When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
- C. S. Lewis
Archive for the 'Novelists' Category
Splitting matter and ideas
Published by 1 year, 2 months ago in Books, Novelists and Philosophers. 0 CommentsI accepted their insults, their frauds, their extortions. I thought I could afford to ignore them — all those impotent mystics who prattle about their souls and are unable to build a roof over their heads. I thought that the world was mine, and that those jabbering incompetents were no threat to my strength. I could not understand why I kept losing every battle. I did not know that the force unleashed against me was my own. While I was busy conquering matter, I had surrendered to them the realm of the mind, of thought, of principle, of laws, of values, of morality.
- Hank Rearden, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Cherryl Brooks: There’s something I want you to know, so that there won’t be any pretending about it. I’m not going to put on the sweet relative act. I know what you’ve done to Jim and how you’ve made him miserable all his life. I’m going to protect him against you. I’ll put you in your place. I’m Mrs. Taggart. I’m the woman in this family now.
Dagny Taggart: That’s quite all right. I’m the man.
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Pure evil: "a weak, ugly, sinful creature"
Published by 1 year, 3 months ago in Books, Novelists and Philosophers. 0 CommentsI mean, we’re only human beings, and what’s a human being? A weak, ugly, sinful creature, born that way, rotten in his bones—so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend his life on his knees, begging to be forgiven for his dirty existence.
- James Taggart, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Television has done much for psychiatry
Published by 1 year, 3 months ago in Novelists and Philosophers. 1 CommentTelevision has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
- Alfred Hitchcock
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, Act I
Zen And The Art Of Going To The Lavatory
Published by 1 year, 3 months ago in Books and Novelists. 0 CommentsRelax mind
Relax body
Relax bowels
Relax.
Do not fall over.
You are a cloud.
You are raining.
Do not rain
While train
Is standing at a station.
Move with the wind.
Apologise where necessary.
- Zen And The Art Of Going To The Lavatory, Grunthos the Flatulent, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
If only this wasn’t unfashionable these days…
Published by 1 year, 4 months ago in Books, Novelists and Philosophers. 0 CommentsIf any part of your uncertainty is a conflict between your heart and your mind — follow your mind.
- John Galt, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning
Published by 1 year, 4 months ago in Books and Novelists. 0 CommentsPutty. Putty. Putty.
Green Putty - Grutty Peen.
Grarmpitutty - Morning!
Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!
Discovery….. Oh.
Putty?….. Armpit?
Armpit….. Putty.
Not even a particularly
Nice shade of green.
- Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning, Grunthos the Flatulent, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
And do the cooking, besides
Published by 1 year, 4 months ago in Books, Novelists and Philosophers. 0 CommentsI quit, because I didn’t wish to serve as the cannibals’ meal and to do the cooking, besides.
- Ellis Wyatt, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.
- Ayn Rand
The third worst poetry in the universe
Published by 1 year, 4 months ago in Books and Novelists. 0 CommentsOh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon
See if I don’t.
- Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Pure evil: guilt as a weapon
Published by 1 year, 4 months ago in Books, Novelists and Philosophers. 0 CommentsI mean that there is no way to disarm any man, except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted as guilt. If a man has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. He’ll bear any form of misery, he’ll feel that he deserves no better. If there’s not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach a man that it’s evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and then does it — we’ll be able to do whatever we please with him. He won’t defend himself. He won’t feel he’s worth it. He won’t fight.
But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards. Save us from the man of clean conscience. He’s the man who’ll beat us.
- Dr. Floyd Ferris, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
When God hates all the same people you do
Published by 1 year, 4 months ago in Novelists. 0 CommentsYou can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
- Anne Lamott
Here’s what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
- The Book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
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