dream....

Jeff Lynne's ELO, "When I Was A Boy"

[Jizzelbin]

"The taste for poetry with which Lucile had inspired me was like fuel to the flames. My feelings acquired new strength; vain ideas of glory passed through my mind; for a moment I believed in my talent, but soon enough, recovering a proper mistrust of myself, I began to entertain doubts about that talent, as I have continued to do ever since. I looked on my work as an evil temptation"
--Chateaubriand, *Memoirs*, tr Baldick

[Elendil's Heir]

"Not much of a cheese shop, is it, really?"
"Finest in the district."
"And what, pray, leads you to that conclusion?"
"Well... it's so clean!"
"It's certainly uncontaminated by cheese...."

Monty Python, "The Cheese Shop Sketch"

[Jizzelbin]

"No universal method exists that would enable us to solve every recurrence relation.... There are several techniques, however, some more powerful than others, that can solve a variety of recurrences."

--Anany Levitin, *Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Algorithms*

[Elendil's Heir]

“If, by supporting the rights of mankind, and of invincible truth, I shall contribute to save from the agonies of death one unfortunate victim of tyranny, or of ignorance, equally fatal, his blessings… will be sufficient consolation to me for the contempt of all mankind.” – Marchese di Beccaria