While I’m thinking about stuff with nothing actually sticking in the mind as particularly worthy of another difficult “essay” that says what I want to say but produces little except frustration and dissatisfaction, I thought I’d throw out some disparate quotes from other stuff I’ve read, or some I’ve pretended to read. Let’s have a look…
Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations. — Alan Watts
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence. – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The great fallacy of childhood is the belief that grownups must know what they are doing. There is no evidence for this in the historical record. You would do better by grabbing a government at random from the denizens of a rural high school. Democracy brings us twerps, psychopaths, ambitious ciphers, short men, and well-born drones. They are what they are. They can’t change any more than a leper can change his spots. I need some really strong drugs or someone to hit me on the head with a rubber mallet. Opium is the religion of the masses. Let us pray. – Fred Reed
What comes after capitalism in its final crisis, now under way, is, I suggest, not socialism or some other defined social order, but a lasting interregnum – no new world system equilibrium…but a prolonged period of social entropy or disorder – Wolfgang Streeck
If Trump’s rise represented an actual substantive rebellion, that at least would suggest a revolution in consciousness. But it’s not that serious. There’s no content behind it. Trump is just a symbol of negation, a big middle finger to the establishment. He’s a TV show for a country transfixed by spectacle. (Sean Illing – Vox)
America was a dictatorship of ideas, a consumerist ethos that propelled the machinery of capitalism through the instrumentalization of popular culture (http://www.vox.com/conversations/2016/12/27/14038406/donald-trump-frankfurt-school-stuart-jeffries-marxism-critical-theory)
They’d never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they’d been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love. — Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz.
Resistance starts with plain speaking.
Fake news is propaganda.
The powerful demanding apologies from artists is censorship.
Business dealings while in office are corruption.
Threatening protesters and petitioners is authoritarianism.
Declaring a minority an internal enemy and calling for militarized unity is fascism.
Everything starts with naming these things in public.
(from Adventures and Musings of an Arch Druidess)
I am reading the book of human sins. When I’m done I’ll cast it into the fire and all their sins will be gone. (“The Island” – movie)
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. – Noam Chomsky
Conventions go a long way to validating superiority. If we were all guided by truth alone, none of us could accept anything on face value. We would each become investigative journalist, historian and detective wrapped as one. – Exo-politician, WordPress
It is better to be alone than to become a person that loses his soul to the fear of loneliness. ― Shannon L. Alder
You have to understand that most of the people out there are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so helplessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. (Morpheus, The Matrix)
When love is not madness, it is not love. — Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Not a single star will be left in the night. / The night will not be left. / I will die and, with me, / the weight of the intolerable universe. / I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, / the continents and faces. / I shall erase the accumulated past. / I shall make dust of history, dust of dust. / Now I am looking on the final sunset. / I am hearing the last bird. / I bequeath nothingness to no one — Jorge Luis Borges, “The Suicide”
God’s only excuse is that he does not exist. — Stendhal
As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods, / They kill us for their sport. — William Shakespeare
You have to be ready to be anyone in moments of danger or love. — Lidia Yuknavitch
[…] there is a human capacity called imagination. It’s the wild card in the deck. It’s the greatest wild card ever known. It is, in fact, the cutting edge of consciousness. It invents new realities. It releases gigantic amounts of buried energy. And it’s entirely an individual proposition. – Jon Rappoport
What could be more free, more independent, more unique, more creative than individual consciousness that has a non-material basis? – Jon Rappoport
…there’ll always be money and whores and drunkards / down to the last bomb, / but as God said, / crossing his legs, / I see where I have made plenty of poets / but not so very much / poetry. — Charles Bukowski
We can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But […] our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t. — Dylan Thomas
~Burning Woman~ 
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree a that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body avenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is pride’s cloak.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eyes of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate, Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, a spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool & the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin’d.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer’d you to impose upon him, knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fool’s reproach! It is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs, so the priest lays his curse on
the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.
Enough! or Too much.
William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
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That guy must have known about mushrooms…
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He was born that way. One of the few people who lived who saw things as they really are. 1757 – 1826.
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I was joking about the mushroom comment! Blake, yes interesting character. Did he see things as they really are, or did he see things his way? I think the “mystery” of the cosmos designed to test the level of consciousness and awareness of evolving sentients is that nothing is ever as it really is. The concept of “god” was invented for the test, then given to the lowly Earthians to see if they would realize philosophically that the concept one all-powerful, eternal, omniscient god is untenable. Why? Because no one could describe “god” exactly like anyone else yet of all “things” that should be as they really are, nothing could be more so than God! So it goes. What is consciousness? What is awareness? How does it begin, where does it end? Why do I exist? Blake didn’t describe things “as they really are” in my opinion, but only “as they really were for him.” Long ago when I discovered Blake I tried to follow his visions only to find out that they always morphed into my own, and went off on totally different tangents. We make things as the really are, mostly collectively which makes them terribly bad, and sometimes individually, which is art, creativity. Collectivism is the death of creativity, hence why Earthians are destroying themselves and their world. Those destroyers “know” how things really are, don’t they.
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Aye, madam, I have said many the time, if the doors of perception were fully cleans’d, we should see things as they are, Infinite. Those ‘destroyers’ of whom yE speak are but the foul minions of NoBaDaddy, and it is they who hold sway over yE mass of our race. I took therefore no wealth of their Wisdom So-called, but to mine own vision remaineth steadfast. In using the name Christ I speak not of that one in the legend-books, for the Christ they see is my religion’s enemy. Rather, yE Imagination is yE Christ of God, and God noneother than thine own self in innocence.
When I was but a lad, I saw angels dancing in the tops of trees, and was duly thrashed by my Father for having reported it so. Yet again, when a lad, I saw the Eye of Old NoBaDaddy peering into my window, to terrify me, and so he did; yet I refused his slavery the entire of my life.
Much time I spent in the company of those learned men to whom I had access, to appertain whether my vision was unique unto me, or not. Among the Platonists, and among the Hermeticists, there had been some few during the Ages, but were sullied all by their Notions of What Should Be, and not What Is.
yrs
Wm Blake
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Thanks Willie, I enjoyed reading that!!! 🙂
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Pingback: Disparate Quotes | Tales from the Conspiratum
Whatever “pingbacks” are, thanks!
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Annndd I don’t agree with some, but I agree with others.
Good selection!
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Thanks Roger; of course it’s never about agreement but about keeping our eyes open and senses alive! The one I have to disagree with, of course, is Stendhal’s “God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.” I love that argument, especially with die-hard Darwinists. It takes more faith to deny the existence of God than to accept it. It’s a funny thing, that people can believe in democracy where ostensibly the majority has to be “right” simply because it is the majority, but they would deny same to majority rule in other areas. To me, whether I personally choose to believe in God or not, the existence of God is guaranteed by a solid majority. I do like the fact that increasingly that solid majority has opted to allow me to not participate in their rituals. Perhaps, at least in our somewhat more liberal worlds, their is now more democracy in religion than in government.
Just thought I’d throw that in the pot as its still simmering…
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Folk do seem to spend an unnecessary amount of time not explaining what they believe but why someone else is wrong and apparently dangerous to believe something else. It can get quite hysterical at times
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True. Am I one of those, I be wonderin’…
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I think it’s one of those problems with being Human….
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“Spectacle is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle
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An interesting quote, Tom. Thanks for the comment.
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