February 2011
51 posts
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January 2011
82 posts
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“‘Animals don’t behave like men,’ he said. ‘If they have...”
– Richard Adams, Watership Down
Have you ever thought that humanity might not be much better than animality?
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“As a bull, with a slight but irresistible movement, tosses its head from the...”
– Richard Adams, Watership Down
Potentially the most creative description of a sunrise I’ve come across.
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“Don’t ruin love by wanting it so bad.”
– Derrick Brown
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“Jim Braddock: ‘This time around I know what I’m fighting for.’...”
– Cinderella Man
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“To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’, the only honest...”
– Stanley Fish, for the New York Times
Read the whole article here.
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Use It For Good - Fallulah
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Don't click this link. Especially if you hate... →
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“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better....”
– Dr. Seuss
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“I went way too far on that; I can’t find my way home…”
– Dr. Shull, finally admitting to an irreversible tangent. He was talking about the sodium content of Campbell’s soup; we were in History of the English Language.
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“What is government if words have no meaning?”
– Jared Loughner to Gabrielle Giffords
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I just did my first Wikipedia edit! It was on Leo Tolstoy’s “Patriotism and Government.” There was a sentence that was not correctly transcribed, and I found the original document and fixed it! I’m excited. This could potentially get addicting.
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“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a...”
– Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
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“You know the expression “to fall on your sword”? Well, the other day...”
– Don Shull, my sprightly linguistics professor
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First day of class.
Today, I had one of those classes (Renaissance Drama) in which the professor begins by having the students write poetry.
Assignment: a 4-line ode to an inanimate object
My result, inspired by the closest thing I could find:
A mug of coffee is the best of friends; It takes away the grumpy to which many tend. It takes you from where the night swiftly ends And ushers you softly to where morning...
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“It is said that the Devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But...”
– Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
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Movie Loves A Screen - April Smith and the Great...
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“Her voice sounded like something that lurks in the long grass, visible only by...”
– Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
I love the unexpectedly wonderful descriptive sentences in this book.
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Only Human - Fallulah
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“It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great...”
– Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
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“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
* i.e. everybody
...
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“Philosophy is odious and obscure,
Both law and physic are for petty wits;...”
– Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
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“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”
– John Donne
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Address to Civil Rights Marchers in Washington, DC...
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“If we were created in God’s image, then when God was a child he smooshed fire...”
– Buddy Wakefield
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WatchSlam poet Rives talks about the mysteries of 4 a.m.
File under “Lyrical origami.”
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l(a le af fa ll s) one l iness - e. e. cummings
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“We suffer from the illusion that we can expand our personal bandwidth,...”
– Linda Stone
This is increasingly true and will become more and more vital to understanding the various struggles our generation will face. Texting in the middle of a conversation, choosing to stalk people peruse Facebook rather than spend live time with friends, or even talking on the phone as you...
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“Once the Germans in their hordes came to the rich margin of Rome; and they came...”
– John Steinbeck, in a paragraph deleted from the final Grapes of Wrath typescript.
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“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
– I have no idea who said this.
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Colors - April Smith and the Great Picture Show
I...
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“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we...”
– Abraham Lincoln
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Happy 1/11/11, it’s the best ever!