Bryan--The Bee’s Knees > Bryan--The Bee’s Knees's Quotes

“It was written in London under the advancing shadow of the Second World War, and it may be that the apprehensionsof those years can be felt vibrating from time to time in its pages. The historian,concerned as he is with the most vital of all studies, is often more subject than herealizes to the electric currents of contemporary mood.”
― C.V. Wedgwood, The Thirty Years War

“Stupidity is the prerogative of the wealthy. Pauper's field is crammed with smart guys.”
― Chandler Brossard, The Bold Saboteurs

“The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own; freedom from external authority is a lasting gain only if the inner psychological conditions are such that we are able to establish our own individuality.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood”
― Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

“You can’t be a non-conformist if you don’t wear the proper uniform.”
― Jack L. Chalker

“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”
― Charles M. Schulz

“He was one of those people who feel so compelled to fulfill duties that they go plunging into great collapsing edifices constructed entirely of disagreeable duties simply out of the fear that some secret, inconspicuous duty might somehow elude them.”
― Robert Walser, The Tanners

“The passion for vengeance is a terrifyingly strong one, very easily and probably inevitably wrought up by such evidence [of atrocities], even at our distance. But however well aware I am of its strength, and that in its full immediate force and expression it is in some respects irrelevant to moral inquiry, I doubt that it is ever to be honored, or regarded as other than evil and in every direction fatally degrading and destructive; even when it is obeyed in hot blood or in a crisis of prevention; far worse when it is obeyed in cold blood and in the illusion of carrying out justice.”
― James Agee, Agee on Film, Vol. 1: Essays and Reviews

“I wonder whether certain dreadful events, of the sort this picture is full of, are not so incalculably rich in the possibilities of moral and aesthetic blackmail that they can never be represented maturely or even un-deceitfully, and so had better not be represented at all...Indeed, few films ever made have so vigorously seized the spectator by the throat and so implacably insisted, with one unprincipled bang over the head after another, that he turn himself into the wildest animal possible, and mistrust and hate with all his might any lingering question which troubles him about his obligations to do so.”
― James Agee, Agee on Film, Vol. 1: Essays and Reviews

“Rilke used to say that no poet would mind going to gaol, since he would at least have time to explore the treasure house of his memory. In many respects Rilke was a prick.”
― Clive James, Unreliable Memoirs

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

“You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I paid it nuts, Billy. What would you think I'd pay a squirrel?”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“I am really sorry to see my Countrymen trouble themselves about Politics. If Men were Wise, the Most arbitrary Princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the Freest Government is compell'd to be a Tyranny. Princes appear to me to be Fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something Else besides Human life.”
― William Blake, Complete Writings

“It offends me that a man can master the Devil, but not the Portuguese language.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition