All Things Quotes (page 158)
My favourite piece of information is that Branwell Bront, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantle piece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. However, this is not relevant to what is currently on my mind because it concerns sloths, whereas the...
Douglas Adams
As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.
Gustave Flaubert
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
W. Somerset Maugham
« Brixie’s blog was huge. That had to be it. Brixie had a monster fashion blog. All those Los Angeles girls with their feet on the pedals of daddy’s sports car... Speedometers twitched in Milan whenever those girls changed their shoes... And Brixie knew how to make the girls in L. A. change their shoes.
Dr. Gustav Y. Svante had warned him about this. This was an Internet thing: “disintermediation.”»
Bruce Sterling
Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched - just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance - so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned.
Albert Camus
A spider lives inside my head. Who weaves a strange and wondrous web. Of silken threads and silver strings. To catch all sorts of flying things, Like crumbs of thoughts and bits of smiles. And specks of dried-up tears, And dust of dreams that catch and cling. For years and years and years...
Shel Silverstein
This is too grand to be said (so I’m just the man to say it), but I can’t be my brother’s brother for nothing, and I know – not always, but I know – there is no single thing I do that is more important than going into that awful Room 307. There isn’t one girl in there, including the Terrible Miss Zabel, who is not as much my sister as Boo Boo or Franny. They may shine with the misinformation of the ages, but they shine. This thought manages to stun me: There’s no place I’d really rather got...
J. D. Salinger
How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself...
David Foster Wallace