If I were to construct a God I would furnish Him with some way and qualities and characteristics which the Present lacks. He would not stoop to ask for any man's compliments, praises, flatteries; and He would be far above exacting them. I would have Him as self-respecting as the better sort of man in these regards.
He would not be a merchant, a trader. He would not buy these things. He would not sell, or offer to sell, temporary benefits of the joys of eternity for the product called worship. I would have Him as dignified as the better sort of man in this regard.
He would value no love but the love born of kindnesses conferred; not that born of benevolences contracted for. Repentance in a man's heart for a wrong done would cancel and annul that sin; and no verbal prayers for forgiveness be required or desired or expected of that man.
In His Bible there would be no Unforgiveable Sin. He would recognize in Himself the Author and Inventor of Sin and Author and Inventor of the Vehicle and Appliances for its commission; and would place the whole responsibility where it would of right belong: upon Himself, the only Sinner.
He would not be a jealous God--a trait so small that even men despise it in each other.
He would not boast.
He would keep private Hs admirations of Himself; He would regard self-praise as unbecoming the dignity of his position.
He would not have the spirit of vengeance in His heart. Then it would not issue from His lips.
There would not be any hell--except the one we live in from the cradle to the grave.
There would not be any heaven--the kind described in the world's Bibles.
He would spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy when he could have made him happy with the same effort and he would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

C.S. Lewis

The Funeral of a Great Myth

To reach the positions held by the real scientists ... you must, in fact, treat reason as an absolute. But at the same time the Myth asks me to believe that reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of a mindless process at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. The content of the Myth thus knocks from under me the only ground on which I could possibly believe the Myth to be true. If my own mind is a product of the irrational-if what seem my clearest reasonings are only the way in which a creature conditioned as I am is bound to feel-how shall I trust my mind when it tells me about Evolution? ... The fact that some people of scientific education cannot by any effort be taught to see the difficulty, confirms one's suspicion that we here touch a radical disease in their whole style of thought... Whatever the real universe may turn out to be, it cannot be like that.

Another favorite family values Bible quote:

Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

33 And they made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

34 And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.

35 And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose.

36Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father.

Given the C.S. Lewis quotes ITT, this one seems appropriate:

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." - Robert A. Heinlein.

"It is this hateful loathing of the Throne of David and the rejection of YHVH/God's coming righteous rule under Messiah that is the quintessential spiritual root cause of all anti-Semitism." Gavin Finley, MD

Background on the quote here: The Root Cause of Anti-Semitism. A Study by Gavin Finley.

http://endtimepilgrim.org/antisemit.htm

Some outtakes from Wiki...

I can see why you might not prefer Nabokov, but worst mainstream novel you've read...really?

If you have an idea of, OK this is how it should be, you'll never see how it is. -- Mooji

It’s a tactical belief, a belief that exists because the upside to disbelief is too small

“When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.” Larry Ellison – Oracle Corporation Founder and CEO

I don't really want this thread to be a debate thread, or for that matter, I don't want to debate art at all, but I will respond briefly.

I've done some searching on Nabokov, and I agree he's very popular with most who have read him, including Lolita - but not universal.

My problem with Lolita is I was so respulsed by the content I frankly couldn't tell you much about his style, literary technique, etc. I have read some excerpts from some of this other works and can see he had a great deal of talent with words - very, very impressive, given Russian is his main language - though not quite as impressive as Conrad, since Nabokov was raised in a multi-lingual family(as I recall) - still, not chopped liver.

I recently read 3 novels by Waugh, generally considered his best 3 (Scoop, Handful of Dust, and Brideshead). I saw something of his talent in the first two but didn't much care for the stories, for different reasons. The only reason I went on to read Brideshead is I've seen the BBC production with Jeremy Irons and consider it in the top 5 of all TV shows ever produced (having both Olivier and Gielgud in the series didn't hurt any - smiling right now thinking of Gielgud's performance). Anyway, I did read Brideshead and loved almost all of it. Interesting note, Waugh thought it was his best when he wrote it, then 5 years later when he re-read it said he was appalled. For that matter, after Tolstoy's conversion, he basically repudiated all his novels, and there are those who think he's the all time greatest. One other fact - I saw that Nabokov disliked Dostoevsky and loved Tolstoy, but there was a copy of Karamazov by Tolstoy's death bed. The point - there is much that is subjective about art appreciation, and one's tastes change for different reasons - there's just no right or wrong on this subject - at least above a certain level.

If Rembrandt had painted a picture of a large, steaming pile of human excrement, and had used his best technique, artiste's may well praise it, but I wouldn't want it hanging on my wall, and would probably miss the artistic value.

I think this only speaks to his greatness. Objectively, Lolita's content barely stands out on the landscape of literary horrors. Kidnapping, rape, murder? <yawn> Wake me up when there's a genocide to report.

But as Martin Amis said: "Nabokov is the laureate of cruelty. Cruelty hardly exists elsewhere; all the Lovelaces and Osmonds turn out, on not very much closer inspection, to be mere hooligans and tyrants when compared to Humbert Humbert."

Weaker eyes see only the banality of evil. Not Nabokov. Imo the psychological insight alone makes Lolita an almost peerless tour-de-force. (Whether this insight could be displayed without Nabokov's artistic powers is another question, but perhaps incidental to the greatness of the book.)

Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!

- George Carlin



I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it.

- George Carlin

My memory of the book is somewhat spotty because, though I haven't consciously tried to forget it, I've made no effort to remember it, either.

However, as I recall, Lolita herself never suffered. She WAS a nymphet, perhaps even sexually active before Humbert (not sure about that) but did not seem to mind the sex at all, other than the fact is was with an old man. Maybe that's part of what I found repulsive - was Lolita really a victim? If not, was Humbert really cruel? Even the seemingly minor cruelty when Emma insulted Miss Bates shocked me more than the sex in Lolita - I wasn't shocked by it, just repulsed (disgusted) by the way it was handled, whereas I really felt the anguish of Miss Bates.

"QUIT CONVERSING IN THE QUOTE THREAD DAMMIT" - kb coolman

It is better to remain silent and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

-Unknown

Quotes from Brother Lawrence's The Practice Of The Presence Of God:

"God alone is capable of making Himself known as He really is. We search in reasoning and in sciences, as in a poor copy. What we neglect to see is God's painting Himself in the depth of our soul."

More here:
http://www.practicegodspresence.com/...-lawrence.html

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.

- Robert Anton Wilson

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them.
- Letters from the Earth

The fact that Lolita was raped at least twice a day for almost two years was a pretty major plot point, actually.

But it seems you're only saying that Lolita is your least favorite major novel; not that it's the worst in any meaningful sense. So carry on.

Le Carre

Secret Pilgrim

Religion is a rubber crutch for the weak.

-Pooter

Quotation, n.: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

"Peace, in nation's terms, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting."

- Ambrose Bierce