You can't plan for any of that. If I thought I knew what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be worth doing. The challenge is how joyfully, with what sense of fun and adventure and playfulness, we will greet it. We don't have to look for what the next thing will be. If experience is any judge, it’ll come flowing toward us like a river.
- Stephen Colbert to Playboy on making The Colbert Report
He asked himself whether human society could have the right to force its members to suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable lack of foresight, and in the other case for its pitiless foresight; and to seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess, a defect of work and an excess of punishment.
Whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration.
These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it.
Victor Hugo via Jean Valjean, Les Misérables
In a French Revolution mode, having just finished A Tale of Two Cities. I'm sure we spent weeks in secondary schooling on the various iterations of governance the French staggered between as tyrants bearing various modes of rule set themselves up and dealt death to their opposite numbers. What a horrifying time to live through when the next day could be in question, life hanging in the capricious hands of the newly power mad. And yet Hugo's insights transcend the times (so far; this is 1/15th of the way in), and while many of us may live in quite a bit more security than revolutionary tribunals afforded, Valjean could still be describing the experience of the poor of today equal to a century and a half ago.
Side note, the first paragraph above in the free e-text is mistranslated or mistyped, taking the original defaut once for the correct "defect" and once for the incorrect "default." It's corrected above; I get the sense there are a lot of little mistakes spread throughout and disseminated about the web. Maybe The Gutenberg Project needs to go wiki.
From Cory Doctorow:
This makes me terribly nostalgic for the future.
If walls are high, the sky is higher still.
Kandahar
ANNIE: Sadie? Oh, well, Sadie... (laughing) Sadie met Grammy through, uh, through Grammy's brother George. Uh, George was real sweet, you know, he had that thing. What is that thing where you, uh, where you, uh, fall asleep in the middle of a sentence, you know-what is it? Uh...
ALVY: Uh, narcolepsy.
ANNIE: Narcolepsy, right, right. Right. So, anyway, so... (laughing) George, uh, went to the union, see, to get his free turkey, be-because, uh, the union always gave George this big turkey at Christmas time because he was... (Annie makes "crazy" signs with her hands) shell-shocked, you know what I mean, in the First World War.
(laughing) Anyway, so, so... George is standing in line, oh, just a sec... uh, getting his free turkey, but the thing is, he falls asleep and he never wakes up. So, so... (laughing) so, he's dead... (laughing) he's dead. Yeah. Oh, dear. Well, terrible, huh, wouldn't you say? I mean, that's pretty unfortunate.
"Love... Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down."
Malcolm Reynolds, Serenity
Please do not start smoking if you see this film. I could have had them peeling organic fruit, too, but that would have been weird.
Alice Wu on characters smoking in her film
We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery - it recharges by running.
...
I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, "Yes, this is obviously where I was going all along." It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.
...
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential - as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
Bill Watterson, Some Thoughts on the Real World by One Who Glimpsed It and Fled
There are some things, especially in the depths of the religious life, which can only be understood by being experienced, and which even then are incapable of being adequately embodied in words. "O taste and see that the Lord is good." The enjoyment must come before the illumination or rather the enjoyment is the illumination. There are things that must be loved before we can know them to be worthy of our love.
-- Thomas Binney
And now, with God's help, I shall become myself.
-- Søren Kierkegaard
About Jacob's wrestling match with God as God disables his hip:
Have you ever tried wrestling with lumbago or a slipped disc? If you should ever find yourself in Jacob's situation, let me tell you what you will do. You will cling. You will hang onto your opponent with desperation. Either you cling or you fall.
And through the fog of pain and terror the words begin to penetrate Jacob's brain, "Let me go, for the day is breaking."
Let him go? How can he? He isn't even sure whether he can walk. Let him go? How dare he? At some point the awful knowledge has gripped him that the one on whose breast he leans sweating and gasping is the God of his fathers, who could slay him with a glance. And for once, since he has no choice, no other hope, Jacob's tenacity is turned in the right direction.
"I will not let you go, unless you bless me."
They are words God has waited over forty years to hear. He would have preferred that Jacob recognize his helplessness and cast himself on the mercy of his God long before. He did not wish to reduce him to such an extremity, but Jacob left him little choice. And God's response is swift in coming. Jacob has conquered by his helpless dependency.
-- John White, Daring to Draw Near
Now must we praise of heaven's kingdom the Keeper
Of the Lord the power and his Wisdom
The work of the Glory-Father, as he of marvels each,
The eternal Lord, the beginning established.
He first created of earth for the sons
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator.
Then the middle-enclosure of mankind the Protector
The eternal Lord, thereafter made
For men, earth the Lord almighty.
Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another -- physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.
-- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye.
-- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
If I sing, let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs
But if I weep, let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home.
-- Rich Mullins and Steve Cudworth, "If I Stand"
If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 18
"Nevertheless he is the only one of them all who does not seem to me ridiculous. Perhaps that is because he is thinking of something else besides himself."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 61
"There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me..."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 80
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world...."
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you -- the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is *my* rose."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 86-7
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.... It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.... You have become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 87-8
I talked to members of one family who were hungry because their crops had failed from the drought, just 100 yards from a lake. Why hadn't they irrigated? The risk of being stomped by hippos was one factor, but another was that carrying water is women's work and tending the fields is men's work, and this cultural impasse left them stymied and starving.
Nicholas Kristoff, The New York Times, May 20, 2003
A man is not hurt so much by what happens as by his opinion of what happens.
Montaigne
Here on my knees, Lord, humbly I bow
Been running around lately, but I've come back around
I tried to live without you, I was gonna be so strong
But I was bound for failure, and it didn't take me long
To learn I was wrong
So here I am, Lord, broken in two
Worthless to the world, but a treasure to You
So many times I've found
When life brings me down
To my knees, it's where I need to be
Right here on my knees
I don't always wanna come, cause it hurts to be healed
And I'm so afraid of judgment whenever I draw near
But you show a mercy that I don't understand
Gently revealing with a touch of your hand
That you'll help me stand
...
Right here on my knees, Lord
Kepano Green, Right Here On My Knees
But tension is to be loved
When it is like a passing note
To a beautiful, beautiful chord
Do I murder us, putting pavement in my veins
Shooting it in, special heroin
For the seeking and displaced?
Sixpence None The Richer, Tension Is a Passing Note, from Divine Discontent
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Frederick Lehman, The Love of God
Were the sky of parchment made,
A quill each reed, each twig and blade,
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
Were every man a scribe of skill,
The marvelous story, Of Gods great glory
Would still remain untold; For He, most high
The earth and sky Created alone of old.
Rabbi Meir ben Isaac Nehorai, Hadamut
"What, the landing gear worked, just like that? I'm not sure I can live in a world with that kind of possibility."
"But you learn to."
"I can imagine myself destitute, I can imagine myself unlucky in love, but I never thought I'd risk my life with such frequency -- it felt kind of good, didn't it?"
Dialogue from The West Wing
"I don't want to be an ant, you know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on 'ant' auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. 'Stop. Go. Walk here, drive there.' All action basically for survival, all communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. 'Here's your change. Paper or plastic? Credit or debit? You want ketchup with that?' I don't want a straw, I want real human moments! I want to see you, I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up - I don't want to be an ant, you know?"
Richard Linklater's Waking Life
"I will prepare, and someday my chance will come."
Abraham Lincoln
When Paul says he counts things he lost rubbish or dung (KJV), he means not merely that he does not think of them as having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly in his mind: what normal person spends his time nostalgically dreaming of manure? Yet this, in effect, is what many of us do. It shows how little we have in the way of true knowledge of God.
J. I. Packer, Knowing God (emphasis added)
"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?"
Captain Ahab, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Ch. 132
They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
"For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies," declares the Lord God. "Therefore, repent and live."
"'Thus says the Lord GOD, "When I gather the house of Israel from the peoples among whom they are scattered, and will manifest My holiness in them in the sight of the nations, then they will live in their land which I gave to My servant Jacob. They will live in it securely; and they will build houses, plant vineyards and live securely when I execute judgments upon all who scorn them round about them. Then they will know that I am the LORD their God."'"
"So then, the days are coming," declares the Lord, "when people will no longer say, 'As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,' but they will say, 'As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the descendants of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He had banished them.' Then they will live in their own land."
"She is seeking righteousness, she is pure. She has such faith that there must be righteousness everywhere and she expects it.... And if you were to torture her, she wouldn't do wrong. She doesn't see that it's impossible for people to be righteous and she is angry at it. Like a child, like a child. She is good!"
Sonia, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth, is as certain as the dawn, and He will come to us like the rain. Like the spring rain watering the earth. So let us press on to know the Lord.
So let us return, let us return to the Lord. Though we're torn, He will bind us up, and raise us up that we might live. Like the spring rain, watering the earth; so let us press on to know the Lord.
Hosea 6:3, by Unknown
Jason Bourne is trying to get home, and he's trying to get home the entire movie, and, you know, he eventually has to realize that Marie is home - he was home all along, he just had to realize it.
Doug Liman, commentary on The Bourne Identity
"Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! ... To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in some one else's."
Razumihin, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
I know, O Lord, that a man's way is not in himself, nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps. Correct me, O Lord, but with justice; not with Your anger, or You will bring me to nothing.
Jeremiah 10:23-24, NASB