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[David Wong]

Just the quotes, no discussion.  And please post the quote, don't just refer to it.  Movie monologues, tv quotes, quotes from novels all count:

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In America
Bruce McCulloch

"Some people look at a flag, swaying in the breeze of the White House and say, "That's America." Whenever I see an American flag hung in a window of a basement apartment by guys who have better things to do with their money than buy curtains, I say, "That's America to me."

In America, there are fifty-one states. Or maybe it's eighty by now. Does England count? I'm not quite sure. The one thing I am sure of is, if I'm standing in a warehouse beside a timeclock, and a guy is punching in his best friend who's too hungover to get out of bed, I'm standing in America.

The makeover capital of the world.  The place where every young man has to answer in his heart the question: "What do you love more, your girlfriend, or your car?" Where that young man can buy a beat-up car for three hundred dollars, and spend a thousand dollars insuring it. The land where even a paperboy can option the film rights to a book.

America. In America, a woman on an assembly line works out her overtime in her head to infinity, and at the exact same moment, her husband gets into a car crash because he was looking at a girl in a tube top.

America. A land where spelling doesn't count, but people's pets do. Where else can you get a job riding a whale at Marine Land?

The land where a guy's girlfriend breaks up with him over the phone, so he takes a gun, and kills the principal. Everyone's sad until they get the day off. Next week, another guy, another gal, another, "We can still be friends" phone call. Uh-oh! The assistant principal gets killed. And everyone is sad because they don't get the day off. Because he was only the assistant principal.

America. A land of opportunity. Yes, that great lumbering beast that journeys tirelessly and stops only to eat a clubouse sandwich, pick its teeth with a matchbook cover, and fall asleep with the TV on.

America. A place for Americans."

Apology
The words of Socrates as accounted by Plato

Do not create a disturbance, gentlemen, but abide by my request not to cry out at what I say but to listen, for I think it will be to your advantage to listen, and I am about to say other things at which you will perhaps cry out.  By no means do this.  Be sure that if you kill the sort of man I say I am, you will not harm me more than yourselves.  Neither Meletus nor Anytus can arm me in any way; he could not harm me, for I do not think it is permitted that a better man be harmed by a worse; certainly he might kill me, or perhaps banish or disfranchise me, which he and maybe others think to be great harm, but I do not think so.  I think he is doing himself much greater harm doing what he is doing now, attempting to have a man executed unjustly.  Indeed, men of Athens, I am far from making a defense now on my own behalf, as might be thought, but on yours, to prevent you from wrongdoing by mistreating the god's gift to you by condemning me; for if you kill me you will not easily find another like me.

[Wickbam]

"Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die.

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.

And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness...


...No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

-- John Donne, 1624. Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, No. 17.

[henr3443]

Thomas: Did you ever read the Bible, Catherine?

Catherine: A long time ago.

Thomas: Did you ever notice how in the Bible when God needed to punish someone .. make an example, or whenever God needed a killing .. he sent an angel. Have you ever wondered what a creature like that must be like? Your whole existence praising your God but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?

THE PROPHECY


Thomas:Some people lose their Faith because Heaven showed them too little, but how many people lose their Faith because It showed them too much?

THE PROPHECY

[David Wong]

A man from Uz, having a very, very bad day:

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Then Job replied:

"If only my anguish could be weighed
and all my misery be placed on the scales!

It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas--
no wonder my words have been impetuous.
The arrows of the Almighty are in me,
my spirit drinks in their poison;
God's terrors are marshaled against me.

Does a wild donkey bray when it has grass,
or an ox bellow when it has fodder?

Is tasteless food eaten without salt,
or is there flavor in the white of an egg?

I refuse to touch it;
such food makes me ill.

"Oh, that I might have my request,
that God would grant what I hope for,

that God would be willing to crush me,
to let loose his hand and cut me off!

Then I would still have this consolation--
my joy in unrelenting pain--
that I had not denied the words of the Holy One.

What strength do I have, that I should still hope?
What prospects, that I should be patient?

Do I have the strength of stone?
Is my flesh bronze?

Do I have any power to help myself,
now that success has been driven from me?

A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends,
even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty.

But my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams,
as the streams that overflow

when darkened by thawing ice
and swollen with melting snow,

but that cease to flow in the dry season,
and in the heat vanish from their channels.

Caravans turn aside from their routes;
they go up into the wasteland and perish.

The caravans of Tema look for water,
the traveling merchants of Sheba look in hope.

They are distressed, because they had been confident;
they arrive there, only to be disappointed.

Now you too have proved to be of no help;
you see something dreadful and are afraid.

Have I ever said, `Give something on my behalf,
pay a ransom for me from your wealth,

deliver me from the hand of the enemy,
ransom me from the clutches of the ruthless'?

Teach me, and I will be quiet;
 show me where I have been wrong.
How painful are honest words!

But what do your arguments prove?
Do you mean to correct what I say,
and treat the words of a despairing man as wind?

You would even cast lots for the fatherless
 and barter away your friend.

But now be so kind as to look at me.
Would I lie to your face?

Relent, do not be unjust;
reconsider, for my integrity is at stake.

Is there any wickedness on my lips?
 Can my mouth not discern malice?

Does not man have hard service on earth?
 Are not his days like those of a hired man?

Like a slave longing for the evening shadows,
  or a hired man waiting eagerly for his wages,

so I have been allotted months of futility,
 and nights of misery have been assigned to me.

When I lie down I think, `How long before I get up?'
    The night drags on, and I toss till dawn.

My body is clothed with worms and scabs,
 my skin is broken and festering.

My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
 and they come to an end without hope.

Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath;
 my eyes will never see happiness again.

The eye that now sees me will see me no longer;
 you will look for me, but I will be no more.

As a cloud vanishes and is gone,
 so he who goes down to the grave does not return.

He will never come to his house again;
his place will know him no more.

Therefore I will not keep silent;
I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit,
 I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep,
 that you put me under guard?

When I think my bed will comfort me
 and my couch will ease my complaint,
even then you frighten me with dreams
 and terrify me with visions,
so that I prefer strangling and death,
 rather than this body of mine.

I despise my life; I would not live forever.
 Let me alone; my days have no meaning.

What is man that you make so much of him,
 that you give him so much attention,
that you examine him every morning
 and test him every moment?

Will you never look away from me,
 or let me alone even for an instant?

If I have sinned, what have I done to you,
 O watcher of men?
Why have you made me your target?
  Have I become a burden to you?
Why do you not pardon my offenses
 and forgive my sins?
For I will soon lie down in the dust;
  you will search for me, but I will be no more."

-Job, Chapters 6 and 7, New International Version

[The Bombastic Sophist]

Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630)
The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.

Nightingale, Florence (1820-1910)
[Of her:]
Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed -- and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief -- that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator -- to say nothing of the politician -- too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further; she held that the universe -- including human communities -- was evolving in accordance with a divine plan; that it was man's business to endeavor to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to understand God's thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.
K. Pearson The Life, Letters and Labours for Francis Galton, vol. 2, 1924.

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.
Pensees. 1670.

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us consider the two possibilities. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Hesitate not, then, to wager that He is.
Pensees. 1670.

Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
Reader's Digest, Nov. 1973.

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Men despise religion; they hate it, and they fear it is true.
Pensees. 1670.

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662)
Religion is so great a thing that it is right that those who will not take the trouble to seek it if it be obscure, should be deprived of it.
Pensees. 1670.

I find more marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.
... Isaac Newton

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead?
-John Updike

No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere, and body is in the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an effect arising from the first existence of being, because when any being is postulated, space is postulated.
-Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, statesman, and lawyer.
"Convince" here means "refute."
Essays "Of Atheism".

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist.
The Brothers Karamazov.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, statesman, and lawyer.

As there is an infinite number of possible universes in the ideas of God, and as only one can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, to determine him to one rather than to another.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
German philosopher and mathematician. The first president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, he discovered calculus (independently of Newton) and contributed to the sciences of mechanics, optics, and logic, and to probability theory.

The supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot have chosen but the best...So it may be said that if this were not the best of all possible worlds, God would not have created any.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The soul follows its own laws, and the body its own likewise, and they accord by virtue of the harmony pre-established among all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

(*edited by DW*)

[hektik]

"Perseverance is an important word for anyone in life. Living each day. Life is fragile."
- Chuck Schuldiner (RIP)

General George S. Patton's Speech to the Third Army - the Unabridged Edition

I found the real speech, not the movie version.

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Somewhere in England June 5th, 1944

"Be seated."

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.

You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken shit drilling." That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking! We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do.

My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!

All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits.'

Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds.

And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts.

Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.

Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Someday I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton.' We want to get the hell over there." The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cock suckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.

War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!

I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.

There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, 'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a- Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!'

"That is all."

[BambisGhost]

Winston Churchill. July 4th, 1940.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.


Sir Richard Harris (actor) being carried from the Savoy hotel on a stretcher, 2 hours before his death, to a party of American tourists who were checking in...

"It was their food that did it"

[Honest Abe]

from The Strawberry Statement by James Simon Kunen

       I had gotten into a situation regarding the physical defense of my honor, which is another way of saying my pride, which is another way of saying my ego. Yesterday I called Bill, a long-time friend and now spiritual adviser, and he promised he'd have an answer for me today. It was a two-part answer.
       
Part I. Three things in ascending importance are: 1) thoughts 2) words 3) actions.
Part II. None of these things are of any importance whatsoever.
       
That straightened me right out.

[BambisGhost]

from Charles Bukowski

"Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities."

[Easy Rhino]

"Coffee is for Closers" from Glengarry Glen Ross:

http://www.whysanity.net/monos/ggr2.html

[Tree]

"An Atheist loves himself and his fellow man instead of a god. An Atheist accepts that heaven is something for which we should work now -- here on earth -- for all men together to enjoy. An Atheist accepts that he can get no help through prayer, but that he must find in himself the inner conviction and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and to enjoy it. An Atheist accepts that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment."
~Murray v. Curlett, 1959

[sephira]

The drunkenness of youth has passed
like a fever,
And yet I saw many things,
Seeing my glory in the days of my glory.
I thought my power eternal
And the days of my life
fixed surely in the years,
but a whisper came to me
from Him who dies not.

I called my tributary kings together
And those who were proud rulers under me,
I opened the boxes of my treasure
to them, saying:
"Take hills of gold, mountains of silver,
And give me one more day upon the earth."
But they stood silent,
Looking upon the ground;
So that I died
And Death came to sit upon my throne.

O sons of men
You see a stranger upon the road,
You call to him and he does not stop.
He is your life
Walking towards time,
Hurrying to meet the kings of India
and China.

O sons of men
You are caught in the web of the world
And the spider Nothing waits behind it.
Where are the men with towering hopes?
They have changed places with owls,
Owls who lived in tombs
And now inhabit a palace.

- One Thousand and One Nights


War, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.

When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice--is often the means of their regeneration.

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

- JS Mill


Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djan karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us.

- Harlan Ellison


As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

 - Christopher Dawson


Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

[Horton The Elephant]

"There's only us, there's only this.  Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.  No other road, no other day.  No day but today."  --Jonathan Larson, Rent


I know it's cheesy, but it gets me every time:

"Good morning.. Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world, and you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom...Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution...but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"  --Independence Day



"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd."  --William Shakespeare, Hamlet

[CCJames]

"Without music, life would be a mistake" - Nietzsche

[Wodowick]

King Missile - It's Saturday

I want to be different, like everybody else I want to be like
I want to be just like all the different people
I have no further interest in being the same,
because I have seen difference all around,
and now I know that that's what I want
I don't want to blend in and be indistinguishable,
I want to be a part of the different crowd,
and assert my individuality along with the others
who are different like me
I don't want to be identical to anyone or anything
I don't even want to be identical to myself
I want to look in the mirror and wonder,
"who is that person? I've never seen that person before;
I've never seen anyone like that before."
I want to call into question the very idea that
identity can be attached
I want a floating, shifting, ever changing persona:
Invisibility and obscurity,
detachment from the ego and all of it's pursuits.
Unity is useless
Comformity is competitive and divisive and leads only to
stagnation and death.
If what I'm saying doesn't make any sense,
that's because sense can not be made
It's something that must be sensed
And I, for one, am incensed by all this complacency
Why oppose war only when there's a war?
Why defend the clinics only when they're attacked?
Why are we always reactive?
Let's activate something
Let's fuck shit up
Whatever happened to revolution for the hell of it?
Whatever happened to protesting nothing in particular, just
protesting cause it's Saturday and there's nothing else to do?

[Shore Dude]

Daddy, by Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of *you*,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
and drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always *knew* it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

[Donal]

Henry V by Shakespear:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
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 Crispin'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 remember'd.
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 remember'd;
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 accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

[Anatomica]

"The creation of a polite word always signifies a major fucking."

Kyle Baker, Why I Hate Saturn