Hamish > Hamish's Quotes

“Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”
― Herman Hesse

“I was conscious all the while in my heart how my fate raced on at breakneck speed,
racing and chasing like a frightened horse, straight for the precipitous abyss, spurred on by dread
and longing to the consummation of death.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“What is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and the shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing. Nothing but death.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“My God, rather than come to such a pass it would have been better for the Jews and every one else, let alone the Egyptians, to have perished in those days and forthwith of a violent and becoming death instead of this dismal pretence of dying by inches that we go in for today. Yes indeed!”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“You are surprised that I should be unhappy when I can dance and am so sure of myself in the superficial things of life. And I, my friend, am surprised that you are so disillusioned with life when you are at home with the very things in it that are the deepest and most beautiful, spirit, art, and thought! That is why we were drawn to one another and why we are brother and sister. I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“The first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the "o" in "worry". Such is Human Perversity.”
― Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

“they will never allow that a child is under any obligation to his father for begetting him, or to his mother for bringing him into the world; which, considering the miseries of human life, was neither a benefit in itself, nor intended so by his parents, whose thoughts, in their love encounters, were otherwise employed.”
― Jonathan Swift

“My master and his friends continued on the shore till I was almost out of sight; and I often heard the sorrel nag (who always loved me) crying out, “Hnuy illa nyha, majah Yahoo;” “Take care of thyself, gentle Yahoo.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

“They bury their dead with their heads directly downward, because they hold an opinion, that in eleven thousand moons they are all to rise again; in which period the earth (which they conceive to be flat) will turn upside down, and by this means they shall, at their resurrection, be found ready standing on their feet.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“The nurse, to quiet her babe, made use of a rattle which was a kind of hollow vessel filled with great stones, and fastened by a cable to the child’s waist: but all in vain; so that she was forced to apply the last remedy by giving it suck.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“we neither of us are able to deliver our conceptions in a manner intelligible to the other.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“And when I began to consider that, by copulating with one of the Yahoo species I had become a parent of more, it struck me with the utmost shame, confusion, and horror.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“He likewise directed, “that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“But as to honour, justice, wisdom, and learning, they should not be taxed at all; because they are qualifications of so singular a kind, that no man will either allow them in his neighbour or value them in himself.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“Whoever can there bring sufficient proof, that he hath strictly observed the laws of his country for seventy-three moons, hath a claim to certain privileges, according to his quality and condition of life, with a proportionable sum of money out of a fund appropriated for that use: he likewise acquires the title of Snilpall, or Legal, which is added to his name, but doth not descent to his posterity. And these people thought it a prodigious defect of policy aoung us, when I told the, that our laws were enforced only by penalities, without any mention of a reward.”
― Swift Jonathan, L2: Gulliver's Travels Bk & MP3 Pk

“It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“Have you ever known a moment of bliss? ... Yet behold, only a little later, scarcely an hour gone by, and the softly-falling soot of ordinary life is already piling up.”
― Nick Bostrom, Letter from Utopia

“Human life, at its best, is fantastic. I’m asking you to create something even greater. Life that is truly humane.”
― Nick Bostrom, Letter from Utopia

“Pleasure! A few grains of this magic ingredient are worth more than a king’s treasure”
― Nick Bostrom, Letter from Utopia

“However, from our present point of view, it is not clear that creating a human race is immoral.”
― Nick Bostrom, Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?

“We ain't nothin but a nation of goddamn chickenshit horseshit tattle-tale pissy-ass whiney, fat, flabby out-of-shape Facebook-lookin damn twerk-fest, peekin out the windows and slippin around listenin in on the cell phones and spyin in the peephole and peepin in the crack of the goddamn door and listenin to the fuckin shit rock, you know Mr. Putin please, show some fuckin mercy - I mean c'mon drop the fuckin bomb won't you.”
― John B. Macklemore

“He had promised my payout would be halfway to six figures. And it was. It was three figures.”
― Martin Amis, Money

“Suicide, like Aspirin, like everything else, costs money. And I didn't have any. Unless you're really brave, suicide is always gonna set you back a couple of bob”
― Martin Amis, Money

“As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome”
― David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.”
― Albert Camus

“Life is still a pathetic ruse: either too painful or too short. You pick.”
― John Kaag

“If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange-meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The Clown turned his powdered face to the mirror.
"If to be fair is to be beautiful," he said, "who can compare with me in my white mask?"
"Who can compare with him in his white mask?" I asked Death beside me.
"Who can compare with me?" said Death, "for I am paler still."
"You are very beautiful," sighed the Clown, turning his powdered face from the mirror.”
― Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories