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America--Fuck Yeah!, Bob Dylan, Cormac McCarthy, Edgar Lee Masters, Friederich Nietzsche, Les Miserables, No Country For Old Men, Pearl Harbor, Primo Levi, quotations, Richard Adams, Salman Rushdie, Spoon River Anthology, Survival in Auschwitz, the Exodus, the Greatest Generation, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Reivers, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Victor Hugo, Watership Down, William Faulkner, Winston Churchill, You Jivin' Me Turkey?
By Tardsie
You Won’t Find The Really Good Ones In Here.
We very much appreciate a piece of well-expressed wisdom. For this reason among so many others, we have continued to compile over the years a collection of quotations which not only inspire us, but inform the philosophy which has thus far guided us through a life which has been pretty damn awesome.
Taking our inspiration from Bad Brad, the eccentrically eclectic force behind You Jivin’ Me Turkey?, who never fails to find powerfully affecting–and largely unfamiliar–quotations, we’d like to start your weekend with some of the passages that figure most centrally in our own lives. And just as our lives are improved in some measure by the unexpected wisdom curated by folks like Brad, we hope that you will find something in what follows which speaks to your own journey. Have a great weekend, folks!
This Is An Actual Photo Of Brad. He Has A Condition Which Makes Him Look Like An Animated Character. Don’t Make Fun.
***
The Big Questions
For what is it all but being hatched,
And running about the yard,
To the day of the block?
Save that a man has an angel’s brain,
And sees the ax from the first!
Edgar Lee Masters
The Difference Between The Two Of You Is That You See The End Coming. So Why Not Live It The Best You Can?
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
Victor Hugo
***
There Is No Ordinary Life
And like a dying star is every work of your virtue: its light is always still on its way and it wanders — And when will light no longer be on its way? Thus the light of your virtue is still on its way even when the work has been done. Though it be forgotten and dead, the ray of its light still lives and wanders. That your virtue is your self and not something foreign, a skin, a cloak, that is the truth from the foundation of your soul, you who are virtuous.
Friedreich Nietzsche
***
People don’t like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irremediably broken by life, is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we’re bored. I understood that I had good and true friends in these three men, that it was all for one and one for all and these were my musketeers. I also saw that I needed to behave better for their sakes. I had become their nagging toothache, their dose of gut-rot, their ulcer. I needed to get better before they decided to cure themselves of me.
If friendship is a fuel, the supply of it is not endless.
Salman Rushdie
***
I knew growing up that I wanted to do something different than anybody else. I wanted to do something that no one else did or could do, and I wanted to do it better than anyone else had. I didn’t know where that was going to lead me, but where it did lead me was to folk music at a time when it was totally off the radar screen.
Bob Dylan
***
Meeting Adversity
Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.
Winston Churchill
The Main Reason Winston Churchill Was Able To Achieve Renown As One Of History’s Greatest Englishmen Was That He Was Half-American.
A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn’t say No though he knew he should.
William Faulkner
***
I’m determined to stand whether God will deliver me or not.
Bob Dylan
***
Strange, how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate, how some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live.
Primo Levi
So Buck Up, Pussy!
You Can’t Know Everything, And Why Would You Want To?
And Frith called after him, ‘El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and wherever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people will never be destroyed.’
Richard Adams
We Always Thought Watership Down Was About A Bunch Of Rabbits.
For My Grandfather, Who Lucked Out Of Pearl Harbor And Felt Like A Fraud For It
I didn’t know you could steal your own life. And I didn’t know that it would bring you no more benefit than about anything else you might steal. I think I done the best with it I knew how, but it still wasn’t mine. It never has been.
Cormac McCarthy
We Know That Forgiving Yourself Was Never Going To Happen. Remember, Though–For Those Who Loved You, It Wasn’t A Betrayal But A Miracle.
Promethean Times 
You SO Rock, Dude! hahahahaha
Thanks For The Mention!
Always Nice To Know I’m On The Minds Of Others 😉
Generally Because Most People Think About Me, Then Try Desperately To Forget Me As Quickly As Possible.
hahahahaha
-BRAD
Pfft. You’re unforgettable. dude. If not for your trenchant quotes, great taste in music, delightfully irrepressible enthusiasm for questionable cinema or love of baseball, then at least for that cartoonish, oversized head!
Some great quotes here, though I must admit, they make my brain sweat with their big words and weird syntax. Despite my years of education, I still like simple. That’s why I get my quotes from the Dr. Phil Show. And Willy Wonka—“And so shines a good deed in a weary world.”
Oho! After you lambasted me for my own affection for Rabbi Phil, you admit to cribbing from him. The hypocrisy is strong in you, although it could never hope to equal my vast reservoirs of pretended virtue, ready to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world at a moment’s notice. After selflessness, hypocrisy is probably my most dominant feature.
I haven’t read Willy Wonka in years. Not since Mrs. Doyle read it TO me in the first grade (by which time my love/hate relationship with audiobooks had already been established). Roald Dahl. I don’t know if I can get behind that name. It’s like how heavy metal acts used to mess up regular words in their names–Megadeth, Queensryche, Motley Crue. I mean, why can’t he just spell his name normally?–Rolled Doll. He’s British, so you could expect he’d throw an extra U in there or something, but it’s only when you understand that his parents were Norwegian that his peculiar name begins to make sense. As you probably know, most Norwegians are illiterate, and Doll’s parents no doubt did the best they could.
And yes, I’m aware that 94% of North Dakotans are Norwegian.
I have always admitted to liking Dr. Phil. I thought you were teasing me when you said you liked him–thought you were being sarcastic, poking fun at me for watching the big Texan.
Okay, who’s on first? I’m confused…
As for Roald Dahl writing that quote, I have no idea. I just know Gene Wilder said it in the movie, but whether Dahl wrote it or some screenwriter adapting it for the movie, I have no idea. Now I’ve managed to make myself look even more pathetic.
Connie has left the building…
Before you go, I’ll clear up the Dr. Phil thing. Aside from the cynical admiration I have for any flim-flam artist, I think Dr. Phil is just a rather benign symptom of our lingering societal disease.
Oh, yeah, now that’s clear as mud.
I like the guy because he tells it like it is, and I usually agree with him. And he talks simple for us here droolin’ dimwitted Ohioans.
I just saw the North Dakota thing, but since I recently slammed my fellow Ohioans in an earlier comment, I’m probably not one to talk. That being said, I’m not Norwegian, so I recuse myself from any Nordic digs. I’m a tough German broad with a little Russian thrown in for added hardiness and a sprinkle of French for a hint of sophistication. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of future fodder from that…
One of my favorite quotations is from the comedian / actor Steve Martin, from when he used to do stand-up comedy. He used to end his monologues with the line, “We all had a great time tonight, considering we’re all going to die.”
Thanks, Bill! Sorry for the delayed reply. A work project is slowly leeching the life from me.
Steve Martin is an interesting character. Of all the talents to come out of the late 1970s, if you’d asked me who would go on to be a true Renaissance man, I would have said, “I don’t know what that means.” But if I had known what that meant in the 1970s, I never would have picked Steve Martin. But as an actor, comedian, author, musician and probably a bunch of other things, he definitely qualifies.
I rather like your quote, “We Always Thought Watership Down Was About A Bunch Of Rabbits.”
I’m glad you liked it! I’m also glad that you got to see an example of our less-offensive (that’s not really the term I’m looking for as it implies something of a hurtful motive on my end, but my vocabulary fails me at the moment; ‘provocative’ seems too self-important and ‘naughty’ too juvenile) stuff. We do a lot of the off-color stuff, but a couple of our regular features, such as ‘Tardsie’s True-Ass Tales‘ or ‘Ask Tardsie‘ offer something a little different.
One thing which although I’ve said before bears repeating–I appreciate your thoughtful comments on some of the stuff you DON’T like. It really is a testament to your maturity and your intellectual integrity that you politely (but clearly) challenge what I’ve written, but have at least made an effort to understand my intentions, never resorting to the argumentative cowardice of ad hominem attacks or trying to attach a label to me. You’re a rare breed.
Thanks for the comment, LameA!
First off, so for all your bluster, you’re just a big old softy.
Secondly, you’ve got some great stuff here.
One of my favorites is another one by Churchill – Never give up, never give up, never give up.
Guap, that is a GREAT one! And can you believe I’d NEVER heard it before? Here is the full quote (at least according to the always-reliable internet): “never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Man, I have read biographies of Churchill, I have recordings of his greatest speeches, and I’m amazed that I never heard that. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
And yeah, I am a softie–I’ve never denied it. The things I post on PT satisfy some significant part of my personality, but I’m not sure it gives an accurate picture of the guy I am (I think my comments, both on this and other people’s blogs are probably a lot closer to the truth). Because I sometimes affect an air of extreme cynicism (in real life I can be cynical, but it’s not a defining characteristic, I don’t think), I think I may appear to be angry, unhappy, bitter and dark. In reality, I’m a big, goofy oafish dude who’s got a life way better than he deserves.
Thanks again for the awesome quote, Guap. That’s going in the list (and additions are rare; I don’t make it a habit to include every kinda neat quotation that I hear). I’m glad that you enjoyed these quotations as well. I hope at least a couple were new to you.
Glad you liked it (used to hang that on the bottom of my resume!). You have a bunch of great ones here I hadn’t heard. I’ll probably carry the Dylan one around for now – that’s where my head is these days…
Does make me want to pick up a Churchill biography though. I know very little about him.
Does make me want to pick up a Churchill biography though. I know very little about him.
He was an interesting and remarkable man, not least because of his many flaws. He was brilliant, but a heavy drinker; rightly regarded as one of the greatest figures of the 20th Century; and yet at times a petty party hack; the man who helped liberate Europe and the man who called Ghandi a “half-naked fakir”; indomitable and unbreakable, and yet subject to periods of crippling depression. And he was half-American.
If you haven’t had a chance to listen to some of his speeches, I urge you to do so. They’re fantastic. “We will fight them on the beaches, and in the fields;” “Never have so many owed so much to so few,” “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth should stand for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.'” Highly recommended.
Simply Smaktacular! I actually like them all…especially, There Is No Ordinary Life…that was beautiful. Guapo hit it on the nail – you big ole softy! You’re just a sweetheart.
I’m so glad you liked them, Chica Blanca! The Friedreich Nietzsche is of particular significance to me. It’s inscribed (From the start of the quotation through “wanders”) on my mom’s headstone.
I’m always one for the longer quote myself (like the Salman Rushdie one above). To me, they allow for more thought and reflection. Those one sentence ones, I’m always reminded of the much repeated “if you live your life by those, you must be a moron”. Granted this is true to a point, but does not seem to allow for the fact that there are many clever and enjoyable ones.
The chicken one is just profound! I do love a good quote, maybe if I collected them all somewhere I would occasionally be able to recall one 🙂
That’s the only reason I can remember them!
Incredible work, my friend!
Excellent marriage of verse and images…
Thanks, Hook! And congrats again on your literary successes! Here’s to more!