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Post by Audio Watchdog on Sept 27, 2018 21:59:21 GMT
David Hare The most dementing of all modern sins: the inability to distinquish excellence from success.
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Post by theotherjosh on Sept 27, 2018 22:44:59 GMT
A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2018 9:55:33 GMT
A beautiful, beautiful quote from an 1859 copy of the Scientific American about a game for dullards. Yes, that ignoble and unintellectual pastime known as... chess? (Wait, hang on just a minute...)
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Sept 28, 2018 18:33:33 GMT
Gustav Mahler- Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Nov 10, 2018 23:56:40 GMT
M.R.James- Reticence is a sound doctrine
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Nov 16, 2018 19:29:28 GMT
William Goldman, who passed away today, A good writer is not someone who knows how to write - but how to rewrite.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Nov 17, 2018 17:38:14 GMT
And again, William Goldman Examine any work of art down to its bone and you find cliché,
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Post by theotherjosh on Nov 19, 2018 18:55:13 GMT
"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
- From George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, 18 August 1790
I'll offer some commentary on this quote with another one, this one from Secondhand Lions: "Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
The United States has very often failed to live up to the lofty ideals affirmed at our inception, but until recently we shared the myth that it was belief in these ideals that united us as a people.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 20, 2018 6:11:18 GMT
And again, William GoldmanExamine any work of art down to its bone and you find cliché,I'll share a rather good one from one of my mentors that comes from a similar vein:
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Post by theotherjosh on Feb 22, 2019 14:34:05 GMT
My good blade carves the casques of men, My tough lance thrusteth sure, My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure.
"Sir Galahad" Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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Post by mrperson on Feb 22, 2019 16:42:45 GMT
A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden One of my all-time favorite books (and authors).
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Post by theotherjosh on Feb 22, 2019 17:38:39 GMT
A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught — in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too — in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?
-John Steinbeck, East of Eden One of my all-time favorite books (and authors). I never read any Steinbeck beyond the educationally mandated Grapes of Wrath and Mice and Men until I was well into adulthood. My wife had a colleague and later friend named Timshel and she led us along a circuitous path that concluded with East of Eden.
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Post by charlesuirdhein on Feb 22, 2019 23:19:09 GMT
"I don't have a skull...or bones"
Olaf the snowman from Frozen.
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Post by Timelord007 on Feb 23, 2019 8:44:58 GMT
It s he best of times, it was the worst of times.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2019 12:44:54 GMT
'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.' - J.R.R.Tolkien
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Post by mrperson on Feb 24, 2019 17:58:25 GMT
“And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”
-Tolkien (Return of the King)
“For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream.”
- Tolkien (one of the LOTR books)
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Feb 24, 2019 19:11:20 GMT
Orson Welles- If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Feb 24, 2019 19:28:26 GMT
Milton Berle If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
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Post by theotherjosh on Apr 2, 2019 12:37:14 GMT
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2019 1:03:01 GMT
This one constantly surprises me. I heard it on television first, then a close friend repeated it verbatim years later without ever having seen the programme.
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