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February 7 - February 13, 2021
Some men seem to think that temperance is preservative, that moderation somehow pickles the soul. They would place their beating hearts inside jam jars if they could. Which does beg the question, what on earth are they saving themselves for?
“Of course it’s dangerous!” The Sphinx laughed. “Most things worth doing are.
It’s better to play sincere mistakes than lifeless perfection.
“All I know is that, at the end of the day, dreams don’t matter, but neither does regret. We aren’t what we want or wish for. We are only what we do.”
Intimacy was not about maintaining the idealistic charade of courtship; it was about embracing and adoring the flaws, the very things that the headmaster of Isaugh had never been quite able to admit in himself.
Why do we call a dishonest person two-faced? Is it really so honest to wear the same face day in, day out, regardless of our mood, our condition, or the event? We are not clocks! Have a face for every occasion, I say! Be honest: Wear a mask.”
Chairs should not have a sense of wanderlust. We don’t have rocking tables. Why have rocking chairs? It’s obscene!
The tree of history rotted faster than it grew.
Ecstasy lies in that brief silence at the end of a play, when the performance is over but the applause has not yet begun.
“I think humanity peaked at the spoon, don’t you? A spoon can serve as a fork, a knife, a ladle … A good spoon is all you need, really.”
customs exist for two reasons: one, to identify insiders; and two, to exclude outsiders.
“Because that’s the benefit of etiquette: It tells us what to do when no one knows what to do.”
“Sometimes a prisoner would rather stare at a bare wall than a barred window.”
“Voleta, my dear, all society will ever do is throw fights out in front of you. It exists to goad you and get your hackles up. But if you take a swing at every bully that steps into your path, you’re going to end up with a lot of black eyes, and you’re going to make a lot of enemies.
I’d rather be misquoted than never quoted. Some of my best lines are misattributions.
The rich “learn lessons.” The poor commit crimes. “Mistakes” are generally considered a mark of the middle class.
“I was present at the beginning of time. I was there when the first coals of the universe turned red and burned for an age. I was dust floating in dead black nothing for half an eternity. I was a star when it formed. I was a star when it died. I was a ray of light bolting across a galaxy for ten thousand years, only to be caught and devoured by an oak leaf.”
“Do you know what a treaty is, Captain Winters? It is a document that tells us what the next war will be over.”
An earnest failure is superior to immaculate potential.
“My sense of being, my identity, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t reside in my parts. It lives in my past, and in the continuity of my present thoughts, and in my hopes for the future. I’m more afraid of losing a memory than a limb.”
‘Asking nicely once is polite. Asking nicely twice is just begging.’”
“I’d sooner give an ape a loaded pistol than a popgun to either one of them.”
In his opinion, drizzles, gravies, and icing were just savory apologies for incompetent dishes.
A man who is not suspicious of a philosophy that appeals to his nature is like the bull comforted by the rutted path that leads to the slaughterhouse.
