Favorite quote(s) from a book

[ftf]

Policy research is always in some degree both reactive and parasitic. Careers and reputations are made as our research flourishes upon the
rotting remains of the Keynsian Welfare State. Both those inside the policy discourse and those whose professional identities are established through antagonism towards the
discourse benefit from the uncertainties and tragedies of reform. Critical researchers. apparently safely ensconced in the moral high ground, nonetheless make a livelihood
trading in the artifacts of misery and broken dreams of practitioners. None of us remains untainted by the incentives and disciplines of the new moral economy.

Made me think.

[merlincustom1]

From The Road by Cormac McCarthy:

In that long ago somewhere very near this place he’d watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air.

[Richard]

The Stranger by Camus:

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of all hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe."

[YoKev]

"It is the part of wisdom never to revisit a wilderness, for the more golden the lily, the more certain that someone has gilded it. To return not only spoils a trip, but tarnishes a memory. It is only in the mind that shining adventure remains forever bright."

Aldo Leopold- A Sand County Almanac

[madsciencenow]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

Brautigan was the master of the one-liner as poetry (or is that vice-versa?)

"I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid."

this made me laugh a ton (for like the past 15 minutes) and I'm still laughing. Thanks!

[David Tollefson]

If the engine is hot enough, anything will burn.
-- Once a Runner, John Parker, Jr.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
-- Dune, Frank Herbert

[kingpin75s]

So it goes.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

[choke]

From Woodcraft and Camping by Nessmuk (George W. Sears):

For brick and mortar breed filth and crime,
With a pulse of evil that throbs and beats;
And men are withered before their prime
By the curse paved in with the lanes and streets.
And lungs are poisoned and shoulders bowed,
In the smothering reek of mill and mine;
And death stalks in on the struggling crowd—
But he shuns the shadow of oak and pine.

[gdw]

“I would prefer not to.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

[metalheart]

From: A Study in Scarlet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

[kppolich]

“I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
The Great Gatsby

[bocobiking]

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The Great Gatsby

[Louis]

Technically not a book, but close enough:

“WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”

― William Shakespeare, Henry V

[csm]

“Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through it and Other Stories

Just about any hobby or pastime can be substituted for "fishermen."



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[sg8357]

"This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother’s side.
I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them.
Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply."

RADM R.A. Heinlein