Not to mention antinouns.
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"The Historia Augusta is a very interesting book. Unlike most Roman histories, it's dense with primary sources: extracts from letters, speeches, pronouncements. It’s also packed with quotes and references from other histories, some of which are unattested in any other source. The only problem is that it seems to have been written as a piece of vicious revenge against all future historians. A few of its emperors are described issuing decrees or holding councils on dates when we know they were otherwise occupied being dead. Other people described in the Historia Augusta never existed at all. Neither did the other books describing them, or the historians who supposedly wrote those books. It points to whole libraries of unreal texts. Like a book that fell into our world from a parallel universe. Also, the six authors all write in exactly the same style, and their Latin is the Latin of at least a century after they were supposed to have been writing. (Imagine a Victorian novel in which characters all greet each other with ‘wassup.’) It’s all a big prank. But annoyingly, some of the material in the Historia Augusta is accurate. It’s just that when there are no other corroborations, we can’t know which parts. Whoever actually wrote it is a personal hero of mine."
- Sam Kriss
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"Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors [...] We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others."
- C.S. Lewis
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them, well, I have others."
- Groucho Marx
"Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most."
- Dwight Schrute
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"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones [...] Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."
- Umberto Eco
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Stolen from a stranger on the internet:
"It was a hot night in the City of Angels when a leggy blonde walked into my office. She had 13, maybe 14 legs. Way too many. "That's a lot of legs for a dame," I suggested to her eldritch form. She glanced my way, and rolled her eyes at me. I picked them up and rolled them back."
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"The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
- Thucydides
"For several centuries now, people have defended new things by pointing out how uniformly people have rejected new things. But sometimes a new gadget is not actually good. Maybe radium toothpaste is not just the fast way to a winning smile."
- Sam Kriss
"[T]he fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
- Carl Sagan
"Dostoevsky is a great writer, but maybe not a good one. His books sag with blather: page after page of drunks rambling, matrons shrieking, people turning purple. And then he’ll very lightly season this overwrought, hysterical Victorian nonsense with some of the most devastating moral observations ever put to the page."
- Sam Kriss
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Stolen from a stranger on the internet:
"It was a hot night in the City of Angels when a leggy blonde walked into my office. She had 13, maybe 14 legs. Way too many. "That's a lot of legs for a dame," I suggested to her eldritch form. She glanced my way, and rolled her eyes at me. I picked them up and rolled them back."
I would watch the hell out of that movie.
"Do not lewd the SCP"
A friend is someone who will go to your funeral. A true friend is someone who skips your funeral to break into your home and steal your porn before your family arrives.
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"In Upstate New York, one has no need for a round-the-world journey overseas. Rome is mere miles from Russia and Mexico, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Rotterdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Cuba, Peru, Canton, Carthage. One travels the world here without ever leaving the boundaries of the Empire State — yet unlike the Old World, it is surprisingly difficult to travel from Rome to Amsterdam via public transportation."
- A.M. Hickman
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"Bought a tap and die set from Harbor Freight. Did not tap. Did die."
"Bought a tap and die set from Harbor Freight. Did not tap. Did die."
From harbor freight surviving is at least a 2 star review...
(just kidding I get a lot of good stuff from there cheap. But the trick is to know what works when cheap ( a clamp) and what needs to be good ( a carving knife, or a tap and die set apparently...)| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
"I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite sceptical about ethics, but bred to believe that ‘a gentleman does not cheat’, than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers."
- C.S. Lewis
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"The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."
- C.S. Lewis
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"In Upstate New York, one has no need for a round-the-world journey overseas. Rome is mere miles from Russia and Mexico, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Rotterdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Cuba, Peru, Canton, Carthage. One travels the world here without ever leaving the boundaries of the Empire State — yet unlike the Old World, it is surprisingly difficult to travel from Rome to Amsterdam via public transportation."
- A.M. Hickman
One may also emulate Odysseus without leaving the Empire State, and travel from Troy to Ithaca.
One may also emulate Odysseus without leaving the Empire State, and travel from Troy to Ithaca.
Do you know how difficult it is to find a good cyclops these days? Ugh. And a credible Circe? Impossible.
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“Dissent obviously should always be completely innocuous and obedient and not disruptive in any way. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, 'Our foremost value is to obey the law at all times and inconvenience nobody, because dissent must never lead to disorder. That’s why our Civil Rights Movement famously never has any run-ins with law enforcement.' He said this in one of his most influential works, 'Letter from Birmingham Candy Shop'.”
― Caitlin Johnstone
Uben ebon gliben globen.
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One may also emulate Odysseus without leaving the Empire State, and travel from Troy to Ithaca."In Upstate New York, one has no need for a round-the-world journey overseas. Rome is mere miles from Russia and Mexico, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Rotterdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Cuba, Peru, Canton, Carthage. One travels the world here without ever leaving the boundaries of the Empire State — yet unlike the Old World, it is surprisingly difficult to travel from Rome to Amsterdam via public transportation."
- A.M. Hickman
Yeah, but the drive back takes 10 years...
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One may also emulate Odysseus without leaving the Empire State, and travel from Troy to Ithaca.Yeah, but the drive back takes 10 years...
On Central NY roads? Sounds about right.
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"God save us from people who are sure of the answers, no matter what their ideology."
- Matt Taibbi
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"Every year, on the first Monday of May, the people of Hastings parade a man made of leaves through the streets of their town. The leaf-man spins and dances all day, wearing a crown of flowers and followed by his drummers and musicians. The people all wear green. They put garlands of leaves and flowers in their hair. Eventually, the leaf-man is taken to the top of a hill overlooking the sea, where he is slaughtered in front of the townsfolk. This ritual is a piece of hoary old seasonal magic, rooted deep in the green fields of England, and it’s been going on for a very long time. Longer than I’ve been alive, in fact. It dates back all the way to 1983."
- Sam Kriss
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Linus frowned. “That’s not how things work. Things aren’t real just because people believe in them.”
“Coins,” Factotum said. “Countries. Crimes. The ineffable efficacy of grace.”
-The Chaos Court
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"One would expect that large numbers of individuals, living in a society in which anonymous, hence irresponsible, forces formulate the large questions of the day and circumscribe the range of possible answers, would experience a kind of impotence and fall victim to a mindless rage."
-Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason 1976
"Extroverted Me often makes decisions that Introverted Me sorely regrets when the time comes to face them."
- Dixie Dillon Lane
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"[The] word barbecue is rather fraught, because it has lots of meanings. First of all, it can be a noun, a verb, and an adjective, and even inside of those, there are multiple meanings. You can barbecue barbecued barbecue at a barbecue with barbecue. It's ridiculous."
- Max Miller
"In a particle accelerator, particles go round and round very fast until they decay, which is a good description of life."
-Sabine Hossenfelder
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"[The] word barbecue is rather fraught, because it has lots of meanings. First of all, it can be a noun, a verb, and an adjective, and even inside of those, there are multiple meanings. You can barbecue barbecued barbecue at a barbecue with barbecue. It's ridiculous."
- Max Miller
METAL BAWXES! THEY HIDE IN METAL BAWXES!
"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it."
- Steven Wright
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"[T]he Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech[.]"
- Benjamin Franklin (writing as "Silence Dogood"), letter to the editor of the New-England Courant, July 9, 1722
"Homogenisation happens per Hemingway’s dictum on bankruptcy: gradually, then suddenly. It is innocuous and incremental, converting defunct properties into convenient and commercially-viable businesses—until one morning your local high-street is unrecognisable, colonised by international consumerism. The world becomes one unbroken chain of interconnected retail parks. We no longer live in nations, but regionally-managed outposts of a global franchise."
- Connor Tomlinson
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"[T]he Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech[.]"
- Benjamin Franklin (writing as "Silence Dogood"), letter to the editor of the New-England Courant, July 9, 1722
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power."
- Frederick Douglass, A Plea for Free Speech in Boston, December 3, 1860