Lethe
Captain
I propose that we should share here short quotations or excerpts that tickle the mind for one reason or another. Perhaps they are amusing, perhaps insightful, provocative, or intriguing, perhaps having some artistic or sentimental value.
I suggest the following guidelines:
1) Only post a few quotations at a time and be careful with length. Sentences, certainly. Paragraphs, with caution. Essays, no.
2) Quotations should be attributed to their authors, so that others may follow up if interested.
3) Quotations can be edited for brevity, clarity, or style, but should always preserve the author's original intent and meaning.
I'll start us off with a few from my own collection:
"I exhort you never to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.” (Lord John-Dalberg Acton)
"The human understanding is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. Though there be many things in nature that are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives that do not exist." (Francis Bacon)
"He who does not advance, falls back; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller. The stationary condition is the beginning of the end, the terrible symptom which precedes death. To live is to assert one's self against the annulling and dispersion of one's physical and moral being -- to refresh one's will day by day." (Henri-Frederic Amiel)
“If push comes to shove, books are great insulating material. You could make a little igloo out of books if you really had to.” (Margaret Atwood)
I suggest the following guidelines:
1) Only post a few quotations at a time and be careful with length. Sentences, certainly. Paragraphs, with caution. Essays, no.
2) Quotations should be attributed to their authors, so that others may follow up if interested.
3) Quotations can be edited for brevity, clarity, or style, but should always preserve the author's original intent and meaning.
I'll start us off with a few from my own collection:
"I exhort you never to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.” (Lord John-Dalberg Acton)
"The human understanding is prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. Though there be many things in nature that are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives that do not exist." (Francis Bacon)
"He who does not advance, falls back; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller. The stationary condition is the beginning of the end, the terrible symptom which precedes death. To live is to assert one's self against the annulling and dispersion of one's physical and moral being -- to refresh one's will day by day." (Henri-Frederic Amiel)
“If push comes to shove, books are great insulating material. You could make a little igloo out of books if you really had to.” (Margaret Atwood)