Quotation meme
Aug. 15th, 2006 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaSo, I am supposed to be working right now. Feh.
The meme goes like this:
Go here and look through the random quotes until you find five that reflect who you are or what you believe. Repost in your LJ and invite anyone who wants to to do the same.
I gather that one is supposed to choose quotations that express life-guiding ideas, as opposed to quotations that are just neat, such as Paul Valéry's definition of poetry as "a profound hesitation between sound and sense" or Conrad's definition of art as "a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to the light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colors, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential." (Preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus")
Or "Nothing she says, nothing she thinks is in itself singular; we have merely lost the habit of so rigorous a harmony between conscience and reflection." (The critic Mattieu Galey speaking of Marguerite Yourcenar in his preface to Les Yeux ouvertes)
At least, that seems to be the trend.
I don't have the patience to wade through the Random Quote Generator, and anyway, sometimes cheating leads to greater honesty.
So
To make a revolution every day is the Nature of the Sun.
~Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (available here: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/browne/medici.html)
We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
~Michel de Montaigne, "On Glory" (the whole essay, nicely translated, is here: http://montaigne.classicauthors.net/Essays/Essays9.html )
The world is incessantly threatened by two dangers: order and disorder.
~Paul Valéry
Everything shines by diminishing, as a candle shines.
~Heard in an unidentified taped speech from the 1960s, possibly by Malcolm X?, broadcast on MLK's birthday on WLIB years ago.
Ain't no sense worrying about things you got no control over, cause if you got no control ain't no sense worrying; and there ain't no sense worrying about things you got control over cause if you got control ain't no sense worrying.
~Mickey Rivers, outfielder for the Yankees in the 1980s
They say you can't do it, but sometimes that doesn't always work.
~Casey Stengel
If you make a mistake, don't try to correct it; repeat it until it becomes part of the pattern.
~the weaver Else Regensteiner
The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
~JFK
Many anthropologists have asserted that myth is, after all, a very simple phenomenon--for which we hardly need a complicated psychological or philosophical explanation. It is simplicity itself; for it is nothing but the "sancta simplicitas" of the human race. It is not the outcome of reflection or thought, nor is it enough to describe it as a product of human imagination. Imagination alone cannot account for all its incongruities and fantastic and bizarre elements. It is rather the Urdummheit of man that is responsible for these absurdities and contradictions. Without this "primeval stupidity" there would be no myth.
~Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (anyone who can invent the term "Urdummheit" gets my vote.)
The issue isn't living or dying, but being altogether in love with the turning of the world, whether it's into darkness or light, in love with fate, beyond caring about the outcome. Not the gambler, on the ground, who waits to see the result of the toss, but the coin itself, spiraling downward, all eyes upon it.
~Jay Cantor, The Death of Che Guevara
It is hard to please everyone.
~Charles Darwin
And for extra credit (taped to my computer):
Bitte aufreiben
Lesen und
Beachten
Please tear up
Read and pay
Attention.
~Torn off a bilingual German matchbook in 1983.
The meme goes like this:
Go here and look through the random quotes until you find five that reflect who you are or what you believe. Repost in your LJ and invite anyone who wants to to do the same.
I gather that one is supposed to choose quotations that express life-guiding ideas, as opposed to quotations that are just neat, such as Paul Valéry's definition of poetry as "a profound hesitation between sound and sense" or Conrad's definition of art as "a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to the light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colors, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential." (Preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus")
Or "Nothing she says, nothing she thinks is in itself singular; we have merely lost the habit of so rigorous a harmony between conscience and reflection." (The critic Mattieu Galey speaking of Marguerite Yourcenar in his preface to Les Yeux ouvertes)
At least, that seems to be the trend.
I don't have the patience to wade through the Random Quote Generator, and anyway, sometimes cheating leads to greater honesty.
So
To make a revolution every day is the Nature of the Sun.
~Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (available here: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~rbear/browne/medici.html)
We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn.
~Michel de Montaigne, "On Glory" (the whole essay, nicely translated, is here: http://montaigne.classicauthors.net/Essays/Essays9.html )
The world is incessantly threatened by two dangers: order and disorder.
~Paul Valéry
Everything shines by diminishing, as a candle shines.
~Heard in an unidentified taped speech from the 1960s, possibly by Malcolm X?, broadcast on MLK's birthday on WLIB years ago.
Ain't no sense worrying about things you got no control over, cause if you got no control ain't no sense worrying; and there ain't no sense worrying about things you got control over cause if you got control ain't no sense worrying.
~Mickey Rivers, outfielder for the Yankees in the 1980s
They say you can't do it, but sometimes that doesn't always work.
~Casey Stengel
If you make a mistake, don't try to correct it; repeat it until it becomes part of the pattern.
~the weaver Else Regensteiner
The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
~JFK
Many anthropologists have asserted that myth is, after all, a very simple phenomenon--for which we hardly need a complicated psychological or philosophical explanation. It is simplicity itself; for it is nothing but the "sancta simplicitas" of the human race. It is not the outcome of reflection or thought, nor is it enough to describe it as a product of human imagination. Imagination alone cannot account for all its incongruities and fantastic and bizarre elements. It is rather the Urdummheit of man that is responsible for these absurdities and contradictions. Without this "primeval stupidity" there would be no myth.
~Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State (anyone who can invent the term "Urdummheit" gets my vote.)
The issue isn't living or dying, but being altogether in love with the turning of the world, whether it's into darkness or light, in love with fate, beyond caring about the outcome. Not the gambler, on the ground, who waits to see the result of the toss, but the coin itself, spiraling downward, all eyes upon it.
~Jay Cantor, The Death of Che Guevara
It is hard to please everyone.
~Charles Darwin
And for extra credit (taped to my computer):
Bitte aufreiben
Lesen und
Beachten
Please tear up
Read and pay
Attention.
~Torn off a bilingual German matchbook in 1983.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 06:46 pm (UTC)I like:
The better work men do is done under stress and at great personal cost.
~William Carlos Williams
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 10:21 pm (UTC)"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."
no subject
Date: 2006-08-17 06:58 am (UTC)