“The risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You've never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the "Come and get me, copper!" sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather.”
― Jonathan Gash, The Great California Game
“I always thought everyone was against war until I found out there are those who are all for it, especially those who do not have to go there.”
― Erich Maria Remarque
“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
― Ernest Hemingway
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
Remembering the Old Man today on the anniversary of his passing in 1883. Marx’s final utterance, “last words are for fools who have not said enough,” reminds us that our time is finite and that in death we are left voiceless—our life’s works are all that remain to speak for us.
“I have lots of fealty in me. I fealt the Emperor with every bone in my body. I fealt hard.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth
But we are as other men, exactly. Of one blood, one species, one brain, one figure, one fundamental set of collective instincts, one solitary body of information, one everything. Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.
Philip Wylie
— On Americans, p. 7
“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.
Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away for two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh--not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.”
― Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
― Martin Buber
On Ricky Gervais stand up tour, it's in your nature to destroy yourselves.
"It's ******* ****. **** Ricky Gervais. **** Ricky Gervais."
Nish Kumar. An actual comedian who, unlike Gervais, is funny.
@izzythepush,
I used to love comedians above just about anybody but these days I don't myself laughing very much.
@edgarblythe,
Nish Kumar is really good. He did the Mash report which may be available on YouTube.
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
― Dom Helder Camara, Dom Helder Camara: Essential Writings
"The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back."
Will Rogers
"The only Zen you find at the top of the mountain is the Zen you bring with you." - Zen proverb
"And now each night, I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when the stars won't come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.”
― Leroi Jones
Can't abide people quotes this morning. Here is one for the others.
“Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
"I was wedded to all the stars of the sky. There was not a single star left, and I married every one of them with great spiritual pleasure. Then I married the moon."
― Ibn Arabi
