"You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity."
- 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' by Phillip K. Dick
__________________ "I ain't no fraggin' hero. I'm th' main man. I booze.
I womanize. I swear. An' I beat th' living crap outta
anybody I fraggin' feel like."- Lobo
Hope you don't mind that most of these are from nonfiction sources. The last work of fiction I finished completely was the play "Galileo" by Brecht and even -that- was for class. Everything else is half-eaten at the moment.
This I found in my chem book while I was studying. It made me laugh, which was surprising:
"While reading a textbook of chemistry, I came upon the statement, 'nitric acid reacts upon copper,' and I determined to see what this meant. Having located some nitric acid, I had only to learn what the words 'acts upon' meant. In the interest of knowledge I was even willing to sacrifice one of the few copper cents then in my possession. I put one of them on the table, opened a bottle labled 'nitric acid,' poured some of the liquid on the copper, and prepared to make an observation. But what was the wonderful thing which I beheld? The cent was already changed, and it was no small change either. A greenish blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air became colored dark red. How could I stop this? I tried by picking the cent up and throwing it out the window. I learned another fact; nitric acid reacts upon fingers. The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I drew my fingers across my trousers and discovered nitric acid reacts upon trousers. That was the most impressive experiment I have ever preformed." ~ Ira Remsen
***
This is from a letter written by Galileo to his friend Castelli. In it he's replying to a letter from Castelli, and elaborating on the point that the Copernican theory is compatible with the Bible. (Coincidentally, the letter was written on Dec 21st, which is my younger brother's birthday
". . . on the other hand, nature is inexorable and immutable, and she does not care at all whether or not her recondite reasons and modes of operation are revealed to human understanding, and so she never transgresses the terms of the laws imposed on her; therefore, whatever sensory experience places before our eyes or necessary demonstrations prove to us concerning natural effects should not in any way be called into question on account of scriptural passages whose words appear to have a different meaning . . ." ~ Galileo Galilei
(That's one massive run-on sentence, and it wasn't even the entire thing!)
***
Okay, okay. Let me give you something from fiction.
" When Mr Hosokowa put the CD in the player and sat down in his chair to listen, he did not go back to work that night. It was as if he was a boy in those high seats in Tokyo again, his father's hand large and warm around his own. He set the disc to play over and over, skipping impatiently past anything that was not her voice. It was soaring, that voice, warm and complicated, utterly fearless. How could it be at once controlled and so reckless? He called Kiyomi's [his daughter] name and she came and stood in the doorway of his study. She started to say something -- yes? or, what?or, sir? -- but before she could make out the words she heard that voice, the straight-haired woman from the picture. Her father didn't even say it, he simply gestured towards one speaker with his open hand. She was enormously pleased to have done something so right. The music praised her. Mr Hosokawa closed his eyes. He dreamed." ~ Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
I think I'm done for now. Good question, and enjoy your star.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
___________ Website Design and Development Madison WI
“In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people, they have no lawyers.”
¯ Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
“I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.”
¯ Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
“We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.”
¯ Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Beasts of Tarzan
__________________ "I ain't no fraggin' hero. I'm th' main man. I booze.
I womanize. I swear. An' I beat th' living crap outta
anybody I fraggin' feel like."- Lobo
'We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, 'Oh, nothing!' Pride helps s; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurt- not to hurt others.'
- Middlemarch, George Eliot
'...when a woman is not contradicted she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.' - Middlemarch
"What? So I like your Grandma. Is that a Crime?" - Aphrodite
"You know I am beggining to think that somewhere deep inside you there is a nice Aphrodite" - Zoey
"Well don't get all warm and tingly. As soon as I find her, I'm going to drown her in the bathtub." - Aphrodite
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Sep 29th, 2011 05:39 PM
