One for Zuccotti Park

"...beauty is / a defiance of authority..." -- William Carlos Williams, Paterson

The Last Post (for a while, anyway)

After 125 epigrams in 125 days, I'm calling "Hurry up please it's time" on this blog. In the future, I might add an occasional post from time to time, but this is my last daily post, a quote from Kafka that sums up this entire blog:

"In a world of lies the lie is not removed from the world by means of its opposite, but only by means of a world of truth." -- Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks


F.Y.I.  I will continue to blog on literature and other things at Mindful Pleasures.

de la mort...

"Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily." -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

Pascal on September 11 (and other atrocities too numerous to mention)

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions." -- Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Picasso on art and truth

"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand." -- Pablo Picasso, Statement, 1923

On radical statement

"We will know we have succeeded in saying something that matters when we are told that it won't be tolerated." -- Curtis White, The Middle Mind

Freud, religion and cultural criticism

"Having recognized religious doctrines as illusions, we are at once faced by a further question: may not other cultural assets of which we hold a high opinion and by which we let our lives be ruled be of a similar nature? Must not the assumptions that determine our political regulations be called illusions as well? and is it not the case that in our civilization the relations between the sexes are disturbed by an erotic illusion or a number of such illusions? And once our suspicion has been aroused, we shall not shrink from asking too whether our conviction that we can learn something about external reality through the use of observation and reasoning in scientific work--whether this conviction has any better foundation. Nothing ought to keep us from directing our observation to our own selves or from applying our thought to criticism of itself." -- Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

Philip Roth on American consciousness

"It's not as though Marx or Freud or Darwin or Stalin or Hitler or Mao had never happened--it's as though Sinclair Lewis had not happened. It's, he thought, as though Babbitt had never been written. It's as though not even that most basic level of imaginative thought had been admitted into consciousness to cause the slightest disturbance." -- Philip Roth, The Human Stain

Kant the woodman

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made." -- Immanuel Kant

Triangular Theology

"If triangles made a god, they would give him three sides." -- Montesquieu

On Greatness

"The glory of great men should always be measured against the means they used to acquire it." -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

A Contemporary Existentialist

"The possibility of freedom first arises when one knows one is living a lie." -- Walter A. Davis, Inwardness and Existence

Frankly, I'd rather worship Falstaff

"...the Western worship of God--by Jews, Christians and Moslems--is the worship of a literary character..." -- Harold Bloom, The Western Canon

Adorno Revises Himself (sort of)

"To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." -- Theodor W. Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society," Prisms

"Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after Auschwitz you could no longer write poems. But it is not wrong to raise the less cultural question whether after Auschwitz you can go on living..." -- Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics

Robert Frost's Reply to Pascal

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread." -- Blaise Pascal, Pensees


"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places."

                             -- Robert Frost, "Desert Places"

How to Survive in the Modern World

"What matters finally is not the world's judgment of oneself but one's own judgment of the world." -- Gore Vidal, United States : Essays 1952-1992

Blowing the Christian Fundamentalist Mind

"An oak tree and I are made of the same stuff. If you go far enough back, we have a common ancestor." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

On Love and War, II

"Love is very very brave." -- William T. Vollmann, You Bright and Risen Angels

On Love and War, I

"They are in love. Fuck the war." -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

Bunuel on Surrealism

"The real purpose of surrealism was not to create a new literary, artistic, or even philosophical movement, but to explode the social order, to transform life itself." -- Luis Bunuel, My Last Sigh

Wilde's answer to Hamlet: on conscience and cowardice

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same things... Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all." -- Lord Henry Wotton in Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann

"This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Willie's Words on Worship

"Were there anything worthy of worship, then, we should ignore it; look at it, if we must, cock-eyed; keep clear; never let on; invent no curses which employ and preserve its name; await the time when the vines of all our lives will grow over and hide it so it may lie safe like a city left empty and forgotten, silent inside us, solely in the deeps of us, so we might wonder about it like some wonder about Atlantis and, lost and alone, so it may remain worthy of worship, and a star shining in the midst of our dirty earth." -- William H. Gass, Tests of Time

Life and Fiction

"All we can do in the face of that ineluctable defeat called life is to try to understand it. That--that is the raison d'etre of the art of the novel." -- Milan Kundera, The Curtain

Kafka on Freud et al

"Psychology is the reading of a mirror-writing, which means that it is laborious, and as regards the always correct result, it is richly informative; but nothing has really happened." -- Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Examination Time

"In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer." -- Oscar Wilde

Vidal on the proper use of the words 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual'

"Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. Those sexual acts are entirely natural; if they were not, no one would perform them." -- Gore Vidal, "Sex is Politics," United States: Essays, 1952-1992.

Grayling on religion

"There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity." -- A. C. Grayling, Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life Without God

According to Wilde...

"People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity." -- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"

Common sense as dumbing down

"Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring." -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Wilde's Wickedness

"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others." -- Oscar Wilde

Kundera's Art of the Novel

"The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become." -- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Reason Why

"We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." -- Henry James, "The Middle Years"

On History and Literary History

"A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only the names of victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone." -- Julien Gracq

Gass on martyrdom and militarism

"Some may still be impatient to die for the emperor, but the chief point in life is to die of something and never for something if it can be helped." -- William H. Gass, Tests of Time

The only sacred thing

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Kafka on Suicide

"The suicide is the prisoner who sees a gallows being erected in the prison yard, mistakenly thinks it is the one intended for him, breaks out of his cell in the night, and goes down and hangs himself." -- Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Wilde on the critics of Realism and Romanticism

"The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass." -- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Ruination and Rumination

"Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate" -- William Shakespeare, Sonnet 64

Obsession: A Seductive New Fragrance from Luis Bunuel

"Obviously, I like obsessions, my own as well as other people's, because they make it easier to deal with life; I feel sorry for people who don't have any." -- Luis Bunuel, My Last Sigh

A Structuralist at the Louvre

"A Structuralist is a person who looks at a Vermeer and says, 'Nice frame.' " -- Anonymous

Picasso on Computers

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." -- Pablo Picasso

Rushdie's Challenge

"New images urgently needed to be made. Images for a godless world. Until the language of irreligion caught up with the holy stuff, until there was a sufficient poetry and iconography of godlessness, these sainted echoes would never fade, would retain their problematic power..." -- Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown

Sagan says it loud and clear

"Evolution is a fact, not a theory." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, final fragment

"The time for me hasn't come yet: some are born posthumously." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part penultimate

"Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXIX

"Without music, life would be an error." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXVIII

"...all gods are poets' parables, poets' prevarications." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXVII

"A joke is the epigram on the death of a feeling." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Mixed Opinions and Maxims, quoted in The Portable Nietzsche

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXVI

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXV

"To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Notes, 1875," quoted in The Portable Nietzsche

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXIV

"The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men..." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Fragment of a Critique of Schopenhauer," quoted in The Portable Nietzsche

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXIII

"The "German spirit" is for me bad air..." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXII

"It is with Germans almost as it is with women: one never fathoms their depths; they don't have any, that is all. They aren't even shallow." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

(Blogger's Note: I'm not certain who should feel more insulted by this, Germans or women. Probably women. Especially German women.)

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XXI

"God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers--at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!" -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XX

"Philosophy, as I have so far understood and lived it, means living voluntarily among ice and high mountains--seeking out everything strange and questionable in existence, everything so far placed under a ban by morality." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XIX

"Scholars spend all of their energies on saying Yes and No, on criticism of what others have thought--they themselves no longer think." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XVIII

"Perhaps I am even envious of Stendhal? He took away from me the best atheistical joke that precisely I might have made: "God's only excuse is that he does not exist." " -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XVII

"Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time--on which we are burned, as it were, with green wood--compels us philosophers to descend into our ultimate depths and to put aside all trust, everything good-natured, everything that would interpose a veil, that is mild, that is medium--things in which formerly we may have found our humanity. I doubt that such pain makes us 'better'; but I know that it makes us more profound." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XVI

"Those thinkers in whom all stars move in cyclic orbits are not the most profound. Whoever looks into himself as into vast space and carries galaxies in himself, also knows how irregular all galaxies are; they lead into the chaos and labyrinth of existence." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XV

"Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XIV

"Liquor and Christianity, the European narcotics." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XIII

"When will all these shadows of God cease to darken our minds?" -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XII

"Almost everything we call 'higher culture' is based on the spiritualization and intensification of cruelty..." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part XI

"Every philosophy also conceals a philosophy; every opinion is also a hiding-place, every word also a mask." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part X

"Ultimately one loves ones desires and not that which is desired." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part IX

"To talk about oneself a great deal can also be a means of concealing oneself." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part VIII

"The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part VII

"What we do in dreams we also do when we are awake: we invent and fabricate the person with whom we associate--and immediately forget we have done so." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part VI

"...behind a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man, and behind a mediocre artist often--a very remarkable man." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part V

"Mature manhood: That means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part IV

"He who despises himself still nonetheless respects himself as one who despises" -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part III

"A man with genius is unendurable if he does not also possess at least two other things: gratitude and cleanliness." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

The Month of Quoting Nietzsche, part II

"The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reaches up into the topmost summit of his spirit." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

A New Year's Resolution

"God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. --And we--we still have to vanquish his shadow, too." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science