Nobody with four Aces wants a New Deal.

From Davos 2012 by way of The New Yorker of March 5, 2012

If I acted, then the faith would surely follow.  After that, I would believe because I had acted.

John le Carre, Absolute Friends

How could anybody, let alone a man like me, expect to blend in in a land where the people are so very, very small.

T. Coraghessan Boyle, "Los Gigante" in The New Yorker of February 6, 2012.

Most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

They were people who had no doubt whatsoever that the more narrow-minded they became, the closer they got to heaven.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Nobody's easier to fool than the person who is convinced that he is right.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

He knew that bad premonitions have a far higher accuracy rate than good ones.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on,
and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.


William Shakespeare (The Tempest) as quoted by
Stephen Greenblatt, Will In The World

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed
Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
   'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 62

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self's better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself, and not me too. 

William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2

Not only that anything should be, but that this very thing should be, is mysterious!  Philosophy stares, but brings no reasoned solution, for from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.

Wiliam James, as quoted by Geoffrey O'Brien in The New York Review of July 14, 2011

Ingrate, he had of me all he could have;
I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood,
Though free to fall.

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III.

Life [has become] that strange experience in which you're zooming along a freeway and suddenly realize that you haven't paid any attention to driving for the last fifteen minutes, yet you're still alive and didn't crash.

Douglas Coupland, as quoted by Pico Iyer in "The McLuhan Galaxy", New York Review of Books (May 26, 2011)

True ambivalence: not feeling unsure, but feeling opposing extremes of conviction at once....ambivalence holds more information than any single emotion.

Rivka Galchen, "Dream Machine" The New Yorker (May 2, 2011)

In attitude and proportion the graceful majesty of the figure is unsurpassed. The effect is completed by the countenance, where on the perfection of youthful godlike beauty there dwells the consciousness of triumphant power.

Thomas Bulfinch, commenting on the Apollo Belvedere in Bulfinch's Mythology.

An open mind is okay, but you should fill it first.

JG, said in class.

Old age is the only stage of life we never grow out of, and can never look back on.

Jill Lepore, Twilight, The New Yorker (March 14, 2011)

The coat-of-arms of the human race ought to consist of a man with an axe on his shoulder proceeding toward a grindstone.

We do no benevolences whose first benefit is not for ourselves.

Mark Twain, Reflections on a Letter and a Book, The Autobiography of Mark Twain.

Paige and I always meet on effusively affectionate terms; and yet he knows perfectly well that if I had his nuts in a steel-trap I would shut out all human succor and watch that trap till he died.

Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain.