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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| bbce72a | There are no such things as synonyms!" he practically shouted." | Tom Robbins | ||
| 95ab8ac | She had heard of men who rejected the gods, who professed not to believe, but here was a believer who refused to grovel, a man who stood up to Shiva, to Buddha, to the gods of his own race, whoever they might be, who stood right up to them and demanded an accounting for a system in which pleasure must be paid for with pain, a system in which the only triumph over suffering was a hard-won oblivion, a system that offered its captive audience .. | Tom Robbins | ||
| c94e2a9 | the professor had refused surgery for the rupturing aorta that was wiping his personal equation off the blackboard of life. "It is tasteless to prolong life artificially," Einstein had told his physicians." | Tom Robbins | ||
| 8875850 | IF THIS TYPEWRITER CAN'T DO IT, then fuck it, it can't be done. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 24dd800 | Claude could simply not imagine the couples he met at parties or passed on the street ever being locked in carnal embrace. | Tom Robbins | ||
| e758133 | Switters had always seemed to take a both/and approach to life, as opposed to the more conventional and restrictive either/or. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 9159fb0 | Don't you see? The enemy represents Death to 'em. The government propaganda mills paint the enemy as an unfeelin', devourin' monster. So, when we go to war we go on a noble mission, a life-affirming mission, whose object is the destruction o' death. And 'tis precisely because we hate death so much that we're too crazed and irrational to see the irony in it. We hate death so bloody much that we will kill -- and die -- in order to try to halt.. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 6900ce5 | Life still begins in the womb, cocky erections still collapse and lie useless when woman's superior sexuality is finished with them, but men control the divine channels now, and while that control may be largely an illusion, their laws, institutions, and elaborate weaponry exist primarily to maintain it. | Tom Robbins | ||
| ef87601 | THE BEET IS THE MOST INTENSE of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. | Tom Robbins | ||
| faef67a | He was as nervous as a praying mantis at an atheists' picnic... | Tom Robbins | ||
| 2da40c4 | An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil." That is a risk we have to take." | Tom Robbins | ||
| 39b7777 | A true believer may worship Jehovah, Allah, or Brahma, the supernatural beings who allegedly created all life; a true believer may slavishly adhere to a dogma designed theoretically to improve life; yet for life itself--its pleasures, wonders, and delights--he or she holds minimal regard. Music, chess, wine, card games, attractive clothing, dancing, meditation, kites, perfume, marijuana, flirting, soccer, cheeseburgers, any expression of be.. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 1a1cbcb | Seattle, the mild green queen: wet and willing, cedar-scented, and crowned with slough grass, her toadstool scepter tilted toward Asia, her face turned ever upward in the rain; the sovereign who washes her hands more persistently than the most fastidious proctologist. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 0e9ab0a | Dar gorus, beyin egodan daha az enerjik oldugunda cogalan optik bir mantar yuzunden olusur. Siyasete maruz kalinca karmasik bir hal alir. Iyi bir dusunce, siradan dar gorusun filtre ve kompresorlerinden gecirilince ote taraftan olcu ve deger acisindan azalmis olarak cikmakla kalmaz, yeni dogmatik bicimlenimiyle baslangicta niyetlenilenin tersi etkiler uretir. Iste bu sekilde, Isa Mesih'in sevgi dolu dusunceleri, Hiristiyanlik'in kotuluk sac.. | Tom Robbins | ||
| cf32f64 | we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 020402a | since religion bore false witness to the Divine, religion was blasphemy. And once it entered into its unholy alliance with politics, it became the most dangerous and repressive force that the world has ever known. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 4bfd23f | He was as nervous as a praying mantis at an atheists' picnic, but he bore down gently, intensifying his concentration, letting go of his attachment to gravity. | Tom Robbins | ||
| a2be17a | Pious dogma, if allowed to flourish, will always drive magic away. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 2ba9086 | In their secretly nervous hearts, they've convinced themselves, poor little delusional narcissists, that their nation is the most powerful that ever was or even will be, ignoring the still vaster empires that have crumbled in the past, conveniently forgetting that the U.S. has only existed for a mere 225 years, and refusing to consider for a nanosecond that in another 225 years it very well might be gone." *Stubblefield commentary, on patri.. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 7693739 | In actuality, myths are neither fiction nor history. Nor are most myths--and this will surprise some people--an amalgamation of fiction and history. Rather, a myth is something that never happened but is always happening. Myths are the plots of the psyche. They are ongoing, symbolic dramatizations of the inner life of the species, external metaphors for internal events. As Campbell used to say, myths come from the same place dreams come fro.. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 3ff97c0 | South Richmond was a neighborhood of mouse holes, lace curtains, Sears catalogs, measles epidemics, baloney sandwiches- and men who knew more about the carburetor than they knew about the clitoris. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 08faa4b | What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other people's decisions for them? | Tom Robbins | ||
| d3611c6 | Nothing is implied here. Except the possibility that everything is connected. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 503de3a | Maybe the affecting aspect was that Madame Ko's tanukis sparked in an onlooker's muscles a kinetic memory of the innocent freedom of early childhood, when one could let one's body go all akimbo on the slightest whim, could bounce, flop, and skip about in pure corporeal joy without embarrassment, judgement, or restraint. Or maybe there was a more "mature" associations, memories, say, of being falling-down drunk at the company picnic-but no.. | Tom Robbins | ||
| 6f1e509 | Breath Properly, Stay Curious, and Always Eat Your Beets! | humor jitterbug-perfume tom-robbins | Tom Robbins | |
| 8efdca8 | Clearly he needed a father, but some other father, any other father, would have been preferable. | Ann Patchett | ||
| d0cc825 | People associated their emperor with a scale of horror fully comparable with Auschwitz - and perhaps worse. They.,were prepared to believe that living men and women nailed to posts,'*soaked in oil and set on fire were used to light a party, because the public enjoyment of torture was part of the fabric of their state. Death screams were part of the fun. | Terry Jones | ||
| 70cb439 | Trajan became commander of the world's largest army. It was a tradition for any new emperor to kick-start his reign with a little military adventure - and Trajan especially wasn't going to be left out. Kicking ass on the frontiers helped an emperor to stamp his authority on the Empire, built his reputation and kept the army busy. Besides, Trajan took 'delight in war'.19 | Terry Jones | ||
| 98cc734 | The light of reason and civilization was virtually snuffed out by the Barbarian hordes who swarmed across Europe, annihilating everything the Romans had put in place, sacking Rome itself and consigning Europe to the Dark Ages. The Barbarians brought only chaos and ignorance, until the Renaissance rekindled the fires of Roman learning and art. It's a familiar story, but it's codswallop. | Terry Jones | ||
| 0a9af91 | It was the association of Celtic women with barbarism that persuaded the Senate to decree in AD 40 that prostitutes should make their hair blonde - the colour the Romans associated with the Celts. It was the eroticism, how-ever, that persuaded ladies at the highest level of Roman society to put on blonde wigs. | Terry Jones | ||
| d66a30f | One of the most influential imports that Europeans brought back from the crusades was the humble button. This transformed women's fashion as clothes no longer had to be loose enough to be pulled over their heads. Fashionable women were able to emphasize their figures, combining tight corsetry with long, flowing skirts and sleeves. Femininity, of course, was also a weapon that could be used to control men, and the power of noblewomen in the .. | Terry Jones | ||
| e002d98 | We cannot think of ourselves as creatures whose rationality endows us with an especially significant advantage over others--indeed, we cannot think of ourselves as rational creatures at all--unless we think of ourselves as creatures who recognize that facts, and true statements about the facts, are indispensable in providing us with reasons for believing (or for not believing) various things and for taking (or for not taking) various action.. | Harry G. Frankfurt | ||
| e269b1a | It is in this sense that Pascal's statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false. Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it .. | Harry G. Frankfurt | ||
| 5faf61c | Oh, my love,' she said. 'What do the only children do?' 'We'll never have to know. | sisterhood sisters | Ann Patchett | |
| 4692e87 | Ye sey right sooth; this Monk he clappeth lowde. He spak how Fortune covered with a clowde I noot nevere what; and als of a tragedie Right now ye herde, and pardee, no remedie It is for to biwaille ne compleyne That that is doon, and als it is a peyne, As ye han seyd, to heere of hevynesse. Sire Monk, namoore of this, so God yow blesse! Youre tale anoyeth al this compaignye. Swich talkyng is nat worth a boterflye, | Geoffrey Chaucer | ||
| 4840b01 | Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his Breast. Imitate him if you dare, | Jonathan Swift | ||
| 47e95b9 | So that, upon the whole, there must be some kind of subjection due from every man to every man, which cannot be made void by any power, pre-eminence, or authority whatsoever. | Jonathan Swift | ||
| dc12106 | Many hundred large volumes have been published upon this controversy: but the books of the Big-endians have been long forbidden, and the whole party rendered incapable by law of holding employments. | Jonathan Swift | ||
| 177bce0 | Readers may be divided into three classes - the superficial, the ignorant, and the learned, and I have with much felicity fitted my pen to the genius and advantage of each. | Jonathan Swift | ||
| dae2778 | May you live every day of your life." -- Jonathan Swift" | Penny Reid | ||
| cef5b45 | I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child ... to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat. Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves.. | Jonathan Swift | ||
| ee8289d | Like Jonathan Swift, Yeats was always a great renamer of his women, giving them mythical aliases or the names of Sir Walter Scott's heroines, referring to them by Golden Dawn initials, and turning feminine Georgies into masculine Georges. | Olivia Shakespear | ||
| 607a587 | These reasonings will furnish us with an adequate definition of a true critic: that he is a discoverer and collector of writers' faults. Which may be farther put beyond dispute by the following demonstration: that whoever will examine the writings in all kinds, wherewith this ancient sect has honoured the world, shall immediately find, from the whole thread and tenor of them, that the ideas of the authors have been altogether conversant and.. | critics flaws jackasses pens tails tubs writing | Jonathan Swift | |
| 8c85d1a | As soon as I entered the house, my wife took me in her arms, and kissed me; at which, having not been used to the touch of that odious animal for so many years, I fell into a swoon for almost an hour. At the time I am writing, it is five years since my last return to England. During the first year, I could not endure my wife or children in my presence; the very smell of them was intolerable; much less could I suffer them to eat in the same .. | misanthropy spouse yahoo | Jonathan Swift |