text:
Emo Philips

Emo Philips (born Philip Soltanec 7 February 1956) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, voice actor, writer and producer. He is known for his eccentric appearance, surreal humor, and the bizarre cadence of his voice in the delivery of his lines.

Quotes

 * Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
 * As quoted in The Fourth — And By Far The Most Recent — 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said : Many Given Heightened Piquancy by Nineteenth-Century Line Cuts (1990) edited by Robert Byrne, 32

 * I was feeling a bit down, I went to a therapist a few times, at a hundred bucks a pop. But then I realized that no therapy session would ever cheer me up half as much as if I was just strolling along and found a hundred dollar bill.
 * As quoted in Psychology Today (July 2006)

 * "I was with this girl the other night and from the way she was responding to my skillful caresses, you would have sworn that she was... conscious. … But I love her from the hair on her head to the tag on her toes."

E=MO² (1985)

 * I was in a bar a few nights ago, moving from stool to stool, trying to get lucky... But there was no gum under any of them. And I hear giggling behind me. At first I don't mind, but the giggling continues... Finally, I thought "What's so amusing?" I turn around, and these two guys, for the last, oh, half hour or so, have been throwing darts into my head. It's a good thing I heard them! I said, "Look, you bums," 'cause I was angry now, "As soon as this game is over, hit the road!" But as I left that bar, one thing stuck in my mind...

 * Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: "A truck!"

 * How many people here have telekinetic powers? Raise my hand.

 * I was walking down Fifth Avenue today and I found a wallet, and I was gonna keep it, rather than return it, but I thought: "Well, if I lost a hundred and fifty dollars, how would I feel?" And I realized I would want to be taught a lesson.

 * New York's such a wonderful city. Although I was at the library today. The guy was very rude. I said, "I'd like a card." He says, "You have to prove you're a citizen of New York." So I stabbed him.

 * People come up to me... concerned... that I'll reproduce.

 * When I was a kid my parents used to tell me, "Emo, don't go near the cellar door!"  One day when they were away, I went up to the cellar door. And I pushed it and walked through and saw strange, wonderful things, things I had never seen before, like... trees.  Grass.  Flowers.  The sun... that was nice... the sun..

 * My parents were very protective. I couldn't even cross the street without them getting all excited, and... placing bets...

 * When I was ten, my family moved to Downers Grove, Illinois. When I was twelve, I found them.

 * You know what I hate? Indian givers... no, I take that back.

 * You know, at parties, people always ask, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" Well, I don't have an alibi!

Die, heretic!

 * Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!"
 * He said, "Nobody loves me."
 * I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
 * He said, "Yes."
 * I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?"
 * He said, "A Christian."
 * I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?"
 * He said, "Protestant."
 * I said, "Me, too! What franchise?"
 * He said, "Baptist."
 * I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?"
 * He said, "Northern Baptist."
 * I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
 * He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist."
 * I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?"
 * He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region."
 * I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?"
 * He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.
 * I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.'''
 * Voted 44th funniest joke of all time in "The 75 Funniest Jokes of All Time" in GQ magazine (June 1999)
 * Voted funniest religious joke of all time (Sept 2005)

A Fine How Ya Do

 * Probably the toughest time in anyone's life is when you have to murder a loved one because they're the Devil. Other than that, though, it's been a good day.
 * Opening line

 * I ran three miles today... finally I said, "Lady, take your purse."

 * People come up to me and say, "Emo, do people really come up to you?"

 * The IRS sent back my tax return saying I owed $800. I said, "If you'll remember, I fastened my return with a paper clip... which, according to your own very latest government Pentagon spending figures, will more than make up the difference."

 * Well, my brother says "hello"! So, hooray for speech therapy.

 * Ambiguity — the Devil's volleyball.

Track Two + Track Two continued

 * I always wanted a beautiful loving wife and she always wanted to be a citizen.

 * I used to be scared of pretty girls, until one confessed they're just as scared of me.

 * My girlfriend always giggles during sex. No matter what she's reading.

GQ Magazine - 75 Funniest Jokes of All Time (June 1999)

 * I caught my wife in bed with another man and I was crushed. So I said, "Get off of me, you two!"

 * I got into a fight one time with a really big guy, and he said, "I'm going to mop the floor with your face." I said, "You'll be sorry." He said, "Oh yeah? Why?" I said, "Well, you won't be able to get into the corners very well."

The Guardian - The best God joke ever - and it's mine! (September 1980)

 * When I was a little boy, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised, the Lord, in his wisdom, doesn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
 * So I'm at the wailing wall, standing there like a moron, with my harpoon.

 * A Mormon told me that they don't drink coffee. I said, "A cup of coffee every day gives you wonderful benefits." He said, "Like what?" I said, "Well, it keeps you from being Mormon ..."

 * I'm not Catholic, but I gave up picking my belly button for lint.

 * When I was a kid my dad would say, "Emo, do you believe in the Lord?" I'd say, "Yes!" He'd say, "Then stand up and shout Hallelujah!" So I would … and I'd fall out of the roller coaster.

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (Episode 303)

 * I like walking in the park... plucking out nose hairs. Those sleeping winos hate that.
 * People ask me how much I weigh. I tell them, 145 pounds, naked. That is, if that scale outside the drugstore is anything to go by.

title: Emo Philips


text:
Omar Bradley

Omar Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981) was one of the main U.S. Army field commanders in North Africa and Europe during the World War II and a General of the United States Army. He was the last surviving five-star officer of the United States.

Quotes

 * It is time that we steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship.
 * Statement (31 May 1948), quoted in An Inconvenient Truth : The Planetary Emergency Of Global Warming And What We Can Do About It (2006) by Al Gore

 * We have men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
 * Armistice Day speech (10 November 1948, in Boston, MA), published in Omar Bradley's Collected Writings, Volume 1 (1967: 589)

 * I am under no illusion that our present strategy of using means short of total war to achieve our ends and oppose communism is a guarantee that a world war will not be thrust upon us. But a policy of patience and determination without provoking a world war, while we improve our military power, is one which we believe we must continue to follow.... Under present circumstances, we have recommended against enlarging the war from Korea to also include Red China. The course of action often described as a limited war with Red China would increase the risk we are taking by engaging too much of our power in an area that is not the critical strategic prize. Red China is not the powerful nation seeking to dominate the world. Frankly, in the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this strategy would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.
 * Testimony before the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations (15 May 1951), published in Military Situation in the Far East, hearings, 82d Congress, 1st session, part 2 (1951), p. 732
 * Variation: "... a wrong war at the wrong place and against a wrong enemy."
 * Military Situation, p. 753

 * We are dealing with [veterans], not procedures; with their problems, not ours.
 * While Administrator of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
 * "General Bradley Speaks of Personnel Affairs," Veterans Administration Personnel Bulletin IB-5, Volume 11 (31 May 1947)

 * Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.
 * As quoted in Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1992) by Peace Pilgrim, p. 113

 * Dependability, integrity, the characteristic of never knowingly doing anything wrong, that you would never cheat anyone, that you would give everybody a fair deal. Character is a sort of an all-inclusive thing. If a man has character, everyone has confidence in him. Soldiers must have confidence in their leader.
 * On military character, in 19 Stars : A Study in Military Character and Leadership (1981) by Edgar F. Puryear Jr.

A Soldier's Story (1951)

 * To those soldiers who must often have wondered WHY they were going where they did. Perhaps this will help answer their questions.
 * Dedication

 * Conscientiously though we have sought to avoid them, the reader may find errors attributable in part to inaccurate sources and to faulty recollection. To those who may feel themselves wronged, I freely acknowledge that this is in part a book of opinion and that the opinion is my own.
 * p. viii

 * In this book I have tried to achieve one purpose: to explain how war is waged on the field from the field command post. For it is there, midway between the conference table and the foxhole, that strategy is translated into battlefield tactics; there the field commander must calculated the cost of rivers, roads and hills in terms of guns, tanks, tonnage- and most importantly in terms of the lives and limbs of his soldiers. How, then, did we reach our critical decisions? Why and how did we go where we did? These are the critical questions I have been asked most often. And these are the questions that gave me justification for writing this book.
 * p. ix

 * To tell the story of how and why we chose to do what we did, no one can ignore the personalities and characteristics of those individuals engaged in making decisions. For military command is as much a practice of human relations as it is a science of tactics and a knowledge of logistics. Where there are people, there is pride and ambition, prejudice and conflict. In generals, as in all other men, capabilities cannot always obscure weaknesses, nor can talents hide faults.
 * p. x

 * During the last six years the United States Army has not only matured greatly, but its officers have grown vastly more aware of their world-wide responsibilities as military men. Allied command has become the accepted pattern of military operation, and many of the insular differences that once caused us to question the motives of our allies have now been completely resolved. If we will only remember that from time to time some difficulties do exist, we shall be better prepared to settle them without exaggerating their dangers.
 * p. x-xi

 * The American army has also acquired political maturity it sorely lacked at the outbreak of World War II. At times during that war we forgot that wars are fought for the resolution of political conflicts, and in the ground campaign for Europe we sometimes overlooked political considerations of vast importance. Today, after several years of cold war, we are intensely aware that a military effort cannot be separated from its political objectives.
 * p. xi

 * If a soldier would command an army he must be prepared to withstand those who would criticize the manner in which he leads that army. There is no place in a democratic state for the attitude which would elevate each military hero above public reproach simply because he did the job he has been trained and is paid to do.
 * p. xi

 * I have attempted to write of my long association with George Patton as fairly and as honestly as I could. General Patton was one of my staunchest friends and the most unhesitatingly loyal of my commanders. He was a magnificent soldier, one whom the American people can admire not only as a great commander but as a unique and remarkable man. In recollecting our experiences together, I may offend those who prefer to remember Patton not as a human being but as a heroic-size statue in a public park. I prefer to remember Patton as a man, as a man with all the frailties and faults of a human being, as a man whose greatness is therefore all the more of a triumph.
 * p. xii

 * Precisely at 7 Patton boomed in to breakfast. His vigor was always infectious, his wit barbed, his conversation a mixture of obscenity and good humor. He was at once stimulating and overbearing. George was a magnificent soldier.
 * p. 5

 * Like Eisenhower, Patton ordinarily messed with a group of inmates from his headquarters. Breakfast was spirited and talkative. Patton picked up the GI holster in which I carried my 30-year-old Colt .45. "Hell, Brad," he said, "what you need is a social gun. You can't carry that cannon with you everywhere you go."
 * p. 5

 * The Yankee invasion had come to England well heeled with American dollars. American privates earned three times as much as their British companions. A U.S. staff sergeant's take-home pay equaled that of a British captain. Since such a substantial share of this wealth was invested in local courting, it is no wonder that Britain's provincial customs were given a fancy whirl. Indeed, it is a tribute to the civility of the British that they endured us with such good will.
 * p. 238

 * "But we've got passengers aboard," our skipper shouted through the darkness. "Prisoners?" the deck called; with a note of curiosity. "Stand by to bring the prisoners aboard." I climbed a rope ladder up the Augusta's side and crawled over the rail, cold, wet, hungry, and tired. The crew pressed forward to see its "prisoners". "Oh, hell," a sailor grunted, "it's only General Bradley."
 * p. 278

 * There are those who contend that the best strategist is the commander most distantly removed from his troops. From where units exist merely as symbols on a map the strategist can perform in a vacuum and his judgment cannot be infected by compassion for his troops. If war were fought with push-button devices, one might make a science of command. But because war is as much a conflict of passion as it is of force, no commander can become a strategist until he knows his men. Far from being a handicap to command, compassion is the measure of it. For unless one values the lives of his soldiers and is tormented by their ordeals, he is unfit to command. He is unfit to appraise the cost of an objective in terms of human life. To spend lives, knowingly, deliberately- even cruelly- he has to steel his mind with the knowledge that to do less would only cost more in the end. For if he becomes tormented by the casualties he must endure, he is in danger of losing sight of his strategic objective. Where the objective is lost, he the war is prolonged and the cost becomes infinitely worse.
 * p. 310

 * But if our afflictions were heavy, we could take comfort in the knowledge that the enemy's outweighed our own. So severe were his losses that none of those divisions committed in the Bulge was ever effective again.
 * p. 483

 * Several days previously I had indicated to Patton that I would feel obligated to ask for relief than submit 12th Army Group to Montgomery's command. George clasped me by the arm. "If you quit, Brad," he said, "then I'll be quitting with you."
 * p. 488

 * A canvas map lay under my helmet with its four silver stars. Only five years before on May 7, as a lieutenant colonel in civilian clothes, I had ridden a bus down Connecticut Avenue to my desk in the old Munitions building. I opened the mapboard and smoothed out the tabs of the 43 divisions now under my command. They stretched across a 640-mile front of the 12th Army Group. With a china-marking pencil, I wrote in the new date: D plus 335. I walked to the window and ripped open the blackout blinds. Outside the sun was climbing into the sky. The war in Europe had ended.
 * Closing words, p. 554

Quotes about Bradley

 * Military hero, courageous in battle, and gentle in spirit, friend of the common soldier, General of the Army, first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he embodies the best of the American military tradition with dignity, humanity, and honor.
 * Gerald Ford, remarks upon presenting Bradley with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (10 January 1977)

 * Omar Bradley, on the other hand, would assume a command position in Overlord whose growing responsibilities would reflect the growing preponderance of American strength on the ground, just as Montgomery's role would shrink in proportion to the relative role of the British Army. A steady, self-effacing Missourian, Bradley was as loyal as a subordinate as Montgomery was an aggravating one. Like his West Point classmate Eisenhower, Bradley had never seen combat until he arrived in North Africa in 1942. But he had by 1944 already acquired a reputation, nourished by the worshipful dispatches of war correspondent Ernie Pyle, as "the GI's general"- a persona reflected in the title of his postwar memoir, A Soldier's Story.
 * David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999), p. 697-698

 * The Bradley name gets heavy billing on a picture of [a] comrade that, while not caricature, is the likeness of a victorious, glory-seeking buffoon ... Patton in the flesh was an enigma. He so stays in the film. ... Napoleon once said that the art of the general is not strategy but knowing how to mold human nature ... Maybe that is all producer Frank McCarthy and Gen. Bradley, his chief advisor, are trying to say.
 * S. L. A. Marshall, on the portrayals of Bradley and George S. Patton in Patton (1970), in "Great Georgie Redone", in The Charleston Gazette (21 March 1970), § 4. p. 4

 * Washington and Grant and Lee were all tried and true
 * Eisenhower, Bradley, and MacArthur, too
 * They will live forevermore, 'till the world is done with war
 * Then they'll close that final door, fading away
 * Vaughan Monroe, in his 1951 song Old Soldiers Never Die, which was named after a famous speech by Douglas MacArthur.

 * You know what's really ironic? General Omar Bradley was a brilliant tactician, and a great leader. No ego, just did the job. And he always looked out for the morale and safety of his men. And then they go and put his name on this thing. Talk about a kick in the ass.
 * Lt. Col. James Burton (Cary Elwes), in The Pentagon Wars (1998)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Omar Bradley


text:
François Rabelais

François Rabelais (ca. 1493 – April 9 1553) was a French humanist writer of satirical romances.

Quotes

 * Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.
 * I am going to seek a grand perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.
 * Last words, according to the Life of Rabelais (1694) by Peter Anthony Motteux.
 * Variant translations:
 * I am going to seek the great perhaps.
 * I am going to search for the great perhaps.

 * Je n'ai rien vaillant; je dois beaucoup; je donne le reste aux pauvres.
 * I have nothing, owe a great deal, and the rest I leave to the poor.
 * His one line will, as quoted in Arthur Machen : A Short Account of His Life and Work (1964) by Aidan Reynolds and William E. Charlton, p. 186

Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564)

 * Gargantua and Pantagruel Full text online at Project Gutenberg, Books I through V, as translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Anthony Motteux in The Works of Francis Rabelais (1854)

Put your prejudice aside, For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous, Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious. Not that I sit here glowing with pride For my book: all you'll find is laughter: '''That's all the glory my heart is after, Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you. I'd rather write about laughing than crying, For laughter makes men human, and courageous.'''
 * Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
 * BE HAPPY!
 * Introduction, as translated by Burton Raffel (1989)

Gargantua (1534)

 * Full text online at Wikisource (Book I of the series though actually published after Pantegruel)

 * La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua, père de Pantagruel Gargantua, The Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua, Father Of Pantagruel, as translated by Thomas Urquhart (1653) and Peter Antony Motteux

 * Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme.
 * To laugh is proper to man.
 * Rabelais to the Reader (prefatory note on leading page)

 * It becomes you to be wise to smell, feel, and have in estimation these fair books, de haulte gresse, light in the pursuit, and bold at the encounter. Then you must, by a curious reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow, — that is what I mean by these Pythagorean symbols, — with assured hope of becoming well-advised and valiant by the said reading; for in it you shall find another kind of taste, and a doctrine more profound, which will disclose unto you deep doctrines and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our religion as matters of the public state and life economical.
 * Prologue

 * Revenons à nos moutons
 * To return to our wethers.
 * Chapter 1; a proverb taken from the French farce of "Pierre Patelin," edition of 1762, p. 90

 * I drink no more than a sponge.
 * Chapter 5

 * Appetite comes with eating, says Angeston. But the thirst goes away with drinking.
 * Chapter 5

 * Natura abhorret vacuum.
 * Translation: Nature abhors a vacuum.
 * Chapter 5

 * As soon as he was born, he cried not as other babes use to do, Miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice shouted about, Some drink, some drink, some drink, as inviting all the world to drink with him. The noise hereof was so extremely great, that it was heard in both the countries at once of Beauce and Bibarois. I doubt me, that you do not thoroughly believe the truth of this strange nativity. Though you believe it not, I care not much: but an honest man, and of good judgment, believeth still what is told him, and that which he finds written.
 * Chapter 6 : How Gargantua was born in a strange manner

 * Thought the moon was made of green cheese.
 * Chapter 11

 * He always looked a given horse in the mouth.
 * Chapter 11

 * By robbing Peter he paid Paul, … and hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall.
 * Chapter 11

 * He did not care a button for it.
 * Chapter 16

 * How well I feathered my nest.
 * Chapter 17.

 * He laid him squat as a flounder.
 * Chapter 27

 * So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.
 * Chapter 29

 * Send them home as merry as crickets.
 * Chapter 29

 * A good crier of green sauce.
 * Chapter 31

 * Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that the one half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth.
 * Chapter 32

 * Les heures sont faictez pour l'homme, et non l'homme pour les heures.
 * I never follow the clock: hours were made for man, not man for hours.
 * Chapter 39 (frère Iean des Entommeures)

 * Being come down from thence towards Seville, they were heard by Gargantua, who said then unto those that were with him, Comrades and fellow-soldiers, we have here met with an encounter, and they are ten times in number more than we. Shall we charge them or no? What a devil, said the monk, shall we do else? Do you esteem men by their number rather than by their valour and prowess? With this he cried out, Charge, devils, charge! Which when the enemies heard, they thought certainly that they had been very devils, and therefore even then began all of them to run away as hard as they could drive, Drawforth only excepted, who immediately settled his lance on its rest, and therewith hit the monk with all his force on the very middle of his breast, but, coming against his horrific frock, the point of the iron being with the blow either broke off or blunted, it was in matter of execution as if you had struck against an anvil with a little wax-candle.
 * Chapter 43

 * Comrades, I hear the track and beating of the enemy's horse-feet, and withal perceive that some of them come in a troop and full body against us. Let us rally and close here, then set forward in order, and by this means we shall be able to receive their charge to their loss and our honour.
 * Chapter 43

 * Et guerre faicte sans bonne provision d'argent, n'a qu'un souspirail de vigueur. Les nerfz des batailles sont les pecunes.
 * War begun without good provision of money beforehand for going through with it is but as a breathing of strength and blast that will quickly pass away. Coin is the sinews of war.
 * Chapter 44

 * Corn is the sinews of war.
 * Chapter 46

 * Our forefathers and ancestors of all times have been of this nature and disposition, that, upon the winning of a battle, they have chosen rather, for a sign and memorial of their triumphs and victories, to erect trophies and monuments in the hearts of the vanquished by clemency than by architecture in the lands which they had conquered. For they did hold in greater estimation the lively remembrance of men purchased by liberality than the dumb inscription of arches, pillars, and pyramids, subject to the injury of storms and tempests, and to the envy of everyone.
 * Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished

Being unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from the hereditary mildness and clemency of my parents, I do now forgive you, deliver you from all fines and imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty, and every way make you as frank and free as ever you were before.
 * Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.
 * Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished

 * There was left only the monk to provide for, whom Gargantua would have made Abbot of Seville, but he refused it. He would have given him the Abbey of Bourgueil, or of Sanct Florent, which was better, or both, if it pleased him ; but the monk gave him a very peremptory answer, that he would never take upon him the charge nor government of monks. For how shall I be able, said he, to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself: If you think I have done you, or may hereafter do you any acceptable service, give me leave to found an abbey after my own mind and fancy.
 * Chapter 52 : How Gargantua caused to be built for the monk the abbey of Theleme

Externally devoted apes, base snites, Puffed-up, wry-necked beasts, worse than the Huns''', Or Ostrogoths, forerunners of baboons: Cursed snakes, dissembled varlets, seeming sancts, Slipshod caffards, beggars pretending wants, Fat chuffcats, smell-feast knockers, doltish gulls, '''Out-strouting cluster-fists, contentious bulls, Fomenters of divisions and debates, Elsewhere, not here, make sale of your deceits.'''
 * '''Here enter not vile bigots, hypocrites,
 * Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme

Nor bridle-champing law-practitioners: Clerks, commissaries, scribes, nor pharisees, Wilful disturbers of the people's ease: Judges, destroyers, with an unjust breath, Of honest men, like dogs, even unto death.''' Your salary is at the gibbet-foot: Go drink there! for we do not here fly out On those excessive courses, which may draw A waiting on your courts by suits in law.
 * '''Here enter not attorneys, barristers,
 * Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme

Here sojourn day and night.''' Sound bodies lined With a good mind, Do here pursue with might Grace, honour, praise, delight. '''Here enter you, and welcome from our hearts, All noble sparks, endowed with gallant parts. This is the glorious place, which bravely shall Afford wherewith to entertain you all. Were you a thousand, here you shall not want For anything; for what you'll ask we'll grant. '''Stay here, you lively, jovial, handsome, brisk, Gay, witty, frolic, cheerful, merry, frisk, Spruce, jocund, courteous, furtherers of trades, And, in a word, all worthy gentle blades.'''
 * '''Grace, honour, praise, delight,
 * Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme

Expounders of the Scriptures old and new.''' Whose glosses do not blind our reason, but Make it to see the clearer, and who shut Its passages from hatred, avarice, Pride, factions, covenants, and all sort of vice. '''Come, settle here a charitable faith, Which neighbourly affection nourisheth.''' And whose light chaseth all corrupters hence, Of the blest word, from the aforesaid sense. '''The holy sacred Word, May it always afford T' us all in common, Both man and woman, A spiritual shield and sword, The holy sacred Word.'''
 * '''Here enter you, pure, honest, faithful, true
 * Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme

Wise, personable, ravishing, and sweet, Come joys enjoy. '''The Lord celestial Hath given enough wherewith to please us all.'''
 * Alluring, courtly, comely, fine, complete,
 * Chapter 54 : The inscription set upon the great gate of Theleme

 * All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good : they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing ; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed,
 * DO WHAT THOU WILT.
 * Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.
 * Ch. 57 : How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living; the famous dictum of the abbey of Theleme presented here, "Do what thou wilt" (Fais ce que voudras), evokes an ancient expression by St. Augustine of Hippo: "Love, and do what thou wilt." The expression of Rabelais was later used by the Hellfire Club established by Sir Francis Dashwood, and by Aleister Crowley in his The Book of the Law (1904): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."

Pantagruel (1532)

 * Les horribles et espouvantables faictz & prouesses du tres renommé Pantagruel Roy des Dipsodes, filz du grand géant Gargantua; Full text online at Wikisource; this is normally considered Book II of the series, although it was the first published.

 * Then fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists; and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures; first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles;: and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge; for from henceforward, as thou growest great and becomest a man, thou must part from this tranquillity and rest of study, thou must learn chivalry, warfare, and the exercises of the field, the better thereby to defend my house and our friends, and to succour and protect them at all their needs against the invasion and assaults of evildoers.
 * Chapter 8

 * But because, as the wise man Solomon saith, Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and that knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul, it behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and by faith formed in charity to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be separated from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory, but the Word of the Lord endureth for ever. Be serviceable to all thy neighbours, and love them as thyself. Reverence thy preceptors: shun the conversation of those whom thou desirest not to resemble, and receive not in vain the graces which God hath bestowed upon thee.
 * Chapter 8
 * Variant translation: Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind, and science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.
 * Original: Science sans conscience n'est que ruine de l'âme.

 * En toutes compagnies il y a plus de folz que de sages, et la plus grande partie surmonte tousjours la meilleure.
 * Translation: In all companies there are more fools than wise men, and the greater part always gets the better of the wiser.
 * Chapter 10

 * Subject to a kind of disease, which at that time they called lack of money.
 * Chapter 16

 * So much is a man worth as he esteems himself.
 * Chapter 29 : How Pantagruel discomfited the three hundred Giants armed with free-stone, and Loupgarou their Captain (Loup-garou is the french term for werewolf)

 * Loupgarou was come with all his giants, who, seeing Pantagruel in a manner alone, was carried away with temerity and presumption, for hopes that he had to kill the good man. Whereupon he said to his companions the giants, You wenchers of the low country, by Mahoom, if any of you undertake to fight against these men here, I will put you cruelly to death. It is my will, that you let me fight single. In the meantime you shall have good sport to look upon us.
 * Chapter 29

Third Book (1546)

 * Le Tiers-Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel, Full text online at Wikisource

 * This flea which I have in mine ear.
 * Chapter 31

 * You have there hit the nail on the head.
 * Chapter 34

 * I have already related to you great and admirable things; but, if you might be induced to adventure upon the hazard of believing some other divinity of this sacred Pantagruelion, I very willingly would tell it you. Believe it, if you will, or otherwise, believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me. It shall be sufficient for my purpose to have told you the truth, and the truth I will tell you.
 * Chapter 52 : How a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature that the fire is not able to consume it

A thousand thousand thanks be given; And say with France, '''it goodly goes, Where the Pantagruelion grows.'''
 * If in your soil it takes, to heaven
 * Chapter 52 : How a certain kind of Pantagruelion is of that nature that the fire is not able to consume it

Fourth Book (1548, 1552)

 * Le Quart-Livre des faicts et dicts héroïques du bon Pantagruel, Full text online at Wikisource

 * Certaine gayeté d'esprit conficte en mespris des choses fortuites.
 * A certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune.
 * Prologue de l'autheur

 * A son [Timon le Misanthrope] exemple ie denonce à ces calumniateurs diaboliques, que tous ayent à se pendre dedans le dernier chanteau de ceste lune. Ie les fourniray de licolz.
 * Following his example, I encourage all these diabolical calumniators to go hang themselves before the last moon's quarter is done. I will supply the rope.
 * Prologue of the 1548 "old" edition

 * Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.
 * Chapter 19

 * I'll go his halves.
 * Chapter 23

The Devil was well, — the devil a monk was he.
 * The Devil was sick, — the Devil a monk would be;
 * Chapter 24

 * Do not believe what I tell you here any more than if it were some tale of a tub.
 * Chapter 38

 * I would have you call to mind the strength of the ancient giants, that undertook to lay the high mountain Pelion on the top of Ossa, and set among those the shady Olympus.
 * Chapter 38

 * Which was performed to a T.
 * Chapter 41

 * He that has patience may compass anything.
 * Chapter 48

 * We will take the good-will for the deed.
 * Chapter 49.

 * You are Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled.
 * Chapter 50

 * Would you damn your precious soul?
 * Chapter 54

 * Let us fly and save our bacon.
 * Chapter 55

 * Needs must when the Devil drives.
 * Chapter 57

 * Scampering as if the Devil drove them.
 * Chapter 62

 * He freshly and cheerfully asked him how a man should kill time.
 * Chapter 62

 * ...l'estomach affamé n'a poinct d'aureilles, il n'oyt goutte.
 * The belly has no ears nor is it to be filled with fair words.
 * Chapter 63

Fifth Book (1564)

 * Full text online at Wikisource

 * Whose cockloft is unfurnished.
 * Author's prologue
 * Prologue

 * Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.
 * Author's prologue

 * Plain as the nose in a man's face.
 * Author's prologue

 * Like hearts of oak.
 * Author's prologue

 * You shall never want rope enough.
 * Author's prologue

 * Looking as like...as one pea does like another.
 * Chapter 2

 * Nothing is so dear and precious as time.
 * Chapter 5

 * And thereby hangs a tale.
 * Chapter 6

 * It is meat, drink, and cloth to us.
 * Chapter 7

 * And so on to the end of the chapter.
 * Chapter 10

 * What is got over the Devil's back is spent under the belly.
 * Chapter 11

 * We have here other fish to fry.
 * Chapter 12

 * What cannot be cured must be endured.
 * Chapter 15

 * Thought I to myself, we shall never come off scot-free.
 * Chapter 15

 * It is enough to fright you out of your seven senses.
 * Chapter 15

 * Necessity has no law.
 * Chapter 15

 * Panurge had no sooner heard this, but he was upon the high-rope.
 * Chapter 18

We met full butt on the quay a great number of guards and other military men that garrisoned the arsenal, and we were somewhat frighted at first because they made us all lay down our arms, and in a haughty manner asked us whence we came.
 * On the third day the sky seemed to us somewhat clearer, and we happily arrived at the port of Mateotechny, not far distant from Queen Whims, alias the Quintessence.
 * Ch. 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

 * What do you say? cried they; do you call it Entelechy or Endelechy? Truly, truly, sweet cousins, quoth Panurge, we are a silly sort of grout-headed lobcocks, an't please you; be so kind as to forgive us if we chance to knock words out of joint. As for anything else, we are downright honest fellows and true hearts.
 * Chapter 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

Pray tell me, does your time lie so heavy upon you in your world that you do not know how to bestow it better than in thus impudently talking, disputing, and writing of our sovereign lady?
 * There has been here from other countries a pack of I know not what overweening self-conceited prigs, as moody as so many mules and as stout as any Scotch lairds, and nothing would serve these, forsooth, but they must wilfully wrangle and stand out against us at their coming; and much they got by it after all. Troth, we e'en fitted them and clawed 'em off with a vengeance, for all they looked so big and so grum.
 * Chapter 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

Panurge then whispered me, Fellow-traveller, quoth he, '''hast thou not been somewhat afraid this bout? A little, said I. To tell you the truth of it, quoth he, never were the Ephraimites in a greater fear and quandary when the Gileadites killed and drowned them for saying sibboleth instead of shibboleth; and among friends, let me tell you that perhaps there is not a man in the whole country of Beauce but might easily have stopped my bunghole with a cartload of hay.''' The captain afterwards took us to the queen's palace, leading us silently with great formality. Pantagruel would have said something to him, but the other, not being able to come up to his height, wished for a ladder or a very long pair of stilts; then said, Patience, if it were our sovereign lady's will, we would be as tall as you; well, we shall when she pleases.
 * Aristotle, that first of men and peerless pattern of all philosophy, was our sovereign lady's godfather, and wisely and properly gave her the name of Entelechy. Her true name then is Entelechy, and may he be in tail beshit, and entail a shit-a-bed faculty and nothing else on his family, who dares call her by any other name; for whoever he is, he does her wrong, and is a very impudent person. You are heartily welcome, gentlemen. With this they colled and clipped us about the neck, which was no small comfort to us, I'll assure you.
 * Chapter 19 : How we arrived at the queendom of Whims or Entelechy

 * The probity that scintillizes in the superfices of your persons informs my ratiocinating faculty, in a most stupendous manner, of the radiant virtues latent within the precious caskets and ventricles of your minds. For, contemplating the mellifluous suavity of your thrice discreet reverences, it is impossible not to be persuaded with facility that neither your affections nor your intellects are vitiated with any defect or privation of liberal and exalted sciences. Far from it, all must judge that in you are lodged a cornucopia and encyclopaedia, an unmeasurable profundity of knowledge in the most peregrine and sublime disciplines, so frequently the admiration, and so rarely the concomitants of the imperite vulgar. This gently compels me, who in preceding times indefatigably kept my private affections absolutely subjugated, to condescend to make my application to you in the trivial phrase of the plebeian world, and assure you that you are well, more than most heartily welcome.
 * Queen Whims, or Queen Quintessence, in Ch. 20 : How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song

Having spoken this, she only said to her officers, Tabachins, a panacea; and straight they desired us not to take it amiss if the queen did not invite us to dine with her; for she never ate anything at dinner but some categories, jecabots, emnins, dimions, abstractions, harborins, chelemins, second intentions, carradoths, antitheses, metempsychoses, transcendent prolepsies, and such other light food.
 * Queen Whims, or Queen Quintessence (which you please), perceiving that we stood as mute as fishes, said: Your taciturnity speaks you not only disciples of Pythagoras, from whom the venerable antiquity of my progenitors in successive propagation was emaned and derives its original, but also discovers, that through the revolution of many retrograde moons, you have in Egypt pressed the extremities of your fingers with the hard tenants of your mouths, and scalptized your heads with frequent applications of your unguicules. In the school of Pythagoras, taciturnity was the symbol of abstracted and superlative knowledge, and the silence of the Egyptians was agnited as an expressive manner of divine adoration; this caused the pontiffs of Hierapolis to sacrifice to the great deity in silence, impercussively, without any vociferous or obstreperous sound. My design is not to enter into a privation of gratitude towards you, but by a vivacious formality, though matter were to abstract itself from me, excentricate to you my cogitations.
 * Chapter 20 : How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song

 * Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said to her tabachins, A panacea.
 * Chapter 20 : How the Quintessence cured the sick with a song

 * We saw a knot of others, about a baker's dozen.
 * Chapter 22

 * Others made a virtue of necessity.
 * Chapter 22

 * Spare your breath to cool your porridge.
 * Chapter 28

 * I believe he would make three bites of a cherry.
 * Chapter 28

Quotes about Rabelais

 * Si d’un mort qui pourri repose Nature engendre quelque chose, Et si la generation Se fait de la corruption, Une vigne prendra naissance De l’estomac et de la pance Du bon Rabelais, qui boivoit Tousjours ce pendant qu’il vivoit.
 * If anything can sprout From a dead man rotted out, And if further generation Arises from stagnation, A grapevine will surely take birth From the belly and the girth Of good Rabelais, who contrived Always to drink while alive.
 * Pierre de Ronsard, «Épitaphe de François Rabelais» in Le Bocage (1554); Terese Coe, tr., "Epitaph for François Rabelais", Poetry, vol. 185, no. 6 (March 2005), p. 438

 * It must be laid down once and for all, that the chief purpose of reading a classic like Rabelais is to prop and stay the spirit, especially in moments of weakness and enervation, against the stress of life, to elevate it above the reach of commonplace annoyances and degradations, and to purge it of despondency and cynicism.... Rabelais is dynamogenous and illuminating; he lights up the humane life with the light of great joy, so that it shows itself as something lovely and infinitely desirable, by the side of which all other attainments fall automatically into their proper place as cheap, poor, and trivial. One closes with it gladly, joyfully, perceiving that for the sake of it all else that is lost is well lost.
 * Albert Jay Nock in the Preface to The Works of Francis Rabelais (1931), Edited and transalted by Albert Jay Nock and Catherine R. Wilson

title: François Rabelais


text:
W. S. Gilbert

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist and librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his operatic collaborations with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan.

Quotes

 * A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause.
 * "Unappreciated Shakespeare", Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, Christmas Number, 9 December 1882.

Trial by Jury (1875)

 * So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly, ugly daughter.
 * 1875, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 353 (2005)
 * She may very well pass for forty three In the dusk with the light behind her.
 * 1875, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 353 (2005)
 * But I submit, my lord, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree!

The Sorcerer (1877)

 * Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells, I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses And ever-filled purses, In prophecies, witches, and knells. If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"— If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax— You've but to look in On our resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe!
 * Mr Wells' song, Act I.
 * "Simmery Axe" is the traditional pronunciation of "St. Mary Axe", a road in the City of London. In Gilbert's day, the last building was number 68, though number 70 was built later.

 * Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.

H.M.S. Pinafore (1878)

 * From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination! It's human nature! I'm resigned.
 * What, never? / No, never! / What, never? / Well, hardly ever!
 * Things are seldom what they seem; Skim milk masquerades as cream.
 * Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool, Be careful to be guided by this golden rule— Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee.
 * The first Lord's Song.
 * I am the monarch of the sea, The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!
 * 1878, HMS Pinafore, act 1, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 353 (2005)
 * When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an attorney's firm. I cleaned the wndows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
 * 1878, HMS Pinafore, act 2, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 353-354 (2005)
 * In spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman!
 * 1878, HMS Pinafore, act 2, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 354 (2005)

The Pirates of Penzance (1879)

 * The last three ships we took proved to be manned entirely by orphans, and so we had to let them go. One would think that Great Britain’s mercantile navy was recruited solely from her orphan asylums – which we know is not the case.
 * Frederick explaining to the other pirates why their merciful ways are incompatible with the profession of a pirate.

 * When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them.
 * The pirate king bidding farewell to Frederic, who has vowed to destroy the pirate band once out of his indentures.

 * No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don’t think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest.
 * The pirate king mourning Frederic's decision not to be a pirate once freed, and his commitment to their destruction.

 * Against our wills, papa—against our wills!
 * The daughters of Major-General Stanley, explaining to him the context of declaration of marriage by the various members of the pirate band.

 * Exactly – you said "often" ('frequently') only once.
 * Major-General Stanley resolving a miscommunication with the pirate king arising from the phonetic similarity of 'often' and 'orphan'.

 * Yes, but you don't go!
 * Major-General Stanley expressing irritation with the police sergeant's posse for dawdling due to fear of what may occur during their pursuit of the pirates

Patience (1881)

 * If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon - Take all the remarkable people in history, Rattle them off to a popular tune!

 * Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine.

 * Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean! Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand.
 * Act I

 * Yes, I am the Apostle of Simplicity. I am called Archibald the All-Right, for I am infallible.

 * Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all. Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!

 * I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me.

 * A pallid and thin young man, A haggard and lank young man, A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Foot-in-the-grave young man!

Iolanthe (1882)

 * The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the Law.

 * The House of Peers, thoughout the war Did nothing in particular And did it very well.

Princess Ida (1884)

 * I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do!

 * ...Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d, At best is only a monkey shav’d!

 * Man is nature's sole mistake.

The Mikado (1885)

 * Ah pray, make no mistake, we are not shy; We're very wide awake, The moon and I!

 * I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.

 * No money, no grovel! (Actually an ad-lib introduced by Rutland Barrington when playing the rôle of Pooh-Bah, to the annoyance of Gilbert.)

 * …in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence.

 * Pooh Bah: This professional conscientiousness is highly creditable to you, but it places us in a very awkward position. Koko: My good sir, the awkwardness of your position is grace itself compared with that of a man engaged in the act of cutting off his own head.

 * To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

 * [Koko is negotiating the terms by which he can behead Nanki-Poo in his place, and they involve letting the latter be married to his fiance until he is executed] Koko: But my position during the next month will be most unpleasant, most unpleasant! Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it.

 * I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.

Pooh-Ba: Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
 * Ko-Ko: Well, a nice mess you've got us into, with your nodding head and the deference due to a man of pedigree!

 * ...but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.

 * The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this and every country but his own.

I've got a little list, I've got a little list Of society offenders who might well be underground, And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!
 * As someday it may happen that a victim must be found
 * Song, "As someday it may happen".

I shall achieve in time— To let the punishment fit the crime, The punishment fit the crime.
 * My object all sublime

Ruddigore (1887)

 * I know a youth who loves a little maid— (Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!) Silent is he, for he's modest and afraid (Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!)

 * Some word that teems with hidden meaning, like "Basingstoke". It might recall me to my saner self. For, after all, I am only Mad Margaret! Daft Meg! Poor Meg! He! he! he!

 * My eyes are fully open to my awful situation, I shall go at once to Roderic and make him an oration, I shall tell him I've recovered my forgotten moral senses, and I don't care tuppence ha'penny for any consequences. Now I do not want to perish by the sword or by the dagger, but a martyr may indulge a little pardonable swagger And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, but I've got to die to-morrow, so it really doesn't matter!

The Yeomen of the Guard (1888)

 * When maiden loves, she sits and sighs, She wanders to and fro - Unbidden tear-drops fill her eyes, And to all questions she replies With a sad "heigh ho!"

 * Heigh-dy! Heigh-dy! Misery me, lack-a-day-dee! He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!

 * I've jibe and joke, And quip and crank, For lowly folk And men of rank.

 * Is life a boon? If so it must befall That death when e're he call Must call too soon.

The Gondoliers (1889)

 * I should have preferred to ride through the streets of Venice; but owing, I presume, to an unusually wet season, the streets are in such a condition that equestrian exercise is impractical.

 * In enterprise of martial kind, When there was any fighting, He led his regiment from behind— He found it less exciting.

 * One of you may be Baptisto's son, for anything I know to the contrary; but the other is no less a personage than the only son of the late King of Barataria. ... And I trust — I trust it was that one who slapped me on the shoulder and called me his man!

 * Of that there is no manner of doubt— No probable, possible shadow of doubt— No possible doubt whatever.

 * Oh, philosophers may sing Of the troubles of a King, But of pleasures there are many and of worries there are none; And the culminating pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done.

 * The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth of gold and satins rare, For cloth of gold you cease to care— Up goes the price of shoddy. In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When everyone is somebodee, Then no one's anybody!

Utopia Limited (1893)

 * There's a little group of isles beyond the wave, So tiny you might almost wonder where it is— That nation is the bravest of the brave, And cowards are the rarest of all rarities. The proudest nations kneel at her command, She terrifies all foreign-born rap-scallions; And holds the peace of Europe in her hand With half a score invincible battalions.
 * Final chorus.

 * By doing so, we shall, in course of time, Regenerate completely our entire land— Great Britain is that monarchy sublime, To which some add (but others do not) Ireland.
 * Final chorus, concluding lines.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

 * You have a daughter, Captain Reese, Ten female cousins and a niece, A ma, if what I'm told is true, Six sisters and an aunt or two. Now, somehow, Sir, it seems to me, More friendly-like we all should be If you united of them to Unmarried members of the crew.
 * Captain Reese.

 * Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo'sun tight and a midshipmite And the crew of the captain's gig.
 * The Yarn of the "Nancy Bell". Compare: There were three sailors of Bristol city Who took a boat and went to sea. But first with beef and captain's biscuits And pickled pork they loaded she. There was gorging Jack and guzzling Jimmy, And the youngest he was little Billee. Now when they got as far as the Equator They'd nothing left but one split pea. W. M. Thackeray: Little Billee.

 * Roll on, thou ball, roll on Through pathless realms of space, Roll on!
 * To the Terrestrial Globe.

 * It's true I've got no shirts to wear, It's true my butcher's bill is due, It's true my prospects all look blue, But don't let that unsettle you! Never you mind! Roll on! (It rolls on.)
 * To the Terrestrial Globe.

 * He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman!. For he might have been a Rooshian A French or Turk or Proosian, Or perhaps Itali-an. But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman.
 * The Englishman (from HMS Pinafore).

 * I love my fellow-creatures, I do all the good I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man And I can't think why!
 * The disagreeable Man (from Princess Ida).

 * Ah, take one consideration with another A policeman's lot is not a happy one!
 * The Policeman's Lot (from The Pirates of Penzance).

 * Bad language or abuse I never, never use, Whatever the emergency; Though "Bother it" I may Occasionally say, I never use a big, big D-
 * The first Lord's Song (from HMS Pinafore).

 * The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that's excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the Law.
 * The Lord Chancellor's Song (from Iolanthe).

 * On a tree by a river a little tomtit Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow" And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow?'. "Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried, "Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?" With a shake of his poor little head he replied, "Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
 * The Suicide's Grave (from The Mikado).

 * Life's a pudding full of plums; Care's a canker that benumbs, Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution, Let us take it as it comes!
 * The tangled Skein.

 * As innocent as a new-laid egg.
 * Engaged.

title: W. S. Gilbert


text:
Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane (1 November 1871 – 5 June 1900) was an American novelist, poet and journalist.

Quotes

 * Every sin is the result of a collaboration.
 * "The Blue Hotel", from The Monster and Other Stories (1898)

Cruel as hawks the hours fly; Wounded men seldom come home to die; '''The hard waves see an arm flung high; Scorn hits strong because of a lie; Yet there exists a mystic tie. Unwind my riddle.'''
 * Unwind my riddle.
 * Epigraph in "The Clan of No Name" (1899); published in the anthology Wounds in the Rain (1900)

 * The word is clear only to the kind who on peak or plain, from dark northern ice-fields to the hot wet jungles, through all wine and want, through lies and unfamiliar truth, dark or light, are governed by the unknown gods, and though each man knows the law, no man may give tongue to it.
 * "The Clan of No Name" (1899); published in the anthology Wounds in the Rain (1900)

The Open Boat (1894)

 * First published in Scribner's Magazine, issue 21 (May 1894)

 * None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.
 * Pt. I

 * A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.
 * Pt. I

 * It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends, friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common. The hurt captain, lying against the water-jar in the bow, spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It was more than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a quality that was personal and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be cynical of men, knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one mentioned it.
 * Pt. III

 * When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger. There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if he felt sure it was a great soft mattress.
 * Pt. IV

 * If I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned — if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?
 * Pt. VI

 * When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelleted with his jeers. Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but I love myself." A high cold star on a winter's night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows the pathos of his situation.
 * Pt. VI

 * When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.
 * Pt. VII

The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

 * The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.
 * Ch. 1 First lines.

 * The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, went calmly on through fields and woods. The youth looked at the men nearest him, and saw, for the most part, expressions of deep interest, as if they were investigating something that had fascinated them. One or two stepped with overvaliant airs as if they were already plunged into war. Others walked as upon thin ice. The greater part of the untested men appeared quiet and absorbed. They were going to look at war, the red animal — war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed in this march.
 * Ch. 3

 * It was surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process in the midst of so much devilment.
 * Ch. 5

 * At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.
 * Ch. 9

 * The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer.
 * Ch. 9

 * He had fought like a pagan who defends his religion.
 * Ch. 17

 * He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man.
 * Ch. 24

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden rain clouds.
 * It rained. The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train, despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky. Yet the youth smiled, for he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to be made of oaths and walking sticks. He had rid himself of the red sickness of battle. The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war. He turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh meadows, cool brooks — an existence of soft and eternal peace.
 * Ch. 24

The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895)

I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter—bitter," he answered; "But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart."'''
 * '''In the desert
 * III

To my tiny throes and struggles, He sees a fool; And it is not fine for gods to menace fools.'''
 * '''If there is a witness to my little life,
 * XIII

Round and round they sped.''' I was disturbed at this; I accosted the man. "It is futile," I said, "You can never—" '''"You lie," he cried, And ran on.'''
 * ''' I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
 * XXIV

"Is a rock, a mighty fortress; "Often have I been to it, "Even to its highest tower, "From whence the world looks black." "Truth," said a traveller, "Is a breath, a wind, "A shadow, a phantom; "Long have I pursued it, "But never have I touched "The hem of its garment." And I believed the second traveller; For truth was to me A breath, a wind, A shadow, a phantom, And never had I touched The hem of its garment.
 * "Truth," said a traveller,
 * XXVIII

War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)

Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind.
 * Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
 * Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind, No. 1, st. 1

Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom — A field where a thousand corpses lie.
 * Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
 * Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind, st. 2

Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died, Do not weep. War is kind.
 * Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
 * Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind, st. 3

Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing And a field where a thousand corpses lie.
 * Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
 * Do Not Weep, Maiden, For War is Kind, st. 4

Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads."
 * The wayfarer,
 * The Wayfarer, No. 13

"Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." '''
 * '''A man said to the universe:
 * A Man Said to the Universe, No. 20

Misattributed
God does that for you; But you can plant a standard Where a standard never flew.
 * You cannot choose your battlefield,
 * The Colors by Nathalia Crane

Quotes about Stephen Crane

 * Roving was good for the writer; to have been a reporter undoubtedly informed Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Crane. To know far more than he may ever use is imperative for the writer.
 * Josephine Herbst "The Ruins of Memory" (April 4, 1956) in The Nation

title: Stephen Crane


text:
Stanisław Lem

Stanisław Lem (12 September 1921 – 27 March 2006) was a Polish satirical, philosophical, and science fiction writer.

Quotes

 * My past had disappeared. Not that I believed for a moment that this was an accident; in fact, I had suspected for some time now that the Cosmic Command, obviously no longer able to supervise every assignment on an individual basis when there were literally trillions of matters in its charge, had switched over to a random system. The assumption would be that every document, circulating endlessly from desk to desk, must eventually hit upon the right one. A time-consuming procedure, perhaps, but one that would never fail. The Universe itself operated on the same principle. And for an institution as everlasting as the Universe — certainly our Building was such an institution — the speed at which these meanderings and perturbations took place was of no consequence.
 * Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie (1961), translated as Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (1973)

 * Not everything everywhere is for us.
 * The Invincible (1963)

 * The only way to deal with technology is with another technology. Man knows more about his dangerous tendencies than he did a hundred years ago, and in the next hundred years, his knowledge will be even more advanced. Then he will make use of it.
 * Summa Technologiae (1964)

 * Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.
 * "Gruppenführer Louis XVI", in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

 * He is no parasite on anything, whose work is real: a mechanic, a doctor, a builder, a tailor, a dishwasher. What, in comparison, does a writer produce? Semblances. This is a serious occupation?
 * "Rien du tout, ou la conséquence" ("Nothing, or the Consequence"), in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

 * Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible.
 * The Star Diaries (1976)

 * The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes.
 * The Star Diaries (1976)

 * Not only does God play dice with the world—He does not let us see what He has rolled.
 * ''Imaginary Magnitude" (1981), "Lecture XLIII", tr. Marc E. Heine (1984)

 * Oh, I read good books, too, but only Earthside. Why that is, I don't really know. Never stopped to analyze it. Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way. When they talk about outer space, they make you feel the silence, so unlike the Earthly kind — and the lifelessness. Whatever the adventures, the message is always the same: humans will never feel at home out there.
 * "Pirx's Tale" in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot (1983)

 * "And do you believe in God?" "I do." "But you didn't think a robot would, right?" "Right."
 * "The Inquest" in More Tales of Pirx the Pilot (1983)

 * In an extreme instance, in which there is a Propervirt of less than 0.9%, the TEXT OF THE PRESENT PROSPECTUS may likewise undergo an ABRUPT change. If, while you are reading these sentences, the words begin to jump about, and the letters quiver and blur, please interrupt your reading for ten or twenty seconds to wipe your glasses, adjust your clothing, or the like, and then start reading AGAIN from the beginning, and NOT JUST from the place where your reading was interrupted, since such a TRANSFORMATION indicates that a correction of DEFICIENCIES is now taking place.
 * Imaginary Magnitude (1984), p. 86

 * For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.
 * From Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, Volume VII, Number 2 (1984)

 * It is not good for a man to be too cognizant of his physical and spiritual mechanisms. Complete knowledge reveals limits to human possibilities, and the less a man is by nature limited in his purposes, the less he can tolerate limits.
 * Fiasco (1986), Ch. 3, tr. Michael Kandel (1987)

 * Even a fool could see that one didn't need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.
 * Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 1

 * The twentieth century had dispensed with the formal declaration of war and introduced the fifth column, sabotage, cold war, and war by proxy, but that was only the beginning. Summit meetings for disarmament pursued mutual understanding and a balance of power but were also held to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy. The world of the war-or-peace alternative became a world in which war was peace and peace war.
 * Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 2

 * The number of one's possible fantasies is inversely proportional to the amount of one's liquid assets. For him who has everything dreams are no longer possible.
 * Peace on Earth (1987), tr. Elinor Ford (1994) from Pokój na Ziemi, Ch. 4

 * Starożytni mawiali: 'mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur'. Świat łaknie oszustw, więc jest oszukiwany.
 * The ancients used to say: mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur — the world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.
 * "A Blink of an Eye", Okamgnienie (2000); the phrase "Mundus Vult Decipi" was used as a motto by the American satirist James Branch Cabell and is said to have originated with Petronius.

 * A man who for an entire week does nothing but hit himself over the head has little reason to be proud.
 * Podroze miedzygwiezdne, trip 3

Solaris (1961)

 * Translation by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox, 1970, unless noted otherwise. Page numbers refer to the 1987 Harcourt Brace "Harvest" edition, ISBN 0156837501.

 * We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.
 * Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72

 * We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.
 * Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72

 * The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.
 * Ch. 8 "The Monsters", p. 120

 * You are only a puppet. But you don't realize that you are.
 * Ch. 9: "The Liquid Oxygen", p. 134

 * Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men.
 * Ch. 9: "The Liquid Oxygen", p. 134

 * Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding out what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.
 * Ch. 10: "Conversation", p. 157

 * Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind — as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will.
 * Ch. 11: "The Thinkers", p. 158

 * If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.
 * Ch. 12: "The Dreams", p. 184

 * In a rocket a person can burst like a bubble, or solidify completely, or boil, or explode in a fountain of blood so quickly he doesn't have time to shout out, and then only his bones will be clattering against the metal, and they'll go on circling in Newtonian orbit with an Einsteinian adjustment, our rattles of progress! And we'll go willingly, because it's a beautiful journey, till we arrive, and in these cabins, over this tableware, amid the immortal dishwashers, with our serried ranks of faithful lockers, our devoted toilets, here is our fulfillment.
 * Ch. 12: "The Dreams" (2011 Johnston translation)

 * Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside.
 * Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 198
 * In the 2011 Johnston translation (p. 208), the quote is rendered differently: A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn't create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he's born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside.

 * Everything is explicable in the terms of the behavior of a small child.
 * Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 199

 * The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that Finis vitae sed non amoris [Life ends but not love], is a lie, useless and not even funny.
 * Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204

 * To replay human existence — fine, but to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune, pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?
 * Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid" (2011 Johnston translation)

 * I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.
 * Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204 (final lines)

The Cyberiad (1967)

 * The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age (1967), translation by Michael Kandel (1974), ISBN 0156027593

 * One day Trurl the constructor put together a machine that could build anything beginning with the letter 'n'.
 * In "How The World Was Saved"

 * Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it...
 * In "How The World Was Saved"

 * Come, let us hasten to a higher plane Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to n Commingled in an endless Markov chain! I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove, And in our bound partition never part. Cancel me not — for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
 * Love and Tensor Algebra, St. 1, 4, 6, in "The First Sally (A): or, Trurl's Electronic Bard"

 * He who has had, has been, but he who hasn't been, has been had.
 * In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §2

 * He who must be what he is, may curse his fate, but cannot change it; on the other hand, he who can transform himself has no one in the world but himself to blame for his failings, no one but himself to hold responsible for his dissatisfaction.
 * In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §3

 * Plenitude, when too plenitudinous, was worse than destitution, for — obviously — what could one do, if there was nothing one could not?
 * In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §4

 * Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable.
 * In "Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius", §10

 * If you should be afflicted with a hump, for example, but firmly believe the Almighty somehow needs your hump to realize His Cosmic Design and that it was therefore ordained along with the rest of Creation, why, then you may be easily reconciled to your deformity. If, however, they tell you that it's merely the result of a misplaced molecule, an atom or two that happened to go the wrong way, then nothing remains for you but to bay at the moon.
 * In "Altruizine"

His Master's Voice (1968)

 * Translation by Michael Kandel (1983), ISBN 0810117312

 * Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.
 * Preface

 * Clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary. No matter how much genuine strength it may contain, there is also, inevitably, a considerable part that is only the pretense of that strength.
 * Preface

 * It is no coincidence, I am sure, that those who have the most to say about the Project are the ones who have had no direct contact with it. Which is similar to the attitude physicists have regarding gravitation or electrons — as opposed to that of the "well-informed" who read popular science. The "well-informed" think they know something about matters that the experts are reluctant to even to speak of. Information at second hand always gives an impression of tidiness, in contrast with the data at the scientist's disposal, full of gaps and uncertainties.
 * Ch. 1

 * It turns out, however, that freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth is drowned out by an ungodly din? When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?
 * Ch. 1

 * Man's quest for knowledge is an expanding series whose limit is infinity, but philosophy seeks to attain that limit at one blow, by a short circuit providing the certainty of complete and inalterable truth. Science meanwhile advances at its gradual pace, often slowing to a crawl, and for periods it even walks in place, but eventually it reaches the various ultimate trenches dug by philosophical thought, and, quite heedless of the fact that it is not supposed to be able to cross those final barriers to the intellect, goes right on.
 * Ch. 2

 * Science is turning into a monastery for the Order of Capitulant Friars. Logical calculus is supposed to supersede man as moralist. We submit to the blackmail of the "superior knowledge" that has the temerity to assert that nuclear war can be, by derivation, a good thing, because this follows from simple arithmetic.
 * Ch. 9

 * Futurologists have been multiplying like flies since the day Herman Kahn made Cassandra's profession "scientific," yet somehow not one of them has come out with the clear statement that we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable.
 * Ch. 11

 * Skepticism is like a microscope whose magnification is constantly increased: the sharp image that one begins with finally dissolves, because it is not possible to see ultimate things: their existence is only to be inferred.
 * Ch. 17

 * What would happen to us if we could truly sympathize with others, feel with them, suffer for them? The fact that human anguish, fear, and suffering melt away with the death of the individual, that nothing remains of the ascents, the declines, the orgasms, and the agonies, is a praiseworthy gift of evolution, which made us like the animals. If from every unfortunate, from every victim, there remained even a single atom of his feelings, if thus grew the inheritance of the generations, if even a spark could pass from man to man, the world would be full of raw, bowel-torn howling.
 * Ch. 17

The Futurological Congress (1971)

 * A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. Whichever is easier. And why indeed should it behave otherwise, being truly intelligent? For true intelligence demands choice, internal freedom. And therefore we have the malingerants, fudgerators, and drudge-dodgers, not to mention the special phenomenon of simulimbecility or mimicretinism. A mimicretin is a computer that plays stupid in order, once and for all, to be left in peace. And I found out what dissimulators are: they simply pretend that they're not pretending to be defective. Or perhaps it's the other way around. The whole thing is very complicated. A probot is a robot on probation, while a servo is one still serving time. A robotch may or may not be a sabot. One vial, and my head is splitting with information and nomenclature. A confuter, for instance, is not a confounding machine — that's a confutator — but a machine which quotes Confucius. A grammus is an antiquated frammus, a gidget — a cross between a gadget and a widget, usually flighty. A bananalog is an analog banana plug. Contraputers are loners, individualists, unable to work with others; the friction these types used to produce on the grid team led to high revoltage, electrical discharges, even fires. Some get completely out of hand — the dynamoks, the locomoters, the cyberserkers.

 * "The year is 2098", he said, "with 69 billion inhabitants legally registered and approximately another 26 billion in hiding. The average annual temperature has fallen four degrees. In fifteen or twenty years there will be glaciers here. We have no way of averting or halting their advance - we can only keep them secret." "I always thought there would be ice in hell," I said. "And so you paint the gates with pretty pictures?"

 * If the methods you employ are good, then what's the point of all this reasoning and argument? A few drops of credendium, a single squirt in the eyes, and I applaud your every word with enthusiasm, you have my full approval, my esteem. If those methods are good. Yet apparently you yourself are not convinced of their worth, preferring simple, old-fashioned hot air and rhetoric, wasting words on me instead of reaching for the atomizer! Apparently you're well aware that the triumph of psychem is a sham, and that you will be standing on the field alone, a conqueror with a bad case of heartburn.

On Solaris screening (1972)

 * Stanisław Lem talking about the filming of Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky. Stanisław Bereś, Rozmowy ze Stanisławem Lemem, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Cracow 1987, ISBN 8308016561 English translation

 * I have fundamental reservations to this adaptation. First of all I would have liked to see the planet Solaris which the director unfortunately denied me as the film was to be a cinematically subdued work. And secondly — as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels — he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment. What we get in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience which are amplified by her appearance; a strange and incomprehensible appearance. [...]

 * The whole sphere of cognitive and epistemological considerations was extremely important in my book and it was tightly coupled to the solaristic literature and to the essence of solaristics as such. Unfortunately, the film has been robbed of those qualities rather thoroughly. [...]

 * My Kelvin decides to stay on the planet without any hope whatsoever while Tarkovsky created an image where some kind of an island appears, and on that island a hut. And when I hear about the hut and the island I'm beside myself with irritation... This is just some emotional sauce into which Tarkovsky has submerged his heroes, not to mention that he has completely amputated the scientific landscape and in its place introduced so much of the weirdness I cannot stand. [...]

 * I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author.

 * Tarkovsky reminds me of a sergeant from the time of Turgenev — he is very pleasant and extremely prepossessing and at the same time visionary and elusive. One cannot "catch" him anywhere because he is always at a slightly different place already. This is simply the type of person he is. When I understood that I stopped bothering. This director cannot be reshaped anymore, and first of all one cannot convince him of anything as he is going to recast everything in his "own way" no matter what.

One Human Minute (1986)

 * The book does not contain "everything about the human being," because that is impossible. The largest libraries in the world do not contain "everything." The quantity of anthropological data discovered by scientists now exceeds any individual's ability to assimilate it. The division of labor, including intellectual labor, begun thirty thousand years ago in the Paleolithic, has become an irreversible phenomenon, and there is nothing that can be done about it. Like it or not, we have placed our destiny in the hands of the experts. A politician is, after all, a kind of expert, if self-styled. Even the fact that competent experts must serve under politicians of mediocre intelligence and little foresight is a problem that we are stuck with, because the experts themselves cannot agree on any major world issue. A logocracy of quarreling experts might be no better than the rule of the mediocrities to which we are subject. The declining intellectual quality of political leadership is the result of the growing complexity of the world. Since no one, be he endowed with the highest wisdom, can grasp it in its entirety, it is those who are least bothered by this who strive for power.

 * Fewer are the ways of helping people than of harming them; it is the nature of things, not a consequence of the statistical method. Our world does not stand halfway between heaven and hell; it seems much closer to hell.

 * Faith as well as science endowed the visible world with properties that eliminated blind, incalculable chance as the author of all events. The war of good and evil present in all religions does not always end, in every faith, with the victory of good, but in every one it establishes a clear order of existence. The sacred as well as the profane rests on that universal order...

Quotes about Lem

 * Lem's crude, insulting and downright ignorant attacks on American science fiction and American science fiction writers went too far too fast and alienated everyone but the Party faithful (I am one of those highly alienated).
 * Philip K. Dick, (2 September 1974)

 * The theme he stresses in most of his work is that machines will someday be as human as Homo sapiens and perhaps superior to him. Mr. Lem has an almost Dickensian genius for vividly realizing the tragedy and comedy of future machines; the death of one of his androids or computers actually wrings sorrow from the reader.
 * Philip José Farmer in The New York Times (2 September 1984)

 * All books by this Polish master of intellectual science fiction should come with a label on the cover warning: Handle With Care. Mr. Lem is a moralist, an ironist, a man of wide erudition (in both science and literature) who has little patience with the shortcomings of his fellow man.
 * Gerald Jonas, in "Attack of the Killer Synsects", in The New York Times Book Review (9 February 1986)

 * I think one of the most interesting things science fiction has done and is doing, in Stanislaw Lem for instance, is showing the infiniteness of the universe and the fact that we are not going to be able to understand everything that we cannot assume that our mind is of the same potential size as the universe. Lem thinks it's not. He thinks that we will not be able to understand everything no matter how long we go on with thinking and using signs. And he gives to me a most exhilarating picture of a fairly incomprehensible universe but a very beautiful one, which of course is what we all are faced with right here and now. Terrifying, but also beautiful.
 * 1988 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

 * The SFWA is not a powerful organization, nothing compared to the Soviet Writers Union, say; but when it uses the tactics of the Soviet Writers Union, I think there is cause for concern, and reasons for shame.
 * Ursula K. Le Guin, on controversies regarding Lem's revoked membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in an open letter in the journal Science Fiction Studies (1977)

Attributed

 * Dopóki nie skorzystałem z Internetu, nie wiedziałem, że na świecie jest tylu idiotów.
 * Translation: Until I started using the Internet, I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world.
 * Quoted in many places around the Internet; however, the quote is not present in any known publication or interview — as noted in e.g. Tomasz Borejza, "Lem już to przewidział", "Przegląd", January 2, 2018.

title: Stanisław Lem