The all-new quote thread

[Saturn]

This is how I feel tonight

“O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t!”
~The Tempest, V, I, 181-4

[Saturn]

“…Truth should be spoken at all times, but more especially at those times when to speak Truth is dangerous.”
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

[Saturn]

“…never can a lasting power be founded on broken promises and lying words. Such empires stand for one short hour. They may blossom with fair hopes, but time finds them out, and they fade and die. In a house, in a ship, in any structure, it is the foundation which most needs strength. So it is too with the actions of men’s lives, which must be founded on truth and justice.”
Demosthenes’ Olynthiac II.

[Malia]

“…never can a lasting power be founded on broken promises and lying words. Such empires stand for one short hour. They may blossom with fair hopes, but time finds them out, and they fade and die. In a house, in a ship, in any structure, it is the foundation which most needs strength. So it is too with the actions of men’s lives, which must be founded on truth and justice.”
Demosthenes’ Olynthiac II.

That's a great leadership quote, Saturn

[Saturn]

Yes, two certain leaders of the "free western world" should take note...

[Saturn]

“Why should God be necessary as a support for moral values? Can they not stand on their own, like aesthetic values for instance? Surely we can live morally – that is, considerately, humbly, responsibly and tolerantly – without believing that any action or type of action is absolutely right? And in practise religious people behave no better than irreligious – if anything the reverse, because they justify and intensify their wickedness by religious zeal.”
J.M. Ross.

[Saturn]

“Is there such a feeling as love at first sight? And if there be, in what does its nature differ from love founded in long observation and slow growth? Perhaps its effects are not so permanent; but they are, while they last, as violent and intense. We walk the pathless mazes of society, vacant of joy, till we hold this clue, leading us through that labyrinth to paradise. Our nature dim, like to an unlighted torch, sleeps in formless blank till the fire attain it; this life of life, this light to moon, and glory to the sun. What does it matter, whether the fire be struck from flint and steel, nourished with care into a flame, slowly communicated to the dark wick, or whether swiftly the radiant power of light and warmth passes from a kindred power, and shines at once the beacon and the hope.”
Mary Shelley, The Last Man, Ch. v

[dks]

Ah, lovely quote, Saturn...

Saturn: the quote-master.

[Saturn]

11
A man has a right to think as his reason directs, it is a duty he owes to himself to think with freedom, that he may act from conviction.

12
A man has a right to unrestricted liberty of discussion; falsehood is a scorpion that will sting itself to death.

13
A man has not only a right to express his thoughts but it is his duty to do so.

14
No law has a right to discourage the practice of truth. A man ought to speak the truth on every occasion, a duty can never be criminal, what is not criminal cannot be injurious.

17
No man has a right to do an evil thing that good may come.

19
No man has a right to kill his brother, it is no excuse that he does so in uniform. He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

27
No man has a right to be respected for any other possessions but those of virtue and talents. Titles are tinsel, power a corruptor, glory a bubble, and excessive wealth, a libel on its possessor.

28
No man has right to monopolise more than he can enjoy; what the rich give to the poor, whilst millions are starving, is not a perfect favour, but an imperfect right.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, From A Declaration of Rights, Pgs. 558-60.

[dks]

Awesome. I love your choices, Saturn--I always read them excitedly. This one is a true gem--almost sounds like creeds taken right out of a Druidian Pagan handbook.

[Saturn]

Awesome. I love your choices, Saturn--I always read them excitedly. This one is a true gem--almost sounds like creeds taken right out of a Druidian Pagan handbook.

It is actually from a political pamphlet that Shelly published - a klind of radical call-to-arms

[Malia]

I've just started an excellent book for one of my leadership classes called: Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It is a book about meditation, primarily. Contained within it are some gems of quotes. Quite a few of them are from Thoreau. I'd forgotten how cool these American Transcendentalists are. Well, of course they're cool--they're the American Romantics, after all

Here's a quote from our friend Thoreau's Walden:

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."

[Saturn]

The last line of that is pure poetry

[dks]

I'd forgotten how cool these American Transcendentalists are. Well, of course they're cool--they're the American Romantics, after all

Here's a quote from our friend Thoreau's Walden:

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars."

Ah, excellent, Malia. Are you kidding? I always say Thoreau and Scottie Fitzgerald--my two American equivalents to Keats.

[Saturn]

This song really has to be heard but the lyrics themselves are sparsely beautiful and sad too:

Forget Her.

While this time's busy sleeping,
All the noise has died away.
I walk the streets to stop my weeping,
She'll never change her ways.

Don't fool yourself, she was heartache from the moment that you met her.
And my heart is frozen still as I try to find the will to forget her, somehow.
She's somewhere out there now.

Her love is a rose, pale and dying.
Dropping her petals in land unknown
All full of wine, the world before her, was sober with no place to go.

Don't fool yourself, she was heartache from the moment that you met her.
My heart is frozen still as I try to find the will to forget her, somehow.
She's somewhere out there now.

Well my tears fall down as I try to forget,
Her love was a joke from the day that we met.
All of the words, all of her men,
all of my pain when I think back to when.

Remember her hair as it shone in the sun,
the smell of the bed when I knew what she'd done.
Tell myself over and over you won't ever need her again.

But don't fool yourself,
she was heartache from the moment that you met her.
My heart is frozen still as I try to find the will to forget her, somehow.
She's out there somewhere now.

Oh She was heartache from the day that I first met her.
My heart is frozen still as I try to find the will to forget you, somehow.
Cause I know you're somewhere out there right now.