The Quote Thread.

[Wamy Einehouse]

"... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."

-Isaac Asimov

[Subfallen]

Originally Posted by NotReady

Howdy.

I got one quote out of Lolita (toughest read I ever struggled all the way through)

Sorry you didn't enjoy it. :/

[NotReady]

Originally Posted by Subfallen

Sorry you didn't enjoy it. :/

I'm probably missing something but I think it's the worst novel I've ever read, for a "mainstream, serious" work. I truly don't understand how Lolita makes so many all time top ten lists. Of course, Tolstoy thought Shakespeare was junk, and Twain and Conrad hated Austen, so I'm in good company.

[Dominic]

Originally Posted by NotReady

I'm probably missing something but I think it's the worst novel I've ever read, for a "mainstream, serious" work. I truly don't understand how Lolita makes so many all time top ten lists. Of course, Tolstoy thought Shakespeare was junk, and Twain and Conrad hated Austen, so I'm in good company.

It's you.

[Splendour]

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
- Charles Darwin

[Hack4444]

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

[NotReady]

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.

[Hack4444]

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.

[kb coolman]

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

"One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it." - Elizabeth Bowen.

[kb coolman]

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

[kb coolman]

"Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned." - Mark Twain

[Splendour]

"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

[Subfallen]

Originally Posted by NotReady

I'm probably missing something but I think it's the worst novel I've ever read, for a "mainstream, serious" work. I truly don't understand how Lolita makes so many all time top ten lists.

Some outtakes from Wiki...

Originally Posted by Nabokov Wiki

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon...stated that "Nabokov's English combines aching lyricism with dispassionate precision in a way that seems to render every human emotion in all its intensity but never with an ounce of schmaltz or soggy language". Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Eugenides said that "Nabokov has always been and remains one of my favorite writers. He's able to juggle ten balls where most people can juggle three or four." T. Coraghessan Boyle said that "Nabokov's playfulness and the ravishing beauty of his prose are ongoing influences" on his writing...

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

[ajmargarine]

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

[burkoboy]

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