The all-new quote thread

[dks]

"Don't go around thinking the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

Mark Twain

[Saturn]

That Mark Twain he kills me

[Heaven/Hell]

"It will hinder the creative process of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in."
- Friedrich Schiller

[Saturn]

"I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child."
-Vladimir Nabokov

[Heaven/Hell]

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."
- Ray Bradbury

[Saturn]

"What if your heart is your only home?"
-Roddy Woomble.

[Saturn]

"History"

I wander lonely streets
Behind where the old Thames does flow
And in every face I meet
Reminds me of what I have run from

In every man, in every hand
In every kiss, you understand
That living is for other men
I hope you two will understand

I've got to tell you my tale
Of how I loved and how I failed
I hope you understand

I've got to tell you my tale
Of how I loved and how I failed
I hope you understand
These feelings should not be in the man

In every child, in every eye
In every sky, above my head
I hope that I know
So come with me in bed
Because it's you and me, we're history
There ain't nothing left to say
When I will get you alone

Maybe we could find a room
Where we could see what we should do
Maybe you know it's true
Living with me is like keeping a fool<

In every man, in every hand
In every kiss, you understand
That living is for other men
I hope you know that I am me so come on
I'm thinking about history
And I'm living for history
And I think you know about me
Cause I am

And one and one is two
But three is company
When you're thinking about the things you do
And you're thinking about the things you do
I want to tell you my tale
How I fell in love and jumped out on my bail
I hope you understand there's more in a smile than in a hand
In every sky, in every kiss
There's something that I might have missed

Why am I going to
A place that now belongs to you
But you were weak and so was I
Let's pick it up, let's even try
To live today, so why not smile
Don't dream away your life 'Cause it is mine
Is that a crime (repeat) this life is mine
The bed ain't made but it's filled full of hope
I've got a skin full of dope
-The Verve

[Heaven/Hell]

Much appreciated Saturn, that's really made my day. Now where did I put my shotgun?

Excuse the profanities in this song, the end message inherent I think more than outweighs the means (ie; we're humans NOT mindless robots).

Working Class Hero - John Lennon
As soon as you're born they make you feel small
By given you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can't really function you're so full of fear

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you're so clever and classless and free
But still fucking peasants as far as I can see

A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be

There's room at the top they are telling you still
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill

A working class hero is something to fear
A working class hero is something to fear

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
A working class hero is something to be

If you want to be a hero well just follow me
If you want to be a hero well just follow me

[Heaven/Hell]

"One ship drives east and another drives west
With the selfsame winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sails,
And not the gales,
That tell us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate;
As we voyage along through life,
'Tis the set of a soul
That decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife."
- The Winds of Fate, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

[Sir Nevis]

Hey now, I've known more than one (straight) guy who turns to chocolate for solace now and then!

Those are the ones who haven't discovered Jack Daniels.

and jack daniels drinkers, in turn, are those who haven't discovered glenfiddich. see verse three, line one of Hugh MacDairmid's 'A Drunk Man looks at the Thistle'.

"I amna' fou' sae muckle as tired-deid dune.
It's gey and hard wark' coupin' gless for gless
Wi' Cruivie and Gilsanquhar and the like,
And I'm no' juist as bauld as aince I wes.

The elbuck fankles in the coorse o' time,
The sheckle's no' sae souple, and the thrapple
Grows deef and dour: nae langer up and doun
Gleg as a squirrel speils the Adam's apple.

Forbye, the stuffie's no the real Mackay.
The sun's sel' aince, as sune as ye began it,
Riz in your vera saul: but what keeks in
Noo is in truth the vilest "saxpenny planet."

And as the worth's gane doun the cost has risen.
Yin canna thow the cockles o' yin's hert
Wi'oot ha'en' cauld feet noo, jalousin' what
The wife'll say (I dinna blame her fur't)"

this is just an excerpt, in case you're wondering where the thistle comes in...

[Saturn]

I may have posted this before, I'm not sure but those who know me will know my enduring love of Petrarch's sublime Canzoniere.

This particular verse was always a favourite but now it is more true to how I feel and it touches me more deeply to the quick than ever before:

37 Si e debile il filo a cui s’attene

“My heavy life is hanging by a thread,
a thread that is so worn
if help does not come soon
it will have run its course out to the end;
for, after I had suffered and had gone
from what I held most dear,
one hope alone remained,
one reason why I had to stay alive;
it said, ‘Since you must live
out of your loved one’s sight,
look to yourself, resist.
Who knows that better times will not return,
and much more happy days,
and you regain the good that you have lost?
This hope sustained me once upon a time:
now I indulge it like an empty dream.

Time passes, and the hours go by fast
to see life’s journey out
that I have not a moment
even to think about my race to death.
The sun has hardly risen in the East
before you see light break
on the opposing peak
arrived at by a long and curving track.
Life is so very short,
bodies of mortal men
so heavy and so weak,
that when I think how I am kept apart
from what I love, her face
such weakness in the wings of my desire
all customary comfort must fall short.
And how long can I live in such a state?

What things we mortals find to give us pleasure!
All too often we love
whatever is most strange
and brings along the biggest crowd of sighs!
I too am one whom weeping seems to please,
tiring my brains to fill
my eyes with tears, as all
my heart is brimming with unhappiness;
and since to speak of her
bright eyes augments desire,
and nothing touches me
so closely where my feelings run so deep,
I turn back to my theme
her eyes which lead my eyes to weep and weep;
so that my eyes are punished, having led
me all along the way which is Love’s road.

That golden hair, enough to make the sun
move enviously away,
and that bright glance, sublime
and yet so blazing with the rays of Love
it makes me fade away before my time,
that skilful way you speak,
rare in this world, unique,
which came to me so very courteously
all these are taken away.
I could more readily
pardon a worse offence
than lose that greeting like an angel’s greeting,
which used to raise my powers
with all the blazing of my heart’s desires;
and nothing I still hope to hear will rouse
me now to anything but heaving sighs."

[Saturn]

"Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit."
~Peter Ustinov~

[Saturn]

From Paul Durcan's The laughter of Mothers

These two wonderfully pithy epigrams:

Women Are the Shape of Things to Come

In theology, not in sexuality, dwells the magnetism of women:
A woman by definition is a walking resurrection.

and

Epistemology

If there was nobody to share the world with,
There is no world.

[Malia]

Here's a quote from a bumper sticker I saw this morning on my way into work.

"Earth First! We'll screw up the other planets later."

[Saturn]

From the sublime to the downright hilarious!!