“Some moments in a life, and they needn’t be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one’s own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.”
― from 'Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone' by James Baldwin
"Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse."
--from DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes
“If you can't say "****" you can't say, "**** the government.”
― Lenny Bruce
@edgarblythe,
Ahh, Lenny.. Glad he was with us. Not that I remember much, I was younger then than now.
@ossobucotemp,
I had a two record album of his routines. Not any more. I did not always like every single thing he did, but loved plenty that he did.
@edgarblythe,
Wiki's pretty good today on his import for the rest of us in the US. I say 'today' since I don't know how much wiki articles get edited.
“Bonkie bit Garp!"
Garp bit Bonkie”
― John Irving, The World According to Garp
"I was born a sinner too. My sin is mentioned in the Bible 25 times. I tried to change, but couldn't... Luckily society learned to accept us left-handed people." -Nicholas Ferroni
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
“I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough.” ~Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
― H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
“The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.”
― H.G. Wells
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day,
something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else
would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of
unanimity.
~Christopher Morley
“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
― Woody Guthrie
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” –Charles Bukowski
“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”
― Jacques-Yves Cousteau
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
― Nelson Mandela
“All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way-if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.”
― John Knowles, A Separate Peace
