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daf66de
|
That's why Priscus is wisest of all: silence cannot be judged. Silence masks all things or no thing. Only Priscus can tell us what his silence conceals, but since he won't, we suspect him great.
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Gore Vidal |
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318aaa1
|
T]here is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices, and what anyone does with a willing partner is of no social or cosmic significance.
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Gore Vidal |
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b0ca288
|
Is it not better for a man never to have been born?" "Certaintly not" The response was brisk. "Just to be able to study the sky is reason enough to be alive." "Unfortunately, I can't see the sky." "Then listen to music."
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Gore Vidal |
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d8b59ca
|
It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.
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unattractiveness
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Gore Vidal |
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20be689
|
Seward appreciated the honest and open way that Stanton lied; it was the hallmark of the truly great lawyer, and demonstrated a professional mastery not unlike his own.
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Gore Vidal |
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b35a603
|
ybdw 'n kthyryn mn ljnwbyyn yktbwn . rbm bsbb lHrb l'hly@ . yjb lHSwl `l~ m's@ lky nHSl `l~ 'db .
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Gore Vidal |
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f65845a
|
d wHydan w s`ydan , m` thlth@ kw'wsin mwDw`@in 'mmh `l~ lTwlh : thnn frGn , wwHd nSf mmlw w `lyh athr 'Hmr shfh . rtWaba lkw'ws ltushkWila mthlthan , lknh Hyn Hwla n yrtWibh `l~ shkli mrbWi`in fshl . lmdh ? l'nWa thlth@ kw'ws yjb 'n tkwn qdr@an `l~ tshkyli mrbWa` . w sh`r blHzn .
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Gore Vidal |
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8187939
|
As for the human case, the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a luminous slide, and the fall of a republic or the rise of an empire--so significant to those involved--are not detectable upon the slide even were there an interested eye to behold that steadily proliferating species which would either end in time or, with luck, become something else, since change is the nature of life, and its hope.
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Gore Vidal |
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37c894f
|
It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time--now, too, I suppose--actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.
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Gore Vidal |
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54837cb
|
Love and hate are so confused in your savage minds and the vibrations of the one are so very like those of the other that I can't always distinguish. You see, we neither love nor hate in my world. We simply have hobbies.
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humanity
love
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Gore Vidal |
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16d9ffc
|
To turn life into words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round
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writing
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Gore Vidal |
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affcf56
|
Whether he knows it or not, the middle-income American is taxed as though he were living in a socialist society.
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Gore Vidal |
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9ba83f8
|
I have never visited any city in the world where I was not told that I just missed the golden age. I seem never to be on time." Cyrus Sitema"
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Gore Vidal |
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29b0c85
|
As for our Ouija-board Supreme Court, it would be nice if they would take time off from holding seances with the long-dead founders, whose original intent so puzzles them, and actually examine what the founders wrought, the Constitution itself and the Bill of Rights.
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supreme-court
constitution
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Gore Vidal |
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9578e2e
|
we no longer live in a nation, but in a Homeland.
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Gore Vidal |
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619010d
|
But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and th..
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Gore Vidal |
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763e13a
|
A court is the most depressing place on earth. Wherever there is a throne, one may observe in rich detail every folly and wickedness of which man is capable, enameled with manners and gilded with hypocrisy.
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|
355
rulership
hypocrisy
monarchy
court
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Gore Vidal |
|
8056776
|
In 1970, I wrote in the New York Times, of all uncongenial places, It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect--good or bad--the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don't say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people ..
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Gore Vidal |
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ea311d7
|
That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb.
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Gore Vidal |
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602fe6f
|
I believe in justice, I want redress for all wrongs done, I want the good life-if such a thing exists-accessible to all. Yet, emotionally, I would be only too happy to become world dictator, if only to fulfill my mission: the destruction of the last vestigial traces of traditional manhood in the race to realign the sexes, thus reducing population, while increasing human happiness and preparing humanity for its next stage.
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Gore Vidal |
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ba8db87
|
I am afraid that as people grow old there is a tendency for them to believe that what the past *ought* to have been it was.
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|
aging
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Gore Vidal |
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6d4c4e6
|
None of this is quite true but Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist.
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Gore Vidal |
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4950047
|
All over Greece, strangers of a certain age will greet one another with the question, "And where were you and what did you do when Xerxes came to Marathon?" Then they exchange lies."
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Gore Vidal |
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43ba57c
|
It was of course Jefferson's gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the "right" answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power."
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Gore Vidal |
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ae9c95b
|
Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on.
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Gore Vidal |
|
e13dde8
|
Leggett feels that to be excitingly right in general is better than to be dully accurate in particular. That is why he is such an effective journalist.
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|
Gore Vidal |
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6f6029f
|
In politics, as in love, opposites attract, and the misunderstandings that ensue tend to be as bitter and, as in love, as equally terminal.
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Gore Vidal |
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4eacd50
|
After all, as educated men, we should realize that myths always stand for other things. They are toys for children teething. The man knows that the toy horse is not a true horse but merely suggests the idea of a horse to a baby's mind. When we pray before the statue of Zeus, though the statue contains him as everything must, the statue is not the god himself but only a suggestion of him. Surely, as fellow priests, we can be frank with one a..
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Gore Vidal |
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4603f37
|
I realize," said Sumner, "that the press is hardly reliable." Lincoln turned from the window; suddenly, he grinned. "Oh, yes, they are. They lie. And then they re-lie. So they are nothing if not re-lie-able."
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Gore Vidal |
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15165ef
|
Now you may not know this"--Lincoln shut his eyes--"but when I first ran for the Illinois legislature, I came out, more or less, for female suffrage; not exactly the most popular position to take back then, and in that part of the world." "It is still not the most popular issue anywhere in the world, thank God." "Well, Mrs. Fremont comes to see me late at night--right off the cars from the West--and threatens me to my face with an uprising ..
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Gore Vidal |
|
f81d5b8
|
As long as any group within the society deliberately maintains its identity it is, or should be, a fair target for satire--both for its own good and for the society's.
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Gore Vidal |
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fc038b0
|
say very mildly, we have only one political party in the U.S., the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat.
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Gore Vidal |
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31692be
|
Now-a-days lower Broadway is blocked with traffic at this hour and everyone walks; even the decrepit John Jacob Astor can be seen crawling along the street like some ancient snail, his viscous track the allure of money. Instead
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Gore Vidal |
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203a21a
|
Howard's] eyes were open and very clear. I'd forgotten what a beautiful gray they were--illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive, and he was watching me, consciously, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should know tell us, does not immediately shut down. So we stared at each other at the end... 'Can you..
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Gore Vidal |
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75b2b48
|
After acquiring Texas, Polk deliberately started a war with Mexico because, as he later told the historian George Bancroft, we had to acquire California. Thanks to Polk, we did.
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Gore Vidal |
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d567999
|
Marietta, I do not believe in ghosts, astrology, palmistry, graphology, John Cage, love or God. I do believe in the moment, in the pleasures of the flesh, of conversation, of art-at least for the few so minded. I believe . . .
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Gore Vidal |
|
701ecbe
|
We do not want to old to be sharper than we. It is bad enough that they were there first, and got the best things.
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|
age
|
Gore Vidal |
|
5b21939
|
Like the rest of us, Constantius was many men in the body of one.
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Gore Vidal |
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25fd523
|
Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse.
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|
christianity
athanasian
christian-hypocrisy
holy-war
arianism
brotherhood
julian
heresy
heretics
hypocrisy
|
Gore Vidal |
|
1107d30
|
But like so many others nowadays, poor Julian wanted to believe that man's life is profoundly more significant than it is. His sickness was the sickness of our age. We want so much not to be extinguished at the end that we will go to any length to make conjuror-tricks for one another simply to obscure the bitter, secret knowledge that it is our fate not to be.
|
|
death
religion
priscus
afterlife
resurrection
mystery
mysticism
|
Gore Vidal |
|
cf1362a
|
The failure of Hellenism has been, largely, a matter of organization. Rome never tried to impose any sort of worship upon the countries it conquered and civilized; in fact, quite the contrary, Rome was eclectic. All religions were given an equal opportunity and even Isis--after some resistance--was worshipped at Rome. As a result we have a hundred important gods and a dozen mysteries. Certain rites are--or were--supported by the state becau..
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|
religion
philosophy
362
eclecticism
ecumenism
formalism
mystery-religions
hellenism
julian
paganism
|
Gore Vidal |
|
623f36f
|
of all this world's creatures, the author is the vainest,
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Gore Vidal |
|
d6a34a6
|
In the twentieth century, science has been everything and the arts almost nothing by comparison. As a result, many artists now pretend to be scientists. They try to imitate the strategies of science. Paintings that talk. Sculpture that swims. Books that turn to ash. New formulas just like the scientist. But that isn't science of course, nor is it art. Just the end of the road.
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|
science
|
Gore Vidal |
|
780008f
|
Wilson was very much school of Montaigne. Like Montaigne, he was not exactly misogynistic but he felt that the challenge of another male mind was the highest sort of human exchange while possession of a beautiful woman was also of intense importance to him.
|
|
misogyny
|
Gore Vidal |