Post brief quotes from fiction/narrative/whatever

Yes, much as I admire Washington, Lincoln was a better wordsmith. Jefferson and JFK were no slouches, either.

"I have never wished anyone dead, but I have read some obituaries with a great deal of satisfaction." - Clarence Darrow (attrib.)

"As your desk, Sosibianus, is full of elaborate compositions, why do you publish nothing? "My heirs," you say, "will publish my verses," When? It is already, Sosibianus, time that you should be read." --Martial, Epigram IV.33, translation Bohn, revised at here by some guy who thought Martial's obscenity-riddled, abuse-laden epigrams belonged in his fairly vast collection of texts from the Church Fathers. Neat site, anyway.

“The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage." --Hunter Thompson, *Fear and Loathing*

" All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice." - Dalton, Road House (1989)

"If, on the contrary [one] happened to be a man of calm and dispassionate feelings, he would indulge a sigh for the frailty of human nature, and would lament that in a matter so interesting to the happiness of millions the true merits of the question should be perplexed and obscured by expedients so unfriendly to an impartial and right determination." --*Federalist* 29 (Hamilton)

“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Enough now the father has sent upon the Earth, and having thrown his [thunderbolts] with his red right hand against the sacred towers, he has terrorized the town." --Horace, Ode I.2

"The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon." - George Washington

"It is evident that no other form [than strictly republican] would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." --*Federalist* 39 (Madison)

"I see the lonely road that leads so far away
I see the distant lights that left behind the day
But what I see is so much more than I can say
And I see you in midnight blue

I see you cryin' now, you've found a lot of pain
And what you're searchin' for can never be the same
But what's the difference 'cos they say what's in a name
And I see you in midnight blue

I will love you tonight
And I will stay by your side
Lovin' you, I'm feelin' midnight blue...."

"Midnight Blue," Discovery, Electric Light Orchestra

"and as for Hamilton
we may take it (my authority, ego scriptor cantilenae)
that he was the Prime snot in ALL American history."

--Pound, *Cantos* 62

"Well, it’s a sad business. And he’s a poet. I never, I never questioned that. We’ve been friends all the way along, but I didn’t like what he did in wartime. I only heard it secondhand, so I didn’t judge it too closely. But it sounded pretty bad. He was very foolish in what he bet on and whenever anybody really loses that way, I don’t want to rub it into him." - Robert Frost on Ezra Pound, 1960

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_P...C_World_War_II

"The collected part of the semen, raised and inflamed became a Lust converted to choler turned head upon the spinal duct, and ascended to the brain.... What a pity it is that our Congress had not known this discovery, and that Alexander Hamilton’s projects of raising an army of fifty thousand Men, ten thousand of them to be Cavalry and his projects of sedition Laws and Alien Laws and of new taxes to support his army, all arose from a superabundance of secretions which he could not find whores enough to draw off! and that the same vapours produced his Lyes and Slanders by which he totally destroyed his party forever and finally lost his Life in the field of Honor. But to return from this digression." --Adams to BRush 11-nov-1806

"I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your state [South Carolina] for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it forever. This abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it." - Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 1787

"He [Adams] is vain, irritable and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He is as disinterested as the being which made him: he is profound in his views: and accurate in his judgment except where knowledge of the world is necessary to form a judgment."
-- Jefferson to Madison, 30-jan-1787

ETA it just struck me how similar Adams and Jefferson were in style. Of course, any student of the most basic history understand these facts, but the stylistic parallels are remarkable. Yeah, I am also guilty of having been impressed at a young age by Pound, so I will never have anything good to say about Hamilton, even as I've been reading in the papers. God dammit, they made a fucking musical about that cocksucker? I'm fine with doing a miniseries -- Pig Vomit did JA, I guess, fine, whatever, but giving that cocksucker banking sack of shit a musical. Fucking assholes.

(Sounds like I'm a lot bigger admirer of Hamilton than you. Check out Ron Chernow's excellent biography, which inspired the musical; you may come away with a higher opinion of him).

"...At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row...."

"Desolation Row," Bob Dylan

"Buffalo hunting? 'I've gone buffalo huntin''? What the fuck does that mean? Buffalo huntin?"

--*Wild at Heart*, movie.

"The Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever. It has been so adopted by the other States. An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as an adoption of some of the articles only. In short any condition whatever must viciate the ratification. What the New Congress by virtue of the power to admit new States, may be able & disposed to do in such case, I do not enquire as I suppose that is not the material point at present. I have not a moment to add more than my fervent wishes for your success & happiness." - James Madison, letter to Alexander Hamilton, 1788

"The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of culture. It was greatest before any culture, though indeed it had little value at that time, because the individual was hardly in a position to defend it. Liberty has undergone restrictions through the evolution of civilization, and justice demands that these restrictions shall apply to all." --Freud, *Civilization and its Discontents*

"In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do... We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." - President James Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine, 1823

"an odd genius...a great sloven, wretchedly profane, and a great admirer of dogs, one of them a native of Pomerania, which I should have taken for a bear had I seen him in the woods." --Maj. Gen. Chas. Lee, as observed by Jeremy Belknap, cit. in the book *1776*

"...I wish that I could really tell you
All the things that happened to me
And all that I have seen.
A world full of people their hearts full of joy,
Cities of light with no fear of war,
And thousands of creatures with happier lives,
And dreams of a future with meaning and no need to hide...."

Genesis, "Keep It Dark"

"Away thou changeling motley humourist,
Leave me, and in this standing wooden chest,
Consorted with these few books, let me lie
In prison, and here be coffin’d when I die.
Here are God’s conduits, grave divines, and here
Nature’s secretary, the philosopher,
And wily statesmen, which teach how to tie
The sinews of a city’s mystic body;
Here gathering chroniclers, and by them stand
Giddy fantastic poets of each land."

--Donne, Satire 1

"I want the seals of power and place,
The ensigns of command,
Charged by the people's unbought grace,
To rule my native land.
Nor crown, nor scepter would I ask
But from my country's will,
By day, by night, to ply the task
Her cup of bliss to fill."

John Quincy Adams, The Wants of Man, stanza 22 (1841)

In vain has God in his wisdom divided the countries of the earth by the separating ocean, if nevertheless profane ships bound over waters not to be violated. The race of man presumptuous enough to endure every thing, rushes on through hidden wickedness.

--Horace, Ode I.3, Loeb translation

Sir Humphrey: "The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices."
Jim Hacker: "Don't tell me about the Press. I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?"
Bernard Woolley: "Sun readers don't care who runs the country - as long as she's got big tits."

From "A Conflict of Interest," Yes, Prime Minister (1987)

"As an example, consider a grocery list of six items milk, hot dogs, dog food, tomatoes, bananas, and bread. To associate the milk with the bookstore, we might imagine books lying in a puddle of milk in front of the bookstore. To associate hot dogs with a coffee shop (the next location on the path from the bookstore), we might imagine someone stirring their coffee with a hot dog. The pizza shop is next, and to associate it with dog food, we might imagine a dog-food pizza (well, some people even like anchovies). Then we come to an intersection; to associate it with tomatoes, we can imagine an overturned vegetable truck with tomatoes splattered everywhere. Next we come to a bicycle shop and create an image of a bicyclist eating a banana. Finally, we reach the library and associate it with bread by imagining a huge loaf of bread serving as a canopy under which we must pass to enter."

--John R. Anderson, *Cognitive Psychology and its Impliciations*, 8th edition (MacMillan textbook 2015)

"As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending." - Andrew Jackson, 1829

"Varius, you can plant no tree preferable to the sacred vine, about the mellow soil of Tibur, and the walls of Catilus. For God hath rendered every thing cross to the sober; nor do biting cares disperse any otherwise. Who, after wine, complains of the hardships of war or of poverty!"
--Horace, *Odes* I.XVIII, Loeb translation (There are some major problems with the old Loeb translation, but I'm too lazy to correct it. It's basically stupid, but the poetry itself is adequate, and after more than two thousand years and countless imitations since, I'll defend Horace.)

"All the lessons of history and experience must be lost upon us if we are content to trust alone to the peculiar advantages we happen to possess." - Martin Van Buren

"The core affect, whether positive or negative, is the basis for our emotional life, and our cognitive and behavioral choices. Within its innate and automatic nature, it will certainly influence the all-or-nothing binary perceptions of oneself and of others and will shape the binary nature of narcissistic approaches to oneself: all good or all bad. The developing defenses will be shaped by a similar binary assessment; grandiosity or unconscious humiliation and narcissistic collapse."

Efrat Ginot, *The Neuropsychology of the Unconscious: Integrating brain and mind in psychotherapy* (NY and London: The Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)

Fourth Bruce: "Goodday, Bruce, Hello Bruce, how are you, Bruce? Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce a chap from pommie land... who'll be joining us this year here in the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo."
All: "Goodday."
Fourth Bruce: "Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce. Michael Baldwin - this is Bruce."
First Bruce: "Is your name not Bruce, then?"
Michael: "No, it's Michael."
Second Bruce: "That's going to cause a little confusion."
Third Bruce: "Mind if we call you 'Bruce' to keep it clear?"

Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Bruces sketch," 1970

The evening had made me light-headed and happy; I think I walked into a deep sleep as I entered my front door. So I didn’t know whether or not Gatsby went to Coney Is-
land or for how many hours he ‘glanced into rooms’ while his house blazed gaudily on. I called up Daisy from the office next morning and invited her to come to tea."

--*The Great Gatsby* (Despite what they say, it's not a bad novel, you know! ;). Little long, I guess.)

(I was underwhelmed by TGG in college, but reread it a few years ago and liked it much more. And I wouldn't say it's too long - not at all).

"The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed." - William Henry Harrison, 1841

"What was the rest of the world doing during the six hundred years when the great powers and European states went through their Ages of Dynasties, Religions, Sovereignty, Nationalism, and Ideology; were racked by two world wars; and then fell into a long peace? Unfortunately the Eurocentric bias of the historical record makes it impossible to trace out curves with any confidence." --Stephen Pinker, *The Better Angels of our Nature"

yes, I was making a little joke about *TGG* -- I think I read it in high school, but I didn't grok it at the time. Now, I agree with everybody that it's one king-hell of a novel -- just the right length for reading in a sitting, too.

"Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train,
Til Stoneman's cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.
In the winter of '65, we were hungry, just barely alive.
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it's a time I remember, oh so well,
The night they drove old Dixie down, and the bells were ringin',
The night they drove old Dixie down, and the people were singin'
They went 'La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la....'"

"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," The Band (1969)

Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog,
He said I'll fix your rack if you take Jack my dog
--"The Weight" Levon Helm. Probably the right lyrics.

"I could agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong." - Anon.

"Contra Walter Blair, its foremost historian, American dialect humor existed well before the nineteenth-century. The journalistic guise of the illiterate-but-shrewd rural critic can be found in a document composed as early as 1763, when a correspondent of the Boston Evening-Post took the persona "Humphrey Ploughjogger" and wrote just such a satire to "poke fun at bugbears of the day." This might be a negligible cavil (at least to Pound studies) if not for the true identity of the author of this seeming anomaly: future president John Adams."

Fabian Ironside, "Pound and/or Jackson: Traces of Jacksonian Humor in Ezra Pound's Writing."

"We already have enough youth. How about a Fountain of Smart?" - Anon.

"I do not any longer like the postman, nor the grocer, nor the editor, nor the cousin¿s husband, and he in turn will come to dislike me, so that life will never be very pleasant again, and the sign Cave Canem is hung permanently just above my door. I will try to be a correct animal though, and if you throw me a bone with enough meat on it I may even lick your hand."
--Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up"

"Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette - the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace." - John Tyler, 1816

"Don't think that soft talk is wanted
you write down what you take for the facts
call pork pork in your proposals."
--Pound *Cantos* 61

"By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. It is a right to be exercised in subordination to the Constitution and in conformity to it. One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression." - James K. Polk, Inaugural Address, 1845

"The survey of smooth lawns and gently sloping meads, covered with rich coats of white and red clover and luxuriant orchard grass, made no delightful impression on their eyes. No, sir; mere meadows are too common to gratify the refined taste of an exquisite with sweet sandy whiskers. He must have undulations, beautiful mounds, and other contrivances, to ravish his exalted and ethereal soul. Hence, the reformers have constructed a number of clever sized hills, every pair of which, it is said, was designed to resemble and assume the form of an Amazon's bosom, with a miniature knoll or hillock on its apex, to denote the nipple."
--Charles Ogle, the "Gold Spoon oration"

"Summer after high school, when we first met
We make-out in your Mustang to Radiohead
And on my eighteenth birthday, we got matching tattoos

Used to steal your parents' liquor and climb to the roof
Talk about our future like we had a clue
Never planned that one day I'd be losing you

In another life, I would be your girl
We'd keep all our promises, be us against the world
In another life, I would make you stay
So I don't have to say you were the one that got away...."

Katy Perry, "The One That Got Away"

"We are what we read more than we know. And it was true no less in that distant founding time. Working on the life of John Adams, I tried to read not only what he and others of his day wrote, but what they read. And to take up and read again works of literature of the kind we all remember from high school or college English classes was not only a different kind of research, but pure delight.

I read Swift, Pope, Defoe, Sterne, Fielding, and Samuel Johnson again after forty years, and Tobias Smollett and Don Quixote for the first time. I then began to find lines from these writers turning up in the letters of my American subjects, turning up without attribution, because the lines were part of them, part of who they were and how they thought and expressed themselves."
--McCullough, "The Course of Human Events," May 15 2013 Wash. DC

Better:

"If you are absolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself the thing is more than half done already. It is a small matter whether you read with any one or not. I did not read with any one. Get the books and read and study them in their every feature, and that is the main thing. It is no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people in it. The books and your capacity for understanding them are just the same in all places. [...] Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing."
--Lincoln, 1855, private correspondence.

They're both good! You could use one now, and the other next time.

"I congratulate you, my fellow-citizens, upon the high state of prosperity to which the goodness of Divine Providence has conducted our common country. Let us invoke a continuance of the same protecting care which has led us from small beginnings to the eminence we this day occupy." - Zachary Taylor, Inaugural Address (1849)

But...but...that would violate my own rules about....something.....but....trust me, I have some!

"In a post-experimental interview, only 4 of the 1 42 participants described the original three samples as displaying hostility. These effects were not limited to visual displays. Subjects who initially worked with scrambled sentences exhibiting a mild hostility-related theme produced similar data. These results are consistent with the spreading activation perspective in that the creative process is facilitated by previously encountered, and unconsciously detected, themes in one's environment."
--*The Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning*

"Hello, good evening, and welcome to 'It's A Living'. The rules are very simple: each week we get a large fee; at the end of that week we get another large fee; if there's been no interruption at the end of the year we get a repeat fee which can be added on for tax purposes to the previous year, or the following year if there's no new series. Every contestant, in addition to getting a large fee, is entitled to three drinks at the BBC or if the show is over, seven drinks - unless he is an MP, in which case he can have seven drinks before the show, or a bishop only three drinks in toto. The winners will receive an additional fee, a prize which they can flog back and a special fee for a guest appearance on 'Late Night Line Up'. Well, those are the rules, that's the game, we'll be back again same time next week. Till then, bye-bye!"

Monty Python's Flying Circus, "It's A Living" (1970)

"'I eat no bread but one piece of toast at breakfast, no butter, no sugar, no sweets. Usually have fruit, one egg, a strip of bacon and half a glass of skimmed milk for breakfast; liver and bacon or sweet breads or ham or fish and spinach and another nonfattening vegetable for lunch with fruit for dessert. For dinner I have a fruit cup, steak, a couple of nonfattening vegetables and an ice, orange, pineapple or raspberry. So I maintain my waist line and can wear suits bought in 1935!'"--Truman, cit. in *Truman*

Truman seemed to have left out his morning whiskey of his set of rules, but that's OK.

Bourbon and branch water, IIRC.

"In less than ten years [the French] Government was changed from a republic to an empire, and finally, after shedding rivers of blood, foreign powers restored her exiled dynasty and exhausted Europe sought peace and repose in the unquestioned ascendancy of monarchical principles. Let us learn wisdom from her example. Let us remember that revolutions do not always establish freedom. Our own free institutions were not the offspring of our Revolution. They existed before. They were planted in the free charters of self-government under which the English colonies grew up, and our Revolution only freed us from the dominion of a foreign power whose government was at variance with those institutions." - Millard Fillmore (1852)

"The striking thing about Mencken's mind is its ruthlessness and rigidity ... Though one of the fairest of critics, he is the least pliant. ... [I]n spite of his skepticism, and his frequent exhortations to hold his opinion lightly, he himself has been conspicuous for seizing upon simple dogmas and sticking to them with fierce tenacity ... true skeptics ... see both truth and weakness in every case."
--Edmund Wilson

"It might seem crazy what I'm about to say
Sunshine she's here, you can take away
I'm a hot air balloon, I could go to space
With the air, like I don't care baby by the way

Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I'm happy
Clap along if you feel like that's what you wanna do...."

"Happy" by Pharrell Williams (2013)

"According to [an] hypothesis of Wolfram Schultz, rewards that are expected do not produce a second phasic dopamine response in certain dopaminergic cells, but rewards that are unexpected, or greater than expected, produce a short-lasting increase in synaptic dopamine, whereas the omission of an expected reward actually causes dopamine release to drop below its background level. The "prediction error" hypothesis has drawn particular interest from computational neuroscientists, because an influential computational-learning method known as temporal difference learning makes heavy use of a signal that encodes prediction error. This confluence of theory and data has led to a fertile interaction between neuroscientists and computer scientists interested in machine learning."
--Wikipedia, "Dopamine"

"I speak of the war as fruitless; for it is clear that, prosecuted upon the basis of the proclamations of September 22d and September 24th, 1862, prosecuted, as I must understand these proclamations, to say nothing of the kindred blood which has followed, upon the theory of emancipation, devastation, subjugation, it cannot fail to be fruitless in every thing except the harvest of woe which it is ripening for what was once the peerless republic." - Franklin Pierce, July 4, 1863

Feh.

Geez, you're really hitting the substandard presidents hard: first Fillmore, now Pierce? FTR, Fillmore was the first president from history years I learned to despise.

"The major problem was that his nervous system was shattered. The slightest noise upset him terribly. He was still hounded by visions of his own death before the work could be finished, of disastrous incompetence on the part of some subordinate, of precious days lost at the bridge over some technical problem he could solve in a minute were he there. He felt imprisoned within his own body. He grew extremely short-tempered. When visitors were with him he suffered the whole while. Talk of any kind tired him more than anything else. His eyesight had grown so dim he could neither read nor write nor sign his own name."
--McCullough on Washington Roebling, in *The Great Bridge*

You will, I'm sure, see a certain pattern as to how I have quoted the Presidents.

"Sir, if you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland, you are a happy man indeed." - James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln in Inauguration Day, March 4, 1861

Well played, but I would have figured it out probably eventually. Or not. :) Very well-played.

"He rose early, cared little about his clothes, his customary ensemble a rumpled three-piece civilian suit, stiff detachable collar, black tie with stickpin. His main pleasures were food¿virtually anything set before him¿horseback riding, a glass of beer, conversation, and books, his reading being done according to a lifelong routine. He always kept three books at hand¿one scientific, one of classical literature or history, one light fiction¿which he took up in turn, giving each exactly twenty minutes according to a pocket watch placed on the table beside his chair. In this fashion, he said, he was able to remember what he read."
--McCullough on Dr. Gorgas, in *The Path Between the Seas*

goshdangit I should have started at no 251 and started going back. But FDR wasn't very quotable and his wife was a pig.

Very well. carry on.

"non ego cuncta meis ampleti uersibus opto,
non mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,
ferrea vox....."

Georg.II.42v. (from the "Green and Gold" Cambridge text)

translate it how you want, like "I don't want to embrace the whole of things with my verses; no, not if I had a hundred languages, and a hundred iron mouths

My Latin isn't that good, and Google can't translate it either, whatever it is.

"...If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." - Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."
--TE Lawrence, but I'm ashamed to say I did not come by this nugget honestly, rather by filthy beggary and google and so forth. i still cherish many of your words, you dumb faggot TE. Not kidding -- *Seven Pillars* is one of the good books.

"I woke up this morning
With an attitude
Looked at the headlines
Put me in a real bad mood
Sitting here remember
Tryin' to stay sane
Between the end of the summer
And the comin' of the blessed rains
And I feel dirty
All the way down
I feel dirty, baby
Like this dirty town
I gave you everything
On a silver tray
Could have been a fool forever
But I'm not made that way...."

Don Henley, "You Don't Know Me At All"

"Thus the tyrants at the center of Welles's films are usually more fascinating and sympathetic than the naïve, commonplace figures around them; this in spite of the fact that Welles puts many of his own political sentiments into the mouths of starry-eyed idealists like Jed Leland, Michael O'Hara, and Mike Vargas. Actually, the demonic, obsessive drives of the tyrant begin to take on a sort of moral purity, as if egomania and self-delusion were partly a reaction against a sickness in the society at large."
--James Naremore, *The Magic World of Orson Welles*

"Our Government springs from and was made for the people — not the people for the Government. To them it owes allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom. But while the Government is thus bound to defer to the people, from whom it derives its existence, it should, from the very consideration of its origin, be strong in its power of resistance to the establishment of inequalities. Monopolies, perpetuities, and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government, and ought not to be allowed. Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry. Wherever monopoly attains a foothold, it is sure to be a source of danger, discord, and trouble. We shall but fulfill our duties as legislators by according 'equal and exact justice to all men,' special privileges to none." - Andrew Johnson, 1865

"What is this madness called revenge? Though our psychotherapeutic culture portrays vengeance as a disease and forgiveness as the cure, the drive for revenge has a thoroughly intelligible function: deterrence. As Daly and Wilson explain, "Effective deterrence is a matter of convincing our rivals that any attempt to advance their interests at our expense will lead to such severe penalties that the competitive gambit will end up a net loss which should never have been undertaken." The necessity of vengeful punishment as a deterrent is not a just-so story but has been demonstrated repeatedly in mathematical and computer models of the evolution of cooperation. --Steven Pinker, *The Better Angels of Our Nature*, Ch. 8

"A Samarian woman
Came running to the city
To talk about the man she saw
She took her pitcher
And went to the well
Water she intended to draw
The stranger she met there
She didn't know where he came from
But when he told her
Every sinful thing she had done
The man at the well
Blessed my soul and went on...."

"Strange Man" by Dorothy Love Coates

"When you get an exasperating letter what happens? If you are young you answer it promptly, instantly and mail the thing you have written. At forty what do you do? By that time you have found out that a letter written in a passion is a mistake in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred; that it usually wrongs two persons, and always wrongs one yourself. You have grown weary of wronging yourself and repenting; so you manacle, you fetter, you log-chain the frantic impulse to write a pulverizing answer. You will wait a day or die. But in the mean time what do you do? Why, if it is about dinner-time, you sit at table in a deep abstraction all through the meal; you try to throw it off and help do the talking; you get a start three or four times, but conversation dies on your lips every time."
--Mark Twain, notebooks ca. 1886 or so.

"Her friends asked her
'Do you know that man?'
She said 'No, I never saw him before.'
They asked her 'Did you get his name?'
She said 'He didn't tell me and I don't know
But when he spoke, my soul caught on fire
And I'll remember this day 'til the day that I die
He stopped by,
Blessed my soul and went on....'"

"Strange Man" by Dorothy Love Coates

"[T]aboo words activate primitive parts of the brain and just understanding them at a cognitive level keeps that emotional reaction in check and keeps us from accessing it too much, but it doesn’t keep us from having the emotional response. Only obscenity has the ability to engage that subtle strong emotion."

-- Steven Pinker

"The stranger was next seen in a city, oh yes he was,
Standing off an angry mob
Defending a women who'd been caught
In the very act of adultery
For pity and mercy she sought
He said, 'Ye here without sin, cast the first stone'
When he raised her from the ground
All her accusers were gone
He gave her a smile, waved farewell and was gone...."

"Strange Man" by Dorothy Love Coates

"Your daily life is a stream of little-noticed miracles made possible in part by reinforcement learning. You get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and drive to work, all the while thinking about something else. Below the surface, reinforcement learning continually orchestrates and fine-tunes this prodigious symphony of motion. Snippets of reinforcement learning, also known as habits, make up most of what you do. You feel hungry, walk to the fridge, and grab a snack. As Charles Duhigg shows in The Power of Habit, understanding and controlling this cycle of cue, routine, and reward is key to success, not just for individuals but for businesses and even whole societies."

--Pedro Domingos, *The Master Algorithm. How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine will Remake our World*

"The crowd asked her
'Do you know the man?'
She said 'No, I never saw him before'
They asked her 'Did you get his name?'
She said, 'He didn't tell me and I don't know
But when he touched me I felt the power from his arms
And I don't plan again to do no wrong
He stopped by, saved my life and was gone....'"

"Strange Man" by Dorothy Love Coates

"A person who persists in believing what is not true or disbelieving what is true can waste a lifetime of effort on something that is without hope of success."
--E. Jayne

"I met that same man
I met that same man
When I turned away from fear
He opened up his arms and he took me in
I felt that same power, Lord, Lord
My soul caught on fire
I'm just glad he stopped by in Alabama
Oh, the Lord stopped by, one Tuesday evening
I'm glad he stopped by
Blessed my soul, and was gone."

"Strange Man" by Dorothy Love Coates

"These girls say,"Well, I should be able to get drunk at a fraternity party and go upstairs to a guy's room without anything happening." And I say, "Oh, really? And when you drive your car to New York City, do you leave your keys on the hood?" My point is that if your car is stolen after you do something like that, yes, the police should pursue the thief and he should be punished. But at the same time, the police and I have the right to say to you, "You stupid idiot, what the hell were you thinking?""
--Camille Paglia

I happen to agree with that sentiment, un-P.C. as I know it is.

"Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!...."

"Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1830)

"Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis."
--EA Poe, "Murders/Rue Morgue"

"Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquered knee;—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!...."

"Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1830)

"Lynch understands the nuanced shadings of those who express themselves with malevolent behavior, just as he allows his upholders of righteousness to manifest a full human complexity."
--Greg Olson *David Lynch: Beautiful Dark"

"O, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every thread-bare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,—
The lightning and the gale!"

"Old Ironsides" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1830)

"As a draughtsman, a Roman Catholic, a gourmand, and a punctilious man of habit, Hitchcock was a ritual formalist who explored psychology not by encouraging his actors to implode in emotional free fall but by containing them within social convention, defined by his strict pictorial frame."

--Camille Paglia, *The Birds*

"How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise" - Sophocles, Oedipus The King, quoted in Angel Heart (1987)

Interesting -- I don't remember that from the movie, but sounds like a Louis Cypher "words to peel eggs by."

The search for knowledge is a lust of the eyes. --Augustine

ETA that wasn't quite the right quote: here's what Augustine actually said, in translation (book 10 of the Confessions)
"Forseeing belongs properly to the eyes; yet we apply this word to the other senses also, when we exercise them in the search after knowledge. For we do not say, Listen how it glows, smell how it glistens, taste how it shines, or feel how it flashes, since all these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, See how it shines, which the eyes alone can perceive; but also, See how it sounds, see how it smells, see how it tastes, see how hard it is. And thus the general experience of the senses, as was said before, is termed "the lust of the eyes," because the function of seeing, wherein the eyes hold the pre-eminence, the other senses by way of similitude take possession of, whensoever they seek out any knowledge."

I suppose it's worth the longer citation -- kind of a neat little passage, IMHO.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Jizzelbin

Interesting -- I don't remember that from the movie, but sounds like a Louis Cypher "words to peel eggs by."....

---

Almost. Cyphre says it to Harry at the very end, after Harry finds the dogtags and has his awful realization.

"Sometimes a man'll tell his bartender things he'll never tell his doctor." - Dr. Philip Boyce, "The Cage," Star Trek: The Original Series

Wait, there was a twist ending to *Angel Heart*? Dude, spoiler alerts!

"The civilized man -- the ideal civilized man -- is simply one who never sacrifices the common security to his private passions. He reaches perfection when he even ceases to love passionately; when he reduces the most profound of all his instinctive experiences from the level of an ecstasy to the level of a mere device for replenishing the armies and workshops of the world, keeping clothes in repair, reducing the infant deathrate, providing enough tenants for every landlord, and making it possible for the Polizei to
know where every citizen is at any hour of the day or night."

--HL Mecken, *In Defense of Women*

I said nothing about a twist ending.

"Laws are to govern all alike — those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." - Ulysses S. Grant, First Inaugural Address, 1869

"The crucial question is whether a man escapes from the life of his time into a realm of abstraction -- it is then that angst is engendered in human consciousness -- or confronts modern life determined to fight its evils and support what is good in it. The first decision leads then to another: is man the helpless victim of transcendental and inexplicable forces, or is he a member of a human community in which he can play a part, however small, toward its modification or reform?"
--Lukacs, *Realism in our Time*

"We all agree that neither the Government nor political parties ought to interfere with religious sects. It is equally true that religious sects ought not to interfere with the Government or with political parties. We believe that the cause of good government and the cause of religion both suffer by all such interference." - Rutherford B. Hayes, 1875

"The worst days of darkness through which I have ever passed have been greatly alleviated by throwing myself with all my energy into some work relating to others." -- Garfield, attrib. 1895

ad supr. obviously I meant a "twist beginning." A subtle distinction, but I admit it was unfair to confuse the two equally worthy modes of misdirection.

The Civil War was "a virtuous tragedy that freed four million Americans and reunited a nation." - National Park Service marker, Wilderness battlefield (2016)

"Muskie also fell victim to what turned out to be a 'dirty trick' on the part of Richard M. Nixon's campaign [....namely,] a letter planted...claiming that Muskie had referred sneeringly to French Canadians as 'Canucks' during a visit to Florida."
--LA Times Apr 29, 1980 "Carter Picks Muskie to Be Secretary of State" front page reprint in *Hitchcock (Revised Edition)*, Fr. TRUFFAUT

"We are sometimes asked in the name of patriotism to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation's life, and those who strove to save it - those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice." - Frederick Douglass

"If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stem, which shines only on the waves behind us!"
--fr. Coleridge, "Recollections"

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

- "Recessional" by Rudyard Kipling, pt. 1

"Those who do not know how to say or have a distaste for saying vague things [où répugnent à dire des choses vagues] are often mute and always unhappy." --Valéry, *Instants*

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Pt. 2

"In the era of mass immigration, anti-Catholicism often found expression around the issue of education. Rightly fearing that native Protestants wished to inject public schools with an evangelical and sectarian spirit, Catholics created a sweeping, parallel system."
--Josh Zeitz, "When America Hated Catholics" Sept 23, 2015, Politico Magazine

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Pt. 3

"He who sups with the devil must have a long spoon."

--something biblical or something.

Old John Brown’s body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,
His soul is marching on.

--a verse by WW Pattton to the well-loved, and much played by me and learned by my from Gene Harris and so many others, to the tune of "John Brown's Body," which is played by Mr. Harris in G, but sung in Bb by the malevolent choristers in the dismal American movie *Inherit the Wind*, may their apples be sour in Hillsboro.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Jizzelbin

"He who sups with the devil must have a long spoon."

--something biblical or something.

---

Looks like an English proverb: http://www.special-dictionary.com/pr...erb/185204.htm

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Kipling, "Recessional," Pt. 4

"Roubaud's fiction often suppresses the rigorous constraints of the Oulipo (while mentioning their suppression, thereby indicating that such constraints are indeed present), yet takes the Oulipian self-consciousness of the writing act to an extreme. "
--some blurb about French mathematician and writer Jacques Roubaud, from here

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

Kipling, "Recessional," conclusion

"Oh, it's sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops,
And it's sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell,
To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops
And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well."

--from Kipling, "Gentlemen-Rankers" a rather good poet, I must say, perhaps should be read more often.

"[Anton Bruckner's] calendar for 1874 details the names of girls who appealed to him, and the list of such girls in all his diaries was very long. In 1880 he fell for a 17-year-old peasant girl in the cast of the Oberammergau Passion Play. His interest in young girls seems to have been motivated by his fear of sin; he believed that (unlike older women) he could be certain that he was marrying a virgin. His unsuccessful proposals to teenagers continued when he was past his 70th birthday."
--anonymous, Wikipedia, "Anton Bruckner," retrieved 28-oct-2016, should have been titled "Bruckner: A Son of a Gun"

"...Then, after the storms of battle, were heard the calm words of peace spoken by the conquering nation, saying to the foe that lay prostrate at its feet: 'This is our only revenge — that you join us in lifting into the serene firmament of the Constitution, to shine like stars for ever and ever, the immortal principles of truth and justice: that all men, white or black, shall be free, and shall stand equal before the law.'" - James A. Garfield, 1880

"Whereas the ideology of charisma regards taste in legitimate culture as a gift of nature, scientific observation shows that cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education: surveys establish that all cultural practices (museum visits, concert-going, reading etc.), and preferences in literature, painting or music, are closely linked to educational level (measured by qualifications or length of schooling) and secondarily to social origin." -- Bourdieu, *Distinction*, tr. R. Lane

"...Give a little bit
Give a little bit of your love to me
I'll give a little bit
I'll give a little bit of my love to you
There's so much that we need to share
So send a smile, and show you care

I'll give a little bit
I'll give a little bit of my life for you
So give a little bit
Give a little bit of your time to me
See the man with the lonely eyes
Oh, take his hand, you'll be surprised...."

"Give A Little Bit," Supertramp

"It is ... an open question what the different styles of assholes are. This allows us to respect Aristotle’s wise maxim that we should not expect precision from a theory beyond what its subject matter will bear. If poetry is not math, neither is virtue and vice. Still less so is the wide variety of asshole vices. We thus proceed inductively, as Aristotle might." Aaron James, *Assholes: A Theory*

"I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization." - Chester Arthur, 1882

If only!

"I've spent months preparing for this test and not you or any sergeant is going to push me around."
--Peter Graves in *Killers From Space*

BENIGANT???? Well,it's a free country, I guess. Still, that is one hell of a word. CAA is IMHO one of those "hollow-eyed" guilded-era presidents someone else described as such. Wonderful, fascinating time, but one of those times the US lacked charismatic leaders, except for on the fringes.

"If you take a life, do you know what you'll give?
Odds are, you won't like what it is
When the storm arrives, would you be seen with me
By the merciless eyes I've deceived?

I've seen angels fall from blinding heights
But you yourself are nothing so divine
Just next in line

Arm yourself because no one else here will save you
The odds will betray you
And I will replace you
You can't deny the prize; it may never fulfill you
It longs to kill you
Are you willing to die?

The coldest blood runs through my veins
You know my name...."

Chris Cornell, "You Know My Name" (from Casino Royale)

"An example of the failure to habituate can be seen in persons who suffer from tinnitus (ringing in the ears). People who complain of having tinnitus seem to have problems habituating to auditory stimuli. Many people have ringing in their ears, and if they are placed in a quiet room, will report a buzzing or other sounds. However, people who chronically suffer from tinnitus have difficulty adapting to the noise (Bessman et al., 2009; Walpurger et al., 2003). Evidence also indicates that people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have difficulty habituating to many types of stimuli. This difficulty helps to explain why ordinary stimuli, such as the buzzing of fluorescent lights, can be distracting to a person with ADHD."
--Sternberg, *Cognitive Psychology* 6th ed.

"We are not here today to bow before the representation of a fierce warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man's enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister Republic thence, and joined with answering rays a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression, until Liberty enlightens the world." - Grover Cleveland, dedication speech for the Statue of Liberty (October 28, 1886)

"So, I had my wife, who died, twenty-five years ago, but I have a daughter, and and a ... grandson....and....a granddaughter. So, this is enough."

--NSlonimsky, *Perfect pitch*

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies[/]When a new planet swims into his ken;[/]Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes[/]He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men "

--the physician JKeats, lampooning the rubes of his day in one of his little poems.

"There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy." - H.P. Lovecraft, 1920

Nice. To think I was making fun of somebody on FB for quoting Lovecraft -- I'm totally stealing that quote. Hell, HPL won't mind.

In the spirit of gamesmanship, here's something from some text file I just saw again:

"Now, I suggest that it is one thing to consider how we might some day [sic] realize a score, and it is quite another thing to perform the work. Surely I am not the only performer who has discovered that, as the moment of the concert approaches, performance decisions once so straightforward have a strange way of becoming obscure. Even if I have not merely treated the score as a kind of road map that guides me from the first to the last measure, even if I have tried to follow all the composer's markings to the letter, giving each phrase the shape and dynamic it calls for within its performance tradition, what have I done to ensure that I can recreate the complete work as if it were my own?"

--Janet Schmalfeldt, "On the Relation of Analysis to Performance: Beethoven's Bagatelles Op. 126, Nos. 2 and 5," *J of Music Theory*, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 1985) pp. 1-31.

"He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." - Mark Twain

"In 2016, the word [cunt] was used by a judge in a British court: when a man was being sentenced to prison for breaching the terms of an ASBO in connection with using racist language, he is reported to have said to the judge that she was a "a bit of a cunt", to which the judge is reported to have replied "You're a bit of a cunt too.""

--from Wikipedia, "Cunt"

well, I was amused.

You'll like this, too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.9cf3c2b0ac1e. The judge was later reprimanded.

“You know something, this is going to be an interesting trial.” - Judge Bryant Durham Jr.

Action
Revolution
Killing
Oratory
Fantasy
Fornication

Samuel Z. "ARKOFF formula" for producing good movies.

"The dreamer, the unwoken fool.
In dreams, no pain will kiss the brow.
The love of ages fills the head,
the days that linger there in prey of emptiness,
of burned-out dreams.
The minutes calling through the years.
The universal dreamer rises up above his earthly burden,
journeys to the dead of night,
high on a hill in Eldorado...."

Electric Light Orchestra, "Overture," Eldorado

"In a deep sense, E. coli and IBM know their respective worlds in the same way. Indeed, E. coli and IBM have each participated in the coevolution of entities which interact with and know one another." -- Stuart Kaufmann, "The Sciences of Complexity and 'Origins of Order'," Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 1991-04-021.

"I cannot always sympathize with that demand which we hear so frequently for cheap things. Things may be too cheap. They are too cheap when the man or woman who produces them upon the farm or the man or woman who produces them in the factory does not get out of them living wages with a margin for old age and for a dowry for the incidents that are to follow. I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth or shapes it into a garment will starve in the process." - Benjamin Harrison, 1891

"Bismarck owed his defeat to his contempt for mankind. He always slipped readily into the mistake of underrating the poweer of ideas, particularly the great revolutionary ideas of freedom and equality; hence the admiration which disillusioned idealists profess for him nowadays." AJP Taylor, *Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman*

"Anyone who loves the law or sausage should never see either made." - Otto von Bismarck (attrib).

I can't resist, I'm pretty sure somebody claimed Bismarck once said "you can do everything with a bayonet except sit on it." Yeah, Otto -- that's the only Bismarck I know, except maybe the person who made the doughnut. And I could be wrong about the quote.

ETA here's my real quote from the bus this morning since my entire knowledge of Bismarck is pretty much exhausted by now, and my paperback is tucked safely back in its section at home: "This is how one calculates. Calculating is this. What we learn at school, for example. Forget this transcendent certainty, which is connected with your concept of spirit." Wittgenstein, *On Certainty* §47

(for noobs like me, for future reference, the section symbol can be created using a compose key, followed by 's' and 'o')

EETA ¶, supposedly called the "pilcrow" sign, would have been better, and is, for future reference, created by compose key + p + shriek ('!'). And the § symbol is supposedly called a "silcrow." That is some straight-up nerd shit, given that I've spent my entire adult life using these symbols very often, and didn't know all that typographical jazz.

Westley: Give us the gate key.
Yellin: I have no gate key.
Inigo Montoya: Fezzik, tear his arms off.
Yellin: Oh, you mean this gate key!
- The Princess Bride

"Where they from? --I don't know, everywhere? [...] --Waiting for somebody to push them around so they can show how tough they are." -- *The Wild One*, motion picture.

"Amid the din of party strife the people's choice was made, but its attendant circumstances have demonstrated anew the strength and safety of a government by the people. In each succeeding year it more clearly appears that our democratic principle needs no apology, and that in its fearless and faithful application is to be found the surest guaranty of good government. But the best results in the operation of a government wherein every citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of purely partisan zeal and effort, and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen." - Grover Cleveland, First Inaugural Address, 1885

"The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement....The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty.--We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"--Wittgenstein, *Philosophic. Invest.* §107

"...In an age of fops and toys,
Wanting wisdom, void of right,
Who shall nerve heroic boys
To hazard all in Freedom’s fight,—
Break sharply off their jolly games,
Forsake their comrades gay,
And quit proud homes and youthful dames,
For famine, toil, and fray?
Yet on the nimble air benign
Speed nimbler messages,
That waft the breath of grace divine
To hearts in sloth and ease.
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can."

"Voluntaries," Ralph Waldo Emerson (1863)

"Spinoza would say what the Christian says, and also something more. For him, all sin is due to ignorance; he would 'forgive them, for they know not what they do.' But he would have you avoid the limited purview from which, in his opinion, sin springs, and would urge you, even under the greatest misfortunes, to avoid being shut up in the world of your sorrow; he would have you understand it by seeing it in relation to its causes and as a part of the whole order of nature."
--Bert Russell, Chapter on Spinoza from his (or "his"? dunno if he had "help" with his nearly illiterate, turgid prose or not from some sack hired by his publisher) *A Hist. of WestPhil*

Changed mind to equally apropos: "Look at my hand. There's no beginning, and there's no end. You can always take another turn -- around the loop, over the knuckle." --probably close to what a hypnotizer says to a whore in the Corman movie *The Undead*

"War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed." - William McKinley

"It is true, and I have experienced it myself, that quick progress...with artistic pieces can engross a sensible composer so that he can sincerely and secretly delight in his own work. But through this self-love we are unwittingly led away from the true purpose of music, until we hardly think of others at all, although it is our goal to delight them." -- Johann Mattheson *Die kanonische Anatomie*

"Yes, you're quite right. I'm fed up with being treated like sheep. What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Boventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, bomplaining about the tea - 'Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home' - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamaris and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's suncream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they 'overdid it on the first day.'" - "Travel Agent," Monty Python's Flying Circus

"When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter." - Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

"And...you were married twice before, each time for for less than three weeks. The divorce papers of both marriages contain words like 'miserly,' 'mental torture,' and 'fits of anger.'" --the motion picture, *The Dead Talk Back*

"Why would anybody steal a groundhog?"
"I can probably think of a couple of reasons... pervert." - Rita and Larry, Groundhog Day

"When James saw that this environment had been destroyed, he fell back on his old belief, but this time without any air of patronizing. Hawthorne had lived in a time of American innocence. Then it had been possible for an artist to be one of the greatest without going outside his environment."
--Peter Buitenhuise, "Henry James on Hawthorne" *The New England Quarterly* Vol. 32, No. 2. (Jun., 1959)

Village tough: "Try and kill me!"
Sanjuro, a ronin: "It'll hurt." - Yojimbo (1961)

"An ancient Chinese thinker said that the best training for political life and the ruling of a country was MUSIC. He saw that if you have skill to regulate the multiple parameters of musical composition and performance, you can probably think fairly coherently about the polyphonic parameters of running a state. In this country we think of the Law as ideal training for a political career, since law teaches us to reduce a complex set of standards to operating rules to perform a finite job. However training in Music may have another ability to attune future politicians to multi-dimensionality, something which major societies require in order to operate simultaneously on many levels."
--William Harris, "Classical Improvisation: The Lost Art"

"Had a dream last night, the angels had come riding
In the light of day where there was no more hiding
All so fine, I still see them shine
I saw angels play right in the light of day

And I watched them fly across a fiery sky
And I heard their cry as they passed me by
I could feel the light inside me, I could feel it everywhere
Life was clear and fair

Woke up in the dark and tried to keep believing
In the light I saw, in time of constant grieving
Vision fair, please don't disappear
And please hear my prayer there in the light of day...."

Steve Winwood, "In the Light of Day"

"Irony in music. E.g. in Wagner's *Meistersingern*. Incomparably deeper in the fugato in the first movement of the Ninth. There is something here analogous to the expression of bitter irony in speech."
--Wittgenstein, notebook entry from 1946, in *Culture and value*

"WE WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THE WAY IN WHICH POLITICIANS ARE REPRESENTED IN THIS PROGRAMME. IT WAS NEVER OUR INTENTION TO IMPLY THAT POLITICIANS ARE WEAK-KNEED, POLITICAL TIME-SERVERS WHO ARE CONCERNED MORE WITH THEIR PERSONAL VENDETTAS AND PRIVATE POWER STRUGGLES THAN THE PROBLEMS OF GOVERNMENT, NOR TO SUGGEST AT ANY POINT THAT THEY SACRIFICE THEIR CREDIBILITY BY DENYING FREE DEBATE ON VITAL MATTERS IN THE MISTAKEN IMPRESSION THAT PARTY UNITY COMES BEFORE THE WELL-BEING OF THE PEOPLE THEY SUPPOSEDLY REPRESENT NOR TO IMPLY AT ANY STAGE THAT THEY ARE SQUABBLING LITTLE TOADIES WITHOUT AN OUNCE OF CONCERN FOR THE VITAL SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF TODAY. NOR INDEED DO WE INTEND THAT VIEWERS SHOULD CONSIDER THEM AS CRABBY ULCEROUS LITTLE SELF-SEEKING VERMIN WITH FURRY LEGS AND AN EXCESSIVE ADDICTION TO ALCOHOL AND CERTAIN EXPLICIT SEXUAL PRACTICES WHICH SOME PEOPLE MIGHT FIND OFFENSIVE.

WE ARE SORRY IF THIS IMPRESSION HAS COME ACROSS."

- Monty Python's Flying Circus, "The War Against Pornography" (1972)

"I would say...'you haven't changed a bit, boys. you're still a load of crap.'"--Ken Russell, interview from 2002 on the censors of his movie *The Devils*

"Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
The night is falling
You have come to journey's end

Sleep now
And dream of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across the distant shore

Why do you weep?
What are these tears upon your face?
Soon you will see
All of your fears will pass away
Safe in my arms
You're only sleeping

What can you see
On the horizon?
Why do the white gulls call?
Across the sea
A pale moon rises
The ships have come to carry you home...."

"Into the West," by Annie Lennox, Fran Walsh and Howard Shore (2003)

"Eux, comme un vil sursaut d'hydre oyant jadis l'ange
Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu
Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu
Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange"

That gang, like some vile jaculate of the hydra hearing once to have given a more pure meaning to the words of the tribe, that they "proclaimed" from on high the drunken spell in the tide without honor of something black and mixed.

Stéphane Mallarmé, Tombeau d'Edgar Poe, extraction and translation by Uncle Jizz.

"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

"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).

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.

"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.

"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

"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*

"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"

"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*

"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"

"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

"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

"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*

"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

"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"

"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)

"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"

"A republic worth living in is worth fighting for, and sacrificing for, and dying for." - Warren G. Harding (1917)

"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

"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

"'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*

"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

"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.

"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

“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"

"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

"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

"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

"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"

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

"'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"

"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

“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).

"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

“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

"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

"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.

"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"

"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

"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)

"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

"good Republican cloth coat hammer hammer yar yar Checkers"
--Dick Nixon

"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

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.

"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)

"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

"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

"dicimus enim quod affirmatio est opposita negationi, et quod caecitas est in oculo."
--Aquinas, D.Ente&Essent.

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

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.

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)