on quotes

You speak in the words of another. You make your choices, select their sentences and choose to borrow foreign intelligence. The selection is neither rational nor arbitrary; it is emphatic, it is challenging, it can be a disguise. And it wants to reveal something: a mood, a tone, an insight or a probing question.

This is why you quote. The careful citation maybe a mask. And it is convenient, if unsettling. A motto or a thought – what is truth, other than a pleasant opinion? We hold dear that which we cannot easily understand but know to be true anyway. Somehow. Literally or virtually, there doesn’t seem to be much difference. What does it matter? The choice has always been mine!

Why blog if you don’t seek expression? Why blog if not for the experience of hiding behind a virtual mask? And 100 is a perfect number. Therefore, no more quotes. They have said it all. On my behalf.

quote of the week

“Socrates: 'Then, in short, all the stirrings and endurings of the soul, when wisdom leads, come to happiness in the end, but when senselessness leads, to the opposite?' - Menon: 'So it seems.'”
(Plato, Symposium/The Banquet (after 385 B.C.))

quote of the week

“Rat stories, true and made up. World-relation attitude irruption: grain ships gnawed bare. Hollowed-out granaries. The Nothing acknowledged. Egypt's lean years. And when Paris was besieged. And when the rat sat in the tabernacle. And when thought forsook meta-physics. And when help was most needed. And when the rats left the ship. And when the rats came back. When they attacked even infants and old people riveted to their chairs. When they negated the new-born babe away from the young mother's breast. When they attacked the cats and nothing was left of the rat-terriers but bare teeth, which sparkle to this day, lined up in the museum.”
(Günter Grass, Dog Years (1963))

quote of the week

“I'm pursued myself like a hundred devils, and shall be overtaken before I can well change horses: – for heaven's sake, make haste – 'Tis for high treason, quoth a very little man, whispering as low as he could to a very tall man that stood next to him – Or else for murder; quoth the tall man – Well thrown size-ace! quoth I. No; quoth a third, the gentleman has been committing – –.”
(Lawrence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1767))

quote of the week

“To be a man's own fool is bad enough; but the vain man is every body's. This silly disposition comes of a mixture of ignorance, confidence and pride; and as there is more or less of the last, so it is more or less offensive, or entertaining. And yet, perhaps the worst part of this vanity is its unteachableness. Tell it any thing, and it has known it long ago; and outruns information and instruction, or else proudly puffs at it. Whereas the greatest understandings doubt most, are readiest to learn, and least pleased with themselves; this, with nobody else.”
(William Penn, Fruits of Solitude in Reflections and Maxims Relating to the Conduct of Human Life (1837))

quote of the week

“Language as the material and medium of expression can never fully emancipate itself from meaning. A genuinely nonobjective poetry would simply be gibberish.”
(Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (1977))

quote of the week

“Where there is kindness, there is also cruelty.”
(12 Lotus, Royston Tan (2008))

quote of the week

“Here I am in your face | Tellin' truths and not your old lies | Seems to me that you care | And I know that you're runnin' otta time | See ya can't get away | I'll be here forever and again | Whisperin' in your ear | Do believe 'cause you know you cannot win | Spent most your life pretending not to be | The one your are but who you choose to see | Learned to survive in your fictitious world | Does what they think of you determine your worth | If special's what you feel when you're with them | Taken away, you feel less then again”
(Janet Jackson et alt., The Velvet Rope (1997))

quote of the week

“[...] for how long can it last, this overextended violation of reality?”
(Thomas R. Pynchon, Against The Day (2006))

quote of the week

“Look at me. You won't be rewarded for your kindness. I am a good example. This is reality. Poverty begets evil. That's the rule of the game.”
(Xiang Gang zhi zao/Made in Hong Kong, Fruit Chan (1997))

quote of the week

“[...] all else is true in the article, except those things that are not.”
(AAWW newsletter (2007))

quote of the week

“I should very much like, then, to share this all so sudden metamorphosis of mine with you. Doing so would make me start to feel a surer faith in the friendship that exists between us, that true friendship which not hope nor fear nor concern for personal advantage ever sunders, that friendship in which and for which people are ready to die. I can give you plenty of examples of people who have not been lacking a friend but friendship, something that can never happen when mutual inclination draws two personalities together in a fellowship of desire for all that is honourable. Why cannot it happen? Because they know that everything – and especially their setbacks – is shared between them.”
(Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae morales at Lucilium (64))

quote of the week

“The spirit is always attacking.”
(The Hidden Blade, Yamada Yoji (2004))

quote of the week

“Stand a little less between me and the sun.”
(Diogenes (412 BC - 323 BC))

quote of the week

“Many are the tales that are told. We are assured that novel methods will be adopted, and when we see the originality of malice, the ingenuity of aggression, which our enemy displays, we may certainly prepare ourselves for every kind of novel stratagem and every kind of brutal and treacherous maneuver. I think that no idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered and viewed with a searching, but at the same time, I hope, with a steady eye.[...] Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender[...]”
(Sir Winston Churchhill, House of Commons address (1940))

quote of the week

The river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not load or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

(T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922))

quote of the week

“The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable, and the only defective, part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men, who study the passions of princes, and conceal their own, approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and honours by affecting to despise them.”
(Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781))

quote of the week

“There are a number of different religions in Utopia. Indeed, each city contains adherents of different faiths. Some worship the sun as their god, others the moon, and others one of the planets. Some Utopians believe that a certain human being, who was remarkable, long ago, either for his virtue or for his vanity, was not only a god, but the supreme god. But a substantial majority of Utopians, including nearly all the wiser citizens, believe in none of these religions.”
(Saint/Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1516))

quote of the week

“And so it was not the nasty thorn of jealousy that pricked his soul in this case. But he did explore all the feelings that intoxication and passion can explore once they catch a glimpse of themselves in the world outside, feelings that are the strangest mixture of disgust and shared emotions. If we are to get on with our story, however, it will be impossible to fathom and analyze all of that.”
(Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg/The Magic Mountain (1924))

quote of the week

“Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward!”
(Hillary Clinton (June 7, 2008))

(pic©AP)