Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[ardeegee]

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
Where ignorant armies clash by night.


She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes

(Actually, those are the only lines I like from that one.)


The teachers told us, the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire
Garrison Town
They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled, 'til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found

(Okay, that one's cheating a little.)

[WT Sharpe]

.....Philosophy directs us first to seek the goods of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied, or not much wanted.
..........— Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) (1561-1626), English essayist, philosopher. The Advancement of Learning, viii, 2.

[beppe]

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
- Thornton Wilder. The bridge of San Luis Rey. Last sentence

[WT Sharpe]

.....It is a great deal easier to set a story afloat than to stop it. If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly: it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, "A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."
..........— Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92), sermon delivered on Sunday morning, April 1, 1855.

[WT Sharpe]

.....“The world is stablished, that it cannot be moved.” Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?
..........— John Calvin. Quoted in A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, Book Three, pt. I, ch. VI. (The Scriptural quote is from Psalms 93:1.)

.....People give ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.
..........— Martin Luther (1483-1546), Father of the Reformation. Ibid.

.....I don’t care what the educational political lobby and their allies on the left say, evolution is hooey.
..........— Dr. Don McLeroy, D.D.S., former Texas School Board member. Quoted in "Revisionaries: How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks" by Mariah Blake, Washington Monthly, January/February 2010.

[beppe]

fery interesting, but not funny! Way around, very interesting and funny. Sort of showing the dark side of the authority. Mazarino or Richelieu once said that with a letter, a pair of scissors and some glue he could demonstrate anything about the author. That he was good, bad, guilty or innocent.

On the third item of the last post: I would not be concerned about freedom of the press, but freedom of reading. And in this very case of the Texan educands freedom from reading.

Here is my quote of the day
Bigotry and ignorance have big mouths but short legs. (beppe, private conversation, 2010)

[WT Sharpe]

.....I don’t believe we’re going to bridge that divide that separates us in this country along racial lines unless we learn to love one another. I know that sounds simplistic, but I honestly believe that that is the only answer.
..........— Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to opposing hate crimes and teaching tolerance. “Only love will bridge racial divide, activist says,” Virginian-Pilot (January 24, 1997).

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

.....I don’t believe we’re going to bridge that divide that separates us in this country along racial lines unless we learn to love one another. I know that sounds simplistic, but I honestly believe that that is the only answer.
..........— Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to opposing hate crimes and teaching tolerance. “Only love will bridge racial divide, activist says,” Virginian-Pilot (January 24, 1997).

Thanks for that one in particular Tom. I've been (re)watching several episodes of "American Experience" about the civil rights movement and am working on a poem regarding some aspects of it. I'm finding it quite fascinating what all was going on as I was making my way through elementary and middle school and me pretty much without awareness of it.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Thanks for that one in particular Tom. I've been (re)watching several episodes of "American Experience" about the civil rights movement and am working on a poem regarding some aspects of it. I'm finding it quite fascinating what all was going on as I was making my way through elementary and middle school and me pretty much without awareness of it.

We hope to see that in the usual place here on MR - when it is completed ....

[WT Sharpe]

.....Alternative history is not "rewriting" history to be "politically correct." It is taking the defensiveness out of the biased history that taught about happy slaves and savage Indians. It is being honest about what really happened and recognizing two sides to the stories of conflict. One of the appropriate biases is to talk about discovering an empty virgin country when it was already full of people with political and economic systems. Conservative estimates are that there were between nine and fifteen million people on the North American Continent alone who were "discovered" by Columbus. They thought they lived here and had a pretty decent civilization. Archeological digs in the deserts of the mid-west show pretty clear patterns of large cities with underground water systems and sophisticated waste removal systems. The pre-Columbian population of the native American city of Cahokia (near what is now East St. Louis) has clearly been established at about forty to sixty thousand people. I never saw that in a cowboys and Indians movie.
..........— Dr. Walter "Skip" Earl, Methodist minister, former TUUS President. "What Do You Mean "We", White Man?" From "Skip’s Script: The President’s Corner," TUUS Times (Newsletter of the Tidewater Unitarian Universalist Society, Oct. 7, 1991.

[dfigueroa]

Halfway down the stairs is a stair where I sit, there isn't any other stair quite like it.

AA Milne

Sorry, it just came to mind when I saw Poohbear in here

[WT Sharpe]

.....All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. ...Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
..........— François De Salignac De La Mothe-Fénelon (1651-1715), French writer, Archbishop of Cambray. Sermon (1685). Quoted in The Great Quotations by George Seldes.

[Mickey330]

"Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long they live, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman Stoic philosopher


As quoted from "Private Sector" by Brian Haig (p436). Which is a good [fiction] novel about the continuing adventures of an Army JAG, Sean Drummond. Haig has about six books published with Drummond as the main protagonist. I've read - and liked - them all.

Marilyn

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Mickey330

"Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long they live, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman Stoic philosopher


As quoted from "Private Sector" by Brian Haig (p436). Which is a good [fiction] novel about the continuing adventures of an Army JAG, Sean Drummond. Haig has about six books published with Drummond as the main protagonist. I've read - and liked - them all.

Marilyn

Wonderful quote! Thanks for sharing!

BTW, that's from Seneca the Younger's Epistle 22, line 17.

[kennyc]

I've had Sharon Old's latest book of poetry in my to-read pile for a week or so now....just picked it up and randomly flipped to page 36 and was blown away by the first two lines of this poem:

Freezer

When I think of people who kill and eat people,
I think of how lonely my mother was.
....


killer Sharon Olds! Wow!

Excerpts of the book including this poem are available on google books here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=V9U...page&q&f=false