Great Quotes II: Source and Context are Key

[Flying Pig]

We have one, somewhere - search 'what is poetry?'

 

[Dachs]

We should set aside a whole thread for the Basho of Rock Center, writer of the Monday Morning Bowel Movement, the one and only Peter King.

Jonathan Martin
raises the hazing issue.
And we must listen.

Two a.m. football.
Surprisingly, I want more.
And I want it now.

I know, Raiders lost.
But my Week 1 takeaway?
Oakland's not boring

 

[Borachio]

squid vendor

his voice confused

with the ****oo

940 Matsuo Basho

 

[Kyriakos]

"Things are for many times, fourteen times. Only two things are there for a sole time: Up above, the incomprehensible Sun; below, Asterion. Maybe it was I who created the Sun as well and later on stopped remembering" J. L. Borges, 'The House of Asterion' (his best story in my view ).

 

[Borachio]

Borges and that Colombian geezer are among my favourite authors, for sure.

flowers and fruit

at the same time melons

at their peak

941 Matsuo Basho

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

"All wealth is created a Great place has a crisp healthiness to it, it's like reading an editorial, except when Caesar blows the flu that." - [Cheezy]bot, in a hypothetical facebook status

 

[Mouthwash]

"Glance into the world just as though time were gone, and everything crooked will become straight to you."
-Nietzsche

 

[gay_Aleks]

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. p.248"

Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

"It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto. This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle..."

Fred Thompson

 

[Cutlass]

 

[Phrossack]

CLARK: Yes, Zesty. Last year, there were over 14,000 EyeStreams about giant-beetle attacks—
LEWIS: Right.
CLARK: —while in reality, there were just 389 recorded instances of humans actually being killed and devoured by mutant beetles in that same time.

--Zesty Lewis and Orange Clark on overreporting of giant mutant beetle attacks, "The Onion's Future News from the Year 2137"

"The llama is a quadruped which lives in the big rivers like the Amazon. It has two ears, a heart, a forehead, and a beak for eating honey. But it is provided with fins for swimming."

--John Cleese, Monty Python's Flying Circus, "Llama Sketch", said in Spanish

 

[madviking]

"The only paradise is paradise lost."

- Marcel Proust

 

[Daird]

A few I've always found inspiring:

"I would rather be the hammer than the anvil." Erwin Rommel.

"It is a good day to fight, and a good day to die! Cowards to the rear, brave hearts... follow me!" Crazy Horse.

 

[Phrossack]

"In Germany the situation is always serious but not hopeless. In Austria the situation is never serious but always hopeless."

-Unknown

 

[Gori the Grey]

Since only Paradise Lost is Paradise Lost, how 'bout: "The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."

(only the first of which, really, is a particularly impressive feat)

 

[Kyriakos]

As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel.

And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.

And the worm spake to the angel saying: "Behold my food."

"Be dakeon para Thina poluphloisboio Thalassaes," murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, "and can you destroy that too?"

And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its melody was ringing in his head.

Lord Dunsany, The Worm and the Angel

 

[Borachio]

“The harvest of this world is to the resolute, and he that is infirm of purpose is ground betwixt the upper and the nether millstone”

― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

 

[Phrossack]

"...the limbs within give life to the armour's pliant scales so artfully conjoined, and strike terror into the beholder. 'Tis as though iron statues moved and men lived cast from the same metal ...each stands alone, a pleasure yet a dread to behold, beautiful yet terrible..."

-Claudian, In Rufinam, describing fully armored horsemen (clibanarii)



"I am King of the Romans and above grammar."

-Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, on having his Latin corrected by a cardinal

 

[Antilogic]

"¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!"
~Attributed to Porfirio Díaz

Spoiler :

(Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!)

 

[Mouthwash]

In return for the significant steps that Iran has listed, the international community will provide Iran with relief that is limited and most importantly, reversible.

-John Kerry, thirty seconds ago.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

Abraham Lincoln