Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

-Rudyard Kipling

quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Push:

quote:

Originally posted by Witness:
The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.
Mao Tse-Tung

nice timing.

It just occurred to me that there could be a second meaning to this one.

What can I say other than: "I'm slow sometimes."

"There is one thing worse than pain, and that is pleasure"
--from David Lindsay's Sketch notes for a new system of philosophy

"Fake love is a very powerful thing."-Chuck Klosterman

The L-O-V-E brought this fragment back, though I disagree with the coda. But I would not change Coupland's message.

quote:

She says: "First there is love, then there is disenchantment and then there is the rest of your life."

And I say, "But what about the rest of your life - what about all the time that remains?"

And she says, "Oh - there's friendship. Or at least familiarity. And there's safety. And after that there's sleep."

I think to myself: How do any of us know that it's going to end like this? That this is all there was maybe going to be? I say, "Oh, God."

And my mother says to me, "Honey, God is what keeps us together after the love is gone."
(Douglas Coupland, Life after God)

"The nostalgia of things unknown, of lands forgotten or unfound, is upon me at times. Often I long for the gleam of yellow suns upon terraces of translucent azure marble, mocking the windless waters of lakes unfathomably calm; for lost, legendary palaces of serpentine, silver and ebony, whose columns are green stalactites; for the pillars of fallen temples, standing in the vast purpureal sunset of a land of lost and marvellous romance. I sigh for the dark-green depths of cedar forests, through whose fantastically woven boughs, one sees at intervals an unknown tropic ocean, like gleams of blue diamond; for isles of palm and coral, that fret an amber morning, somewhere beyond Cathay or Taprobane; for the strange and hidden cities of the desert, with burning brazen domes and slender pinnacles of gold and copper, that pierce a heaven of heated lazuli."
-- Clark Ashton Smith,
"Nostalgia of the Unknown"

This is not mine, but I have been unable to trace its origin. I first heard it in Spanish, and it sounds much better than in English.
Quite appropiate for the Internet.

quote:

Te fustigo con el látigo de mi indiferencia
desde el pedestal de mi desprecio.

I whip you with the scourge of my indifference
from the pedestal of my contempt.

"For the cat is cryptic, and close to Aegyptus, and bearer of tales from forgotten cities in Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten".
H.P. Lovecraft
"The Cats of Ulthar"

quote:

According to Deathclock(.com), I won’t die until 2058.

How do you like the taste of that shit, cancer?

Cigarette Of Victory, I think.

-Warren Ellis

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It's already tomorrow in Australia "

(Charles Schultz)

quote:

But now and again there appears a novel which opens up a new world not by revealing what is strange, but by revealing what is familiar.

- George Orwell commenting on Henry Miller's _Tropic of Cancer_

(Thanks to all the writers out there who have made the familiar world just strange enough to keep us interested)

"At least if you were ignorant, you could do what you wanted, you had no idea what had been achieved in the past. You were free, instead of chewed at by bleeding impotence, dissolved away like a pearl in acid."

-Janet Fitch-

"Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time".
J. G. Ballard

"A lost art, thinking right."
-- Detective Munch, Homicide: Life on the Street.

HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN, TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET— Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.
She tried to assemble her thoughts.
“You make us sound mad,” said Susan.
NO. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN’T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME ?

-Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

CONTEMPT, n. The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy who is too formidable safely to be opposed.

RECONSIDER, v. To seek a justification for a decision already made.

- Ambrose Bierce - The Devil's Dictionary

"Their voices set my teeth on edge. I have no valid complaint against hustlers, no rational bitch, but the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes."

HST, the Rum Diary.

I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.
Banksy, street artist (b. 1974)

“The fruits of science so far, put into the hands of governments, have turned out to be cruelties and stupidities exceeding by far those of the Spanish Inquisition and Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible.” (Vonnegut 1992 The Humanist 52:6. p.3)

Kurt Vonnegut Jr, lifted from an essay a friend wrote about him and about the themes of his writings.

Oooo, heads up, elders and nudists of the same condition.

It is not how old you are, but how you are old.

Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)