|
f21f703
|
Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
8b544b3
|
Fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
e88e5fa
|
The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly... "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
e768e33
|
The emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone loved to hate, and Heaven had blessed us with two of them.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
d951cfd
|
O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!" he bawled. "Take a large bowl," I said. "Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow -- which means 'dry cup' -- and drink to the dregs." Procopius stared at me. "And I will be wis..
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
fa526a0
|
Blessed are the idiots, for they are happiest people on earth.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
357563f
|
Immortality is only for the gods," he whispered. "I wonder how they can stand it."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
5d01313
|
Don't be ashamed of reliving your childhood, Ox, because all of us must do it now and then to maintain our sanity.
|
|
sanity
|
Barry Hughart |
|
b1e8570
|
Occasionally a moderately intelligent thought misses a turn and accidentally enters my mind
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
ab540c0
|
the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
1fbf2f2
|
Master Li, how are we going to murder a man who laughs at axes?" I asked. We are going to , dear boy. Our first order of business will be to find a deranged alchemist, which should not be very difficult. China," said Master Li, "is overstocked with deranged alchemists."
|
|
mad-scientists
china
|
Barry Hughart |
|
41e8916
|
I have never been able to understand why perfectly sensible people waste time being wittily obscure instead of just saying what they want and going on about their business.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
3555623
|
Master Li turned bright red while he scorched the air with the Sixty Sequential Sacrileges with which he had won the all-China Freestyle Blasphemy Competition in Hangchow three years in a row.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
dcde473
|
The mind is a miser," he said. "Nothing is ever thrown away, and it's amazing what you can find if you dig deep enough."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
dd5de64
|
Mystery and terror are the bulwarks of tyranny.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
7987337
|
Our senses are woefully limited. Our brains are but tiny candles flickering in an infinity of darkness. Our only wisdom is to admit that we cannot understand, and since we cannot understand we must do the best we can with faith. which is our only talent. The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it.
|
|
love
|
Barry Hughart |
|
8efe54e
|
everybody knows that the soul of a cat is formed from the composite souls of nine debauched nuns who failed in their vows.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
a749854
|
Show me a quest for personal immortality and I'll show you a path through a slaughterhouse, and the incense of personal divinity is the stench of other people's corpses.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
2019d26
|
I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world. May your villages remain ignorant of tax collectors, and may your sons be many and ugly and strong and willing workers, and may your daughters be few and beautiful and excellent providers of love gifts from eminent families that live very far away, and may your lives be blessed by the beauty that has touched mine. Farewell.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
cd82837
|
Ox, what occupation is most closely linked to insanity?' 'Emperor,' I said promptly.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
c59d6ae
|
Ox, at an early age a Chinese genius gazes at the path that lies ahead and reaches for a wine jar," Master Li said. "Is it any wonder that our greatest men have lurched rather than walked across the landscape as they hiccuped their way into history?" --
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
9366a12
|
Boy, just look at the soul shining through my eyes! It's like a goddamned flower!
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
eaa4390
|
The problem with 'the crown jewel of Chinese literature' [Dream of the Red Chamber] is that it has two thousand pages and an equal number of characters, and the hero is an effeminate ass who should have either been spanked or decapitated, both ends being equally objectionable.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
b478012
|
Coge un cuenco grande, dije. Llenalo con medidas iguales de hechos, fantasias, historia, mitologia, ciencia, supersticion, logica y locura. Oscurece la mezcla con lagrimas amargas, aclarala con carcajadas, viertele tres mil anos de civilizacion, grita kan pei, que significa "copa seca", y bebela hasta las heces." Propocio me clavo los ojos. "?Y sere sabio?", pregunto. "Mejor que eso", le respondi. "Seras chino."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
6f75fe0
|
To cherish perfection is to commit creative suicide, and every true artist knows that a masterpiece is an accident that should be burned.
|
|
perfection
wisdom
barry-hughart
li-kao
master-li-and-number-ten-ox
story-of-the-stone
|
Barry Hughart |
|
c8d3d48
|
I have decided that the problem with poetic justice is that it never knows when to stop.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
9ba05e7
|
A fool will study for twenty or thirty years and learn how to do something, but a wise man will study for twenty or thirty minutes and become an expert. In this world, it isn't ability that counts, but authority.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
899fdbc
|
the emotional health of a village depended upon having a man whom everyone hated.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
2d2cd59
|
Key Rabbit, allow me to bore you with a comparison of your wife and a beautiful woman," I said. "In the morning a beauty must lie in bed for three or four hours gathering strength for another mighty battle with Nature. Then, after being bathed and toweled by her maids, she loosens her hair in the Cascade of Teasing Willows Style, paints her eyebrows in the Distant Mountain Range Style, anoints herself with the Nine Bends of the River Diving..
|
|
humor
beauty-queens
|
Barry Hughart |
|
336b0c0
|
Of course there is a slight chance that somebody might want to give the Celestial Bookmaker a heart attack.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
2150450
|
I shall clasp my hands together and bow to the corners of the world.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
7df880f
|
once there was a great king who gazed down from a tall tower upon a gardener who sang as he worked, and the king cried, 'Ah, to have a life of no cares! If only I could be that gardener.' And the voice of the August Personage of Jade reached out from Heaven and said, 'It shall be so,' and lo, the king was a gardener singing in the sun. In time the sun grew hot and the gardener stopped singing, and a fine dark cloud brought coolness and then..
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
bec10f4
|
Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
a79832f
|
Immortality is a meaningless word unless invulnerability goes with it.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
424940c
|
O great and mighty Master Li, pray impart to me the Secret of Wisdom!' he bawled. A silly smile was sliding down the side of his face like a dripping watercolor, and his eyeballs resembled a pair of pink pigeon eggs that were gently bouncing in saucers of yellow won-ton soup. To my great credit I never batted an eyelash. 'Take a large bowl,' I said. 'Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, lo..
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
5b7ebc9
|
I used to love history class. I can still quote whole passages by heart: "When the emperor entered the Hall of Balming Virtue, a violent wind came from a dark corner, and out of it slithered a giant serpent that coiled around the throne. The emperor fainted, and that night earthquakes struck Loyang, and waves swept the shores, and cranes shrieked in the marshes. On the fifth day of the sixth moon a long trail of black mist floated into the ..
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
f41f531
|
Miser Shen is preparing to spend the night with a goat.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
3aa8954
|
One of the previous possessors of the stone was Chuang Tzu. He had a disciple who spent seven years studying universal energy and then demonstrated his wisdom by walking across the surface of a river and back again, and Chuang Tzu broke into tears. 'Oh, my boy!' he sobbed. 'My poor, poor, boy! You spent seven years of your life learning to do that, and all the while old Meng has been running a ferry not two miles from here, and he only char..
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
5131596
|
Within an hour we had a visit from a gentleman with shifty eyes and an interesting pattern of knife scars where his nose used to be,
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
976480d
|
Ginseng hunters refer to the plant as chang-diang shen, "the root of lightning," because it is believed that it appears only on the spot where a small mountain spring has been dried up by a lightning bolt. After a life of three hundred years the green juice turns white and the plant acquires a soul. It is then able to take on human form, but it never becomes truly human because ginseng does not know the meaning of selfishness."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
84bcb6b
|
Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real...
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
a5aa729
|
Men cannot come any closer to immortality without going insane.
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
98ecbf9
|
He actually seemed to want an answer, so I shrugged and said, "A superior who inherited the job from an uncle rams a barge pole up his ass."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |
|
fbaf383
|
Is it any wonder that our greatest men have lurched rather than walked across the landscape as they hiccupped their way into history?" "Sir, that's the best autobiography I ever heard!" I said enthusiastically."
|
|
|
Barry Hughart |