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Amazons

The Amazons also known as Oiorpata in Iranian and Scythian, were believed to have been a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia (modern territory of Ukraine). Other historiographers place them in Anatolia, or sometimes Libya.

The term is also used more informally by some in contemporary academia to describe societies perceived to have a similar set of gender norms to the Amazons of antiquity.

Antiquity

 * About the Sauromatai the following tale is told:--When the Hellenes had fought with the Amazons,--now the Amazons are called by the Scythians /Oiorpata/, which name means in the Hellenic tongue"slayers of men," for "man" they call /oior/, and /pata/ means "to slay,"--then, as the story goes, the Hellenes, having conquered them in the battle at the Thermodon, were sailing away and conveying with them in three ships as many Amazons as they were able to take prisoners. These in the open sea set upon the men and cast them out of the ships; but they knew nothing about ships, nor how to use rudders or sails or oars, and after they had cast out the men they were driven about by wave and wind and came to that part of the Maiotian lake where Cremnoi stands; now Cremnoi is in the land of the free Scythians. There the Amazons disembarked from their ships and made their way into the country, and having met first with a troop of horses feeding they seized them, and mounted upon these they plundered the property of the Scythians.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV, P. 110

 * The Scythians meanwhile were not able to understand the matter, for they did not know either their speech or their dress or the race to which they belonged, but were in wonder as to whence they had come and thought that they were men, of an age corresponding to their appearance: and finally they fought a battle against them, and after the battle the Scythians got possession of the bodies of the dead, and thus they discovered that they were women. They took counsel therefore and resolved by no means to go on trying to kill them, but to send against them the youngest men from among themselves, making conjecture of the number so as to send just as many men as there were women. These were told to encamp near them, and do whatsoever they should do; if however the women should come after them, they were not to fight but to retire before them, and when the women stopped, they were to approach near and encamp. This plan was adopted by the Scythians because they desired to have children born from them.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV, P. 111

 * The young men accordingly were sent out and did that which had been commanded them: and when the Amazons perceived that they had not come to do them any harm, they let them alone; and the two camps approached nearer to one another every day: and the young men, like the Amazons, had nothing except their arms and their horses, and got their living, as the Amazons did, by hunting and by taking booty.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV, P. 112

 * Now the Amazons at midday used to scatter abroad either one by one or by two together, dispersing to a distance from one another to ease themselves; and the Scythians also having perceived this did the same thing: and one of the Scythians came near to one of those Amazons who were apart by themselves, and she did not repulse him but allowed him to lie with her: and she could not speak to him, for they did not understand one another's speech, but she made signs to him with her hand to come on the following day to the same place and to bring another with him, signifying to him that there should be two of them, and that she would bring another with her. The young man therefore, when he returned, reported this to the others; and on the next day he came himself to the place and also brought another, and he found the Amazon awaiting him with another in her company. Then hearing this the rest of the young men also in their turn tamed for themselves the remainder of the Amazons; and after this they joined their camps and lived together, each man having for his wife her with whom he had had dealings at first; and the men were not able to learn the speech of the women, but the women came to comprehend that of the men. So when they understood one another, the men spoke to the Amazons as follows: "We have parents and we have possessions; now therefore let us no longer lead a life of this kind, but let us go away to the main body of our people and dwell with them; and we will have you for wives and no others." They however spoke thus in reply: "We should not be able to live with your women, for we and they have not the same customs. We shoot with bows and hurl javelins and ride horses, but the works of women we never learnt; whereas your women do none of these things which we said, but stay in the waggons and work at the works of women, neither going out to the chase nor anywhither else. We therefore should not be able to live in agreement with them: but if ye desire to keep us for your wives and to be thought honest men, go to your parents and obtain from them your share of the goods, and then let us go and dwell by ourselves.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV, P. 113 - 114

 * The young men agreed and did this; and when they had obtained the share of the goods which belonged to them and had returned back to the Amazons, the women spoke to them as follows: "We are possessed by fear and trembling to think that we must dwell in this place, having not only separated you from your fathers, but also done great damage to your land. Since then ye think it right to have us as your wives, do this together with us,--come and let us remove from this land and pass over the river Tanaïs and there dwell.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV, P. 115

 * The young men agreed to this also, and they crossed over the Tanaïs and made their way towards the rising sun for three days' journey from Tanaïs, and also towards the North Wind for three days' journey from the Maiotian lake: and having arrived at the place where they are now settled, they took up their abode there: and from thenceforward the women of the Sauromatai practise their ancient way of living, going out regularly on horseback to the chase both in company with the men and apart from them, and going regularly to war, and wearing the same dress as the men.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV P. 116

 * And the Sauromatai make use of the Scythian tongue, speaking it barbarously however from the first, since the Amazons did not learn it thoroughly well. As regards marriages their rule is this, that no maiden is married until she has slain a man of their enemies; and some of them even grow old and die before they are married, because they are not able to fulfil the requirement of the law.
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IV, P. 117

 * &(...) the Athenians replied as follows: "Though we know that this gathering was assembled for battle with the Barbarian and not for speech, yet since the Tegean has proposed to us as a task to speak of things both old and new, the deeds of merit namely which by each of our two nations have been achieved in all time, it is necessary for us to point out to you whence it comes that to us, who have been brave men always, it belongs as a heritage rather than to the Arcadians to have the chief place. First as to the sons of Heracles, whose leader they say that they slew at the Isthmus, these in the former time, when they were driven away by all the Hellenes to whom they came flying from slavery under those of Mykene, we alone received; and joining with them we subdued the insolence of Eurystheus. having conquered in fight those who then dwelt in Peloponnesus. Again when the Argives who with Polyneikes marched against Thebes, had been slain and were lying unburied, we declare that we marched an army against the Cadmeians and recovered the dead bodies and gave them burial in our own land at Eleusis. We have moreover another glorious deed performed against the Amazons who invaded once the Attic land, coming from the river Thermodon: and in the toils of Troy we were not inferior to any. But it is of no profit to make mention of these things; for on the one hand, though we were brave men in those times, we might now have become worthless, and on the other hand even though we were then worthless, yet now we might be better. Let it suffice therefore about ancient deeds; but if by us no other deed has been displayed (as many there have been and glorious, not less than by any other people of the Hellenes), yet even by reason of the deed wrought at Marathon alone we are worthy to have this privilege and others besides this, seeing that we alone of all the Hellenes fought in single combat with the Persian, and having undertaken so great a deed we overcame and conquered six-and-forty nations. Are we not worthy then to have this post by reason of that deed alone? However, since at such a time as this it is not fitting to contend for post, we are ready to follow your saying, O Lacedemonians, as to where ye think it most convenient that we should stand and opposite to whom; for wheresoever we are posted, we shallendeavour to be brave men. Prescribe to us therefore and we shallobey." They made answer thus; and the whole body of the Lacedemonians shouted aloud that the Athenians were more worthy to occupy the wing than the Arcadians. Thus the Athenians obtained the wing, and overcamethe Tegeans. (...)
 * Herodotus, The Histories, book IX, P. 27

 * Charles: Stay, stay thy hands! thou art an Amazon
 * And fightest with the sword of Deborah.
 * To Joan la Pucelle (Joan of Arc), after fighting and losing to her.
 * Henry VI, Part I, Act I, scene ii.
 * William Shakespeare

Contemporary

 * Amazons were the embodiment of the strength of the feminine Principle, and now it is necessary to show the aspect of spiritual perfection of woman... it is time to change conditions in the world. 150.
 * Agni Yoga,  Leaves of Morya’s Garden II  (1925)
 * Amazon society, as mythology, history, and universal male nightmare, represents a culture in which women reign culturally supreme because of their gender. Amazon societies are also important because women were trained to be warriors—military and, presumably, in other ways as well...
 * In Amazon societies, women were mothers and their society's only warriors; mothers and their society's only hunters; mothers and their society's only political and religious leaders. No division of labor based on sex seems to have existed in such societies. Although Amazon leaders existed and queens were elected, the societies seem to have been...ones in which any woman could aspire to and achieve full human expression.
 * Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, (1972), pp. 335–336.

 * The giant female body builder proves unthinking people wrong who believe feminine beauty can never be harmonious with well developed musculature.
 * Robert Crumb qtd. in the Picturing The Modern Amazon exhibition

 * I discovered this realm by accident. I'm an old newspaper editor who has written nine books, including a novel about the legendary Amazons of Ancient Greece. While promoting it, I found sites named Amazon-Warriors.com, Deadly Amazons, Sexy Amazons, Sexy Latin Amazon, etc. — all selling brief movies of half-nude Amazons killing each other, with great attention paid to their arrow-riddled, sprawled, convulsing bodies. In Ancient Greek sculptures and ceramics, and later in Renaissance paintings, Amazons always were portrayed fighting Greek soldiers — but this new genre shows Amazons killing Amazons.
 * Jim Haught, “The Horrifying World Of Internet Snuff Sites”, Jezebel, (12/01/11).

 * We used to assume that the Amazons were legendary despite accounts by the ancient Greeks which placed them somewhere in Asia Minor. The Greeks were fascinated and horrified by the stories of such unnatural women, who were reputed to cut off their breasts in order to pull their bows better and to cripple their own male children. The Amazons were said to have fought successfully in battle against men until the right order was at last restored and they were defeated. Recent archaeological evidence suggests that the Amazons were not a fable believed by the ancient Greeks. Since it is now possible for archaeologists to determine the sex of skeletons, a lot of what had been assumed to be male warriors have had to be reclassified as women. Among the nomadic horse-riding warrior peoples from the steppes whom the Greeks called Scythians women appear to have been the equals of men, even when it came to fighting, and in death they lie with their weapons. Perhaps as many as 37 per cent of Scythian burials are of women warriors. Tombs of Viking women warriors from a later period have been found as well.
 * Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (2020)
 * The next 100 years will see the beginning of an American matriarchy—a nation of amazons in the psychological rather than the physical sense. In 500 years there will be a serious sex battle. And in 1000 years women will definitely rule this country.
 * William Moulton Marston as quoted in "Neglected Amazons to Rule Men in 1000 yrs., Says Psychologist"; Washington Post, (November 11, 1937).

 * Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by black women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks.
 * Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, The Adventures of Esplandián Putnam, (1917), p. 306.

 * I have always loved Amazons. The word itself is exciting. I’ve invented variations such as the Tame-azons who tame men. Being short and a little shy as a young man, I loved the idea of big strong aggressive women who would use their strength to wrestle me down.
 * Eric Stanton, qtd. in "Vintage Sleaze and Pulp Erotica by Prolific Fetish Illustrator Eric Stanton", Dangerousminds, (09.01.2016).

title: Amazons


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Talk:Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson was one of the most influential 20th-century architects. Johnson constantly pushed the mold with new modernist styles for America.

Unsourced

 * Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
 * Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.
 * The people with money to build today are corporations -- they are our popes and Medicis. The sense of pride is why they build.
 * I am a whore and I am paid very well for high-rise buildings.
 * I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs — at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral.
 * I believe in juxtaposition of the arts.
 * Philip Johnson on Frank Lloyd Wright - He's the greatest architect of the nineteenth century.
 * The Michelangelos of this world are not to be imitated; it is too difficult, and too dangerous.
 * The duty of the artist is to strain against the bonds of the existing style.

 * The job of the architect today is to create beautiful buildings. That's all.
 * I would rather stay in Chartres Cathedral with the nearest toilet two blocks away, than in a Harvard house with back-to-back bathrooms.

 * Architecture is surely not the design of space, certainly not the massing or organization of volumes. These are ancillary to the main point, which is the organization of procession. Architecture exists in time.

 * On architects being known for long life spans: Of course they live long -- they have a chance to act out all their aggressions.
 * To be in the presence of a great work of architecture is such a satisfaction that you can go hungry for days. To create a feeling such as mine in Chartres Cathedral when I was 13 is the aim of architecture.

 * Early unsuccessess shouldn't bother anybody because it happens to absolutely everybody.

 * ...Comfort is not a function of beauty... purpose is not necessary to make a building beautiful...sooner or later we will fit our buildings so that they can be used...where form comes from I don't know, but it has nothing at all to do with the functional or sociological aspects of our architecture.

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

title: Talk:Philip Johnson


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Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen Arnold Douglas (23 April 1813 – 3 June 1861), was as American politician, one of the principal founders of the Illinois Democratic Party, Illinois supreme court judge, and Illinois Senator. He was responsible for the passage of the compromise of 1850, author of the Kansas-Nebraska act. He was famous for his debates against Abraham Lincoln in 1858, which brought them both to greater national prominence in the U.S.

1850s

 * Abolitionism proposes to destroy the right and extinguish the principle of self-government for which our forefathers waged a seven years' bloody war, and upon which our system of free government is founded.
 * Speech in the Senate (3 March 1854)

 * If there is any one principle dearer and more sacred than all others in free governments, it is that which asserts the exclusive right of a free people to form and adopt their own fundamental law, and to manage and regulate their own internal affairs and domestic institutions.
 * Speech in Chicago, Illinois (9 July 1858)

 * The framers of the Constitution well understood that each locality, having separate and distinct interests, required separate and distinct laws, domestic institutions, and police regulations adapted to its own wants and its own condition; and they acted on the presumption, also, that these laws and institutions would be as diversified and as dissimilar as the States would be numerous, and that no two would be precisely alike, because the interests of no two would be precisely the same.
 * Speech in Chicago, Illinois (9 July 1858)

 * I do not regard the Negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is my brother, or any kin to me whatever.
 * Lincoln-Douglas Debates (21 August 1858)

 * Slavery is not the only question which comes up in this controversy. There is a far more important one to you, and that is, What shall be done with the free negro? We have settled the slavery question as far as we are concerned; we have prohibited it in Illinois forever; and in doing so, I think we have done wisely, and there is no man in the State who would be more strenuous in his opposition to the introduction of slavery than I would; but when we settled it for ourselves, we exhausted all our power over that subject. We have done our whole duty, and can do no more. We must leave each and every other State to decide for itself the same question. In relation to the policy to be pursued toward the free negroes, we have said that they shall not vote; whilst Maine, on the other hand, has said that they shall vote. Maine is a sovereign State, and has the power to regulate the qualifications of voters within her limits. I would never consent to confer the right of voting and of citizenship upon a negro; but still I am not going to quarrel with Maine for differing from me in opinion. Let Maine take care of her own negroes and fix the qualifications of her own voters to suit herself, without interfering with Illinois, and Illinois will not interfere with Maine.
 * Speech in Ottawa, Illinois (21 August 1858)

 * Mr. Lincoln simply contented himself at the outset by saying, that he was not in favor of social and political equality between the white man and the negro, and did not desire the law so changed as to make the latter voters or eligible to office. I am glad that I have at last succeeded in getting an answer out of him upon this question of negro citizenship and eligibility to office, for I have been trying to bring him to the point on it ever since this canvass commenced.
 * Fourth Lincoln-Douglass Debate (September 1858)

 * Lincoln maintains there that the Declaration of Independence asserts that the negro is equal to the white man, and that under Divine law, and if he believes so it was rational for him to advocate negro citizenship, which, when allowed, puts the negro on an equality under the law. I say to you in all frankness, gentlemen, that in my opinion a negro is not a citizen, cannot be, and ought not to be, under the Constitution of the United States. I will not even qualify my opinion to meet the declaration of one of the Judges of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, “that a negro descended from African parents, who was imported into this country as a slave is not a citizen, and cannot be.” I say that this Government was established on the white basis. It was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and never should be administered by any except white men. I declare that a negro ought not to be a citizen, whether his parents were imported into this country as slaves or not, or whether or not he was born here. It does not depend upon the place a negro’s parents were born, or whether they were slaves or not, but upon the fact that he is a negro, belonging to a race incapable of self-government, and for that reason ought not to be on an equality with white men.
 * Fourth Lincoln-Douglass Debate (September 1858)

 * I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others.
 * In 1858

1860s

 * You know that in his Charleston speech, an extract from which he has read, he declared that the negro belongs to an inferior race; is physically inferior to the white man, and should always be kept in an inferior position. I will now read to you what he said at Chicago on that point. In concluding his speech at that place, he remarked, 'My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desire to do, and I have only to say let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal'. Thus you see, that when addressing the Chicago Abolitionists he declared that all distinctions of race must be discarded and blotted out, because the negro stood on an equal footing with the white man; that if one man said the Declaration of Independence did not mean a negro when it declared all men created equal, that another man would say that it did not mean another man; and hence we ought to discard all difference between the negro race and all other races, and declare them all created equal.
 * Sixth Lincoln-Douglas debate, (13 October 1860), Quincy, Illinois

 * There are only two sides to this question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots and traitors.
 * Last public speech before his death, Chicago, Illinois (1 May 1861)

title: Stephen A. Douglas


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Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer (31 January 1923 – 10 November 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter and film director who is considered to have been innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism.

Quotes

 * Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
 * "Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.

 * The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.
 * "Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.

 * The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today … We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.
 * "Hip, Hell, and the Navigator" in Western Review No. 23 (Winter 1959); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988) edited by J. Michael Lennon.

 * Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
 * "Mr. Mailer Interviews Himself" in The New York Times Book Review (17 September 1965)

 * You're contending with a genius, D.J. is his name, only American alive who could outtalk Cassius Clay, that's lip.
 * D.J., in Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967) Ch. 1

 * This is D.J., Disc Jockey to America turning off. Vietnam, hot dam.
 * D.J., in Why Are We in Vietnam? (1967) Ch. 10

 * One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness — the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.
 * Interview in Writers at Work Third Series (1967) edited by George Plimpton

 * With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance.
 * As quoted in The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden (1968) by David W. Noble, p. 204

 * There are four stages to marriage. First there's the affair, then there's the marriage, then children, and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.
 * News summaries (31 December 1969)

 * Women think of being a man as a gift. It is a duty. Even making love can be a duty. A man has always got to get it up, and love isn't always enough.
 * News summaries (31 December 1969)

 * The people who worked for NASA ... were ... part of that vast convocation of Americans, probably a majority, whom one saw in New York only on television.
 * A Fire on the Moon (1970), Part 1, Chapter 1, page 7

 * The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.
 * A Fire on the Moon (1970), Part 1, Chapter 2, page 28

 * What is plumbing but the prevention of treachery in closed systems?
 * A Fire on the Moon (1970), Part 1, Chapter 3, page 61 (referring to Werner von Braun's obligatory worry about the colossal and dangerous fuel tanks in rockets).

 * The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.
 * "The Siege of Mailer : Hero to Historian" in The Village Voice (21 January 1971); republished in Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988), edited by J. Michael Lennon

 * We think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.
 * Marilyn (1973), Ch. 1

 * The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.
 * On Joe DiMaggio's marriage to Marilyn Monroe, in Marilyn (1973)

 * A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul.
 * Address on "Richard Milhous Nixon and Women's Liberation" at the University of California at Berkeley, as quoted in TIME magazine (6 November 1972), which also reported that at the close of his address:
 * Mailer invited "all the feminists in the audience to please hiss." When a satisfying number obliged, he commented: "Obedient little bitches."

 * The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
 * As quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter

 * I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
 * As quoted in The Writer's Quotation Book : A Literary Companion (1980) by James Charlton, p. 43

 * Culture is worth a little risk.
 * As quoted in "The Poetic License to Kill" by Lance Morrow, in TIME magazine (1 February 1982)

 * Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state. I do not know who I am. Nor what I was. I cannot hear a sound. Pain is near that will be like no pain felt before.
 * Ancient Evenings (1983) First lines

 * We sail across dominions barely seen, washed by the swells of time. We plow through fields of magnetism. Past and future come together on thunderheads and our dead hearts live with lightning in the wounds of the Gods.
 * Ancient Evenings (1983) Last lines

 * Short-term amnesia is not the worst affliction if you have an Irish flair for the sauce.
 * Vanity Fair (May 1984)

 * Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.
 * Timothy Madden, in Tough Guys Don't Dance (1984), Ch. 1

 * When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
 * On Tough Guys Don't Dance as quoted in The New York Times (8 June 1984)

 * Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.
 * Newsweek (22 October 1984)

 * I felt something shift to murder in me. I felt … that I was an outlaw, a psychic outlaw, and I liked it.
 * His reaction to a publisher's rejection of The Deer Park because of six "salacious lines" he would not remove, as quoted in The New York Times (21 July 1985)

 * On a late-winter evening in 1983, while driving through fog along the Maine coast, recollections of old campfires began to drift into the March mist, and I thought of the Abnaki Indians of the Algonquin tribe who dwelt near Bangor a thousand years ago.
 * Harry Hubbard, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

 * What if there are not only two nostrils, two eyes, two lobes, and so forth, but two psyches as well, and they are separately equipped? They go through life like Siamese twins inside one person … They can be just a little different, like identical twins, or they can be vastly different, like good and evil.
 * Kittredge Gardiner, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

 * I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.
 * Harry Hubbard, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

 * There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.
 * As quoted in The International Herald Tribune (24 January 1992)

 * Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.
 * Interview with Divina Infusino in American Way (15 June 1995)

 * I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
 * Interview with Divina Infusino in American Way (15 June 1995)

 * The ultimate tendency of liberalism is vegetarianism.
 * Herbst Theater, San Francisco City Arts & Lectures Series, (5 February 2007)

 * Booze, pot, too much sex, failure in one's private life, too much attrition, too much recognition, too little recognition. Nearly everything in the scheme of things works to dull a first-rate talent. But the worst probably is cowardice.
 * As quoted in The Sunday Herald [Scotland] (11 November 2007)

The Naked and the Dead (1948)

 * For that is the genius of the old man — Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful … That fine edge in Tolstoy, the knowledge that compassion is valueless without severity (for otherwise it cannot defend itself against sentimentality), gave The Naked and the Dead whatever enduring virtue it may possess and catapulted the amateur who wrote it into the grim ranks of those successful literary men and women who are obliged to become professional in order to survive …
 * Mailer's Introduction to the 50th Anniversary Edition (1998)

 * You're a fool if you don't realize this is going to be the reactionary's century, perhaps their thousand-year reign. It's the one thing Hitler said which wasn't completely hysterical.
 * Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 3

 * I hate everything which is not in myself.
 * Sgt. Sam Croft, in Pt. 1, Ch. 5

 * A nation fights well in proportion to the amount of men and materials it has. And the other equation is that the individual soldier in that army is a more effective soldier the poorer his standard of living has been in the past.
 * Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 6

 * The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.
 * Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 6

 * To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder… The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.
 * Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 6

 * There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.
 * Gen. Edward Cummings, in Pt. 1, Ch. 11

 * And all the bright young people of his youth had butted their heads, smashed against things until they got weaker and the things still stood.
 * Lieutenant Robert Hearn, Pt. 2, Ch. 12

 * He felt a crude ecstasy. He could not have given the reason, but the mountain tormented him, beckoned him, held an answer to something he wanted. It was so pure, so austere.
 * On Sgt. Sam Croft and Mt. Anaka, in Pt. 3, Ch. 3

 * Croft had an instinctive knowledge of land, sensed the stresses and torsions that had first erupted it, the abrasions of wind and water. The platoon had long ceased to question any direction he took; they knew he would be right as infallibly as sun after darkness or fatigue after a long march.
 * Pt. 3, Ch. 10

 * You carried it alone as long as you could, and then you weren't strong enough to take it any longer. You kept fighting everything, and everything broke you down, until in the end you were just a little goddam bolt holding on and squealing when the machine went too fast.
 * Pt. 3, Ch. 14

 * He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co-ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, "Give me the co-ordinates."… The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea…. Hot dog!
 * On Maj. Dalleson, in Pt. 4, Ch. 1

Barbary Shore (1951)

 * Somerset Maugham … wrote somewhere that "Nobody is any better than he ought to be." … I carried it along with me as a working philosophy, but I suppose that finally I would have to take exception to the thought … or else the universe is just an elaborate clock.
 * Ch. 10

 * The manuscript lay like a dust-rag on his desk, and Eitel found, as he had found before, that the difficulty of art was that it forced a man back on his life, and each time the task was more difficult and distasteful.
 * Ch. 14

 * There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.
 * Michael Lovett, in Ch. 14

 * What were the phenomena of the world today? If I knew little else, I knew the answer — war, and the preparations for new war.
 * Michael Lovett, in Ch. 18

 * The essence of spirit, he thought to himself, was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.
 * Ch. 18

 * He was a fool — a brilliant man and I loved his beard, and there was the mountain ax in his brain, and all the blood poured out, and he could not see the Mexican sun. Your people raised the ax, and the last blood of revolutionary mankind, his poor blood, ran into the carpet.
 * Lannie Madison, on the assassination of Leon Trotsky, in Ch. 21

 * There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
 * Ch. 26

 * I ask, "Would You agree that sex is where philosophy begins?" But God, who is the oldest of the philosophers, answers in his weary cryptic way, "Rather think of Sex as Time, and Time as the connection of new circuits."
 * Ch. 28

 * Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
 * McLeod, in Ch. 29

 * The storm approaches its thunderhead, and it is apparent that the boat drifts ever closer to shore. So the blind will lead the blind, and the deaf shout warnings to one another until their voices are lost.
 * Michael Lovett, in Ch. 33

The Man Who Studied Yoga (1956)

 * Published in New Short Novels 2 (1956)

 * I would introduce myself if it were not useless. The name I had last night will not be the same as the name I have tonight. For the moment, then, let me say that I am thinking of Sam Slovoda.
 * Ch. 1

 * I am convinced the most unfortunate people are those who would make an art of love. It sours other effort. Of all artists, they are certainly the most wretched.
 * Ch. 5

 * The novelist, thinks Sam, perspiring beneath blankets, must live in paranoia and seek to be one with the world; he must be terrified of experience and hungry for it; he must think himself nothing and believe he is superior to all. The feminine in his nature cries out for proof he is a man; he loves himself and therefore despises all that he is.
 * Ch. 5

 * He has wasted the day, he tells himself, he has wasted the day as he has wasted so many days of his life … while that huge work with which he has cheated himself, that enormous novel which would lift him at a bound from the impasse in which he stifles, whose dozens of characters would develop a vision of life in bountiful complexity, lies foundering, rotting on a beach of purposeless effort. Notes here, pages there, it sprawls through a formless wreck of incidental ideas and half-episodes; utterly without shape. He is not even a hero for it.
 * Ch. 5

 * However could he organize his novel? What form to give it? It is so complex. Too loose, thinks Sam, too scattered.
 * Ch. 5

"Destroy time, and chaos may be ordered," he repeats after me, and in desperation to seek his coma, mutters back, "I do not feel my nose, my nose is numb, my eyes are heavy, my eyes are heavy." So Sam enters the universe of sleep, a man who seeks to live in such a way as to avoid pain, and succeeds merely in avoiding pleasure. What a dreary compromise is life!
 * I give an idea to Sam. "Destroy time, and chaos may be ordered," I say to him.
 * Ch. 5

Advertisements for Myself (1959)

 * Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.
 * "First Advertisement for Myself"

 * There is probably no sensitive heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality.
 * "The Homosexual Villain"; this has also been widely misquoted as: "There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality."

 * I had my good looks, my blond hair, my height, build, and bullfighting school, I suppose I became one of the Village equivalents of an Eagle Scout badge for the girls. I was one of the credits needed for a diploma in the sexual humanities.
 * Sergius O'Shaugnessy, in "The Time of Her Time"

 * When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane's rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules.
 * "Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out"

 * God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.
 * "Advertisement for Myself on the Way Out"

 * Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
 * "The White Negro", first published in Dissent (Summer 1957)

 * To be an existentialist, one must be able to feel oneself — one must know one’s desires, one’s rages,one’s anguish, one must be aware of the character of one’s frustration and know what would satisfy it.The over-civilized man can be an existentialist only if it is chic, and deserts it quickly for the next chic.
 * "The White Negro", first published in Dissent (Summer 1957)

 * America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
 * "Advertisement for 'Games and Ends'", Pt. 5

 * The White Protestant's ultimate sympathy must be with science, factology, and committee rather than with sex, birth, heat, flesh, creation, the sweet and the funky; they must vote, manipulate, control, and direct, these Protestants who are the center of power in our land, they must go for what they believe is reason when it is only the Square logic of the past.
 * "Advertisement for 'Games and Ends'", Pt. 5

 * The hipster comes our of a muted rebellion of the proletariat, he is, so to say, the lazy proletariat. The beatnik - often Jewish - comes from the middle class, and twenty-five years ago would have join the YCL [Young Communist League]. Today, he chooses not to work as a sentence against the conformity of his parents. Therefore he can feel moral value in his good-bye to society. The hipster is more easygoing about the drag and value of a moneyless life of leisure.
 * "Hipster and Beaknik, A Footnote to 'The White Negro'"

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

 * Politics quarantines one from history; most of the people who nourish themselves in the political life are in the game not to make history but to be diverted from the history which is being made.

 * Mysteries are irritated by facts.

 * Mystery is an emotion which is repugnant to a political animal.

 * Why else lead a life of bad banquet dinners, cigar smoke, camp chairs, foul breath, and excruciatingly dull jargon if not to avoid the echoes of what is not known.

 * Pompous words and long pauses which lay like a leaden pain over fever, the fever that one is in, over, or is it that one is just behind history?

 * America is a nation of experts without roots; we are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot take a step, and when the culture has finished its work the institutions handcuff the infirmity.

 * Then vote for him the boss will if he must; he cannot be caught on the wrong side, but he does not feel the pleasure of a personal choice. Which is the center of the panic.

 * One gets the impression that people come to Los Angeles in order to divorce themselves from the past, here to live or try to live in the rootless pleasure world of an adult child.

 * Los Angeles is the home of self-expression, but the artists are middle-class and middling-minded; no passions will calcify here for years in the gloom to be revealed a decade later as the tessellations of hard and fertile work. … In this land of the pretty-pretty, the virility is in the barbarisms, the vulgarities, it is in the huge billboards, the screamers of the neon lighting, the shouting farm-utensil colors of the gas stations and monster drugstores, it is in the swing of the sports cars, hot rods, convertibles.

 * In tranquility one recollects them with affection, their instinct is good, crazy family good.

 * For years Pershing Square has been one of the three or four places in America famous to homosexuals, famous not for its posh, the chic is round-heeled here, but because it is one of the avatars of good old masturbatory sex, dirty with the crusted sugars of smut, dirty rooming houses around the corner where the score is made, dirty book and photograph stores down the street.

 * There was Johnson (Lyndon) who had compromised too many contradictions and now the contradictions were in his face: when he smiled the corners of his mouth squeezed gloom; when he was pious, his eyes twinkled irony; when he spoke in a righteous tone, he looked corrupt; when he jested, the ham in his jowls looked to quiver. He was not convincing. He was a Southern politician, a Texas Democrat, a liberal Eisenhower; he would do no harm, he would do no good, he would react to the machine, good fellow, nice friend -- the Russians would understand him better than his own. … Johnson gave you all of himself, he was a political animal, he breathed like an animal, sweated like one, you knew his mind was entirely absorbed with the compendium of political fact and maneuver.

 * Eleanor Roosevelt, fine, precise, hand-worked like ivory. Her voice was almost attractive … One had the impression of a lady who was finally becoming a woman, which is to say that she was just a little bitchy about it all; nice bitchy, charming, it had a touch of art to it, but it made one wonder if she were not now satisfying the last passion of them all, which was to become physically attractive, for she was better-looking than she had ever been.

 * . Huge. Cold as a bishop. The hell he would consign you to was cold as ice.

 * Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics which is concrete, factual, practical and unbelievably dull if not for the consequences of the actions of some of these men; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation.

 * The twentieth century may yet be seen as that era when civilized man and underprivileged man were melted together into mass man.

 * America was the country in which the dynamic myth of the Renaissance — that every man was potentially extraordinary — knew its most passionate persistence. Simply, America was the land where people still believed in heroes.

 * It was almost as if there were no peace unless one could fight well, kill well (if always with honor), love well and love many. … It was as if the message in the labyrinth of the genes would insist that violence was locked with creativity, and adventure was the secret of love.

 * The excessive hysteria of the Red wave was no preparation to face an enemy, but rather a terror of the national self.

 * A hero can capture the secret imagination of a people, and so be good for the vitality of his nation; a hero embodies the fantasy and so allows each private mind the liberty to consider its fantasy and find a way to grow. Each mind can become more conscious of its desire and waste less strength in hiding from itself.

 * Hitler … was a hero, the hero-as-monster, embodying what had become the monstrous fantasy of a people, but the horror upon which the radical mind and liberal temperament foundered was that he gave outlet to the energies of the Germans and so presented the twentieth century with an index of how horrible had become the secret heart of its desire.

 * Everyone from the meanest starving cripple to an ambitious young man could expand to the optimism of an improving future because the man offered an unspoken promise of a future which would be rich.

 * The concept of hero is antagonistic to impersonal social progress, to the belief that social ills can be solved by social legislating, for it sees a country as all-but-trapped in its character until it has a hero who reveals the character of the country to itself.

 * Eisenhower could stand as a hero only for that large number of Americans who were most proud of their lack of imagination.

 * The need of the city is to accelerate growth; the pride of the small town is to retard it.

 * Hungry fighters win fights.

 * Kennedy's most characteristic quality is the remote and private air of a man who has traversed some lonely terrain of experience, of loss and gain, of nearness to death, which leaves him isolated from the mass of others.

 * All too often men with physical courage are disappointing in their moral imagination.

 * There could be no politics which gave warmth to one's body until the country had recovered its imagination, its pioneer lust for the unexpected and incalculable.

 * One can indeed be restored, by an exceptional demonstration of love.

 * Politics in America is still different from politics anywhere else because the politics has arisen out of the immediate needs, ambitions, and cupidities of the people, that our politics still smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, rather than having descended to us from the chill punctilio of aristocratic negotiation.

 * It might be more difficult to be a President than it ever had before. Nothing less than greatness would do.
 * Superman Comes to the Supermarket (November 1960)

The Presidential Papers (1963)

 * A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
 * Preface

 * In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.
 * Preface

 * Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.
 * Preface

 * A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.

 * In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.
 * The Fourth Presidential Paper — Foreign Affairs : Letter To Castro

 * I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses.
 * The Sixth Presidential Paper — A Kennedy Miscellany : An Impolite Interview

 * At bottom, I mean profoundly at bottom, the FBI has nothing to do with Communism, it has nothing to do with catching criminals, it has nothing to do with the Mafia, the syndicate, it has nothing to do with trust-busting, it has nothing to do with interstate commerce, it has nothing to do with anything but serving as a church for the mediocre. A high church for the true mediocre.
 * The Sixth Presidential Paper — A Kennedy Miscellany : An Impolite Interview

An American Dream (1965)

 * I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946 … We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 1

 * I was now at a university in New York, a professor of existential psychology with the not inconsiderable thesis that magic, dread, and the perception of death were the roots of motivation.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 1

 * Murder offers the promise of vast relief. It is never unsexual.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 1

 * The only true journey of knowledge is from the depth of one being to the heart of another.
 * Ch. 1

 * Witches have no wit, said the magician who was weak. Hula, hula, said the witches.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 4

 * I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity — it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 5

 * Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 6

 * Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 7

 * The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.
 * Detective Roberts, in Ch. 8

 * Madness is locked beneath. It goes into tissues, is swallowed by the cells. The cells go mad. Cancer is their flag. Cancer is the growth of madness denied.
 * Stephen Rojack, in Ch. 8

Cannibals and Christians (1966)

 * We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. It contains happenings, Pop art, camp, a theater of the absurd … Do we have the art because the absurd is the patina of waste…? Or are we face to face with a desperate or most rational effort from the deepest resources of the unconscious of us all to rescue civilization from the pit and plague of its bedding?
 * Introducing our Argument

 * We are close to dead. There are faces and bodies like gorged maggots on the dance floor, on the highway, in the city, in the stadium; they are a host of chemical machines who swallow the product of chemical factories, aspirin, preservatives, stimulant, relaxant, and breathe out their chemical wastes into a polluted air. The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.
 * Introducing our Argument

 * There's a subterranean impetus towards pornography so powerful that half the business world is juiced by the sort of half sex that one finds in advertisements.
 * "Petty Notes on Some Sex in America" first published in Playboy magazine (1961 - 1962)

 * Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.
 * "Petty Notes on Some Sex in America" first published in Playboy magazine (1961 - 1962)

 * Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
 * Review of the book My Hope for America (1964) by Lyndon B. Johnson

 * There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.
 * Review of the book My Hope for America

 * What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.
 * "A Speech at Berkeley on Vietnam Day"

Armies of the Night (1968)

 * His consolation in those hours when he was most uncharitable to himself is that taken at his very worst he was at least still worthy of being a character in a novel by Balzac, win one day, lose the next, and do it with boom! and baroque in the style.

 * There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.

Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968)

 * Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968, New York: Random House, 2016

 * New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
 * Pt. 2, p. 83

 * West of the Amphitheatre, railroad sidings seemed to continue on for miles, accompanied by those same massive low sheds larger than armories, with pens for tens of thousands of frantic beasts, cattle, sheep, and pigs, animals in an orgy of gorging and dropping and waiting and smelling blood. In the slaughterhouses, during the day, a carnage worthy of the Disasters of War took place each morning and afternoon.
 * Pt. 2, p. 86

 * It is the smell of the stockyards, all of it taken together, a smell so bad one must go down to visit the killing of the animals or never eat meat again. Watching the animals be slaughtered, one knows the human case — no matter how close to angel we may come, the butcher is equally there.
 * Pt. 2, p. 87

 * Chicago was a town where nobody could ever forget how the money was made. It was picked up from floors still slippery with blood.
 * Pt. 2, p. 88

The Executioner's Song (1979)

 * Historical, religious, and existential treatises suggest that for some persons at some times, it is rational not to avoid physical death at all costs. Indeed the spark of humanity can maximize its essence by choosing an alternative that preserves the greatest dignity and some tranquility of mind.

TIME interview (1991)

 * "His Punch Is Better Than Ever" by Bonnie Angelo in TIME magazine (30 September 1991)

But there are always traces of repression. And you can find it in a Democratic government too. People who are "right-minded," you know, are always with us. But I think so long as we can move along with the economy, we're all right. It's just if there's a smash, a crash — that's when I'm not at all optimistic about what's going to happen.
 * I don't think we're ever going to have a cheap fascism of Brownshirts and goose stepping or anything of that sort. We're too American for that. We would find that ridiculous.

One of the diseases of the left is political correctness. If you're out of power for too long, then you just get worse and worse about how important your own ideas are.
 * I love the idea of a left conservative because it gets rid of political cant. We're stifling in it. One of the diseases of the right is self-righteousness. I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.

They're narrow-minded, power seeking, incapable of recognizing the joys of a good discussion. The women's movement is filled with tyrants, just as men's political movements are equally filled. What I've come to discover are the negative sides, that women are no better than men. I used to think — this is sexism in a way, I'll grant it — that women were better than men. Now I realize no, they're not any better.
 * I had a great many prejudices that have since dissolved. But what I still hate about the women's movement is their insistence upon male piety in relation to it. I don't like bending my knee and saying I'm sorry, mea culpa. I find now that women have achieved some power and recognition they are quite the equal of men in every stupidity and vice and misjudgment that we've exercised through history.

 * We've got an agreeable, comfortable life here as Americans. But under it there's a huge, free-floating anxiety. Our inner lives, our inner landscape is just like that sky out there — it's full of smog. We really don't know what we believe anymore, we're nervous about everything.

 * It's a misperception of me that I am a wild man — I wish I still were. I'm 68 years old. The rage now is, oh, so deep it's almost comfortable. It has even approached the point where I can live with it philosophically. The world's not what I want it to be. But then no one ever said I had the right to design the world.

Interview for French TV (1998)

 * Interview (1998) made for French television, first broadcast on French and US television in October 2000, as quoted in "Mailer Tells a Lot. Not All, but a Lot.; His Longest Love Affair Is With the U.S." by Bernard Weinraub, in The New York Times (4 October 2000)

 * I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be.

 * I certainly do have this feeling of affection for the absolute sense of intellectual freedom that exists as a live nerve, a live wire, right through the center of American life. … Every time I get totally discouraged with this country, I remind myself, "No, the fact is that finally we can really say what we think, and some extraordinary things have come out of that."

 * We are as ugly as animals in our fashion, and unless we deal with the ugliness in ourselves, unless we deal with the violence in ourselves, the brutality in ourselves, and find some way to sublimate it, just to use Freud's term, into something slightly higher, we're never going to get anywhere with anything.

 * I knew that Jack needed a lot of help, and what he really needed was somebody who could spend a prodigious amount of time with him, every night, see him, live with him, live with him the way someone in A.A. lives with a drunk. … I wasn't doing that. So when the crime occurred — because I'd just been hoping things would work out all right — when the crime occurred, I knew that I had a responsibility on that one.
 * On his role in the parole of Jack Abbott, during which Abbot killed a man.

 * Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

 * What's not realized about good novelists is that they're as competitive as good athletes. They study each other — where the other person is good and where the person is less good. Writers are like that but don't admit it.

 * He had a personality that was hopeless. He had a profound distrust of people's possibilities, and it came out in his personality. … There was an almost indecent pleasure he took in being sentimental about all the worst things.
 * On Richard Nixon

I just thought — this is a cold and cruel thing to say, but it's the way a writer is — I thought, "Oh, this is good." Not that it was good that all these people are dead. But "Oh, it's so good for writing." There was a sense of, "This can be used."
 * There's a detachment that you need as a writer. And as a young man, I probably had more detachment than I have today. So that part of me was just looking at the battlefield, and it was certainly full of horrors. There was a lieutenant with us and a driver and another enlisted man like myself. And I think they were shocked profoundly.

Quotes about Mailer

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

 * The idea to make New York City a state, in case you didn't know, is not original with me...Most people, however, will remember the statehood idea as it was first put forth in Norman Mailer's campaign for Mayor in 1969. He gave the idea some pzazz, but not enough people took it seriously.
 * Bella Abzug Bella!: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington (1972)

 * That's a photograph of Norman Mailer. He was a very great writer; he, uh, donated his ego to the Harvard Medical School for study.
 * Woody Allen's character, Miles Monroe, in the film Sleeper (1973)

 * How refreshing to go from Norman Mailer to Toni Morrison!
 * 1994 interview included in Conversations with Isabel Allende (1999) translated from Spanish by Virginia Invernizzi

 * Alix Kates Shulman had no idea that its main principle, that "a woman and man should share equally the responsibility for their household and children in every way, from the insidiously unacknowledged tasks of daily life to the pleasures of guiding a young human to maturity," would cause such uproar. Reprinted in the debut issue of Ms., in Redbook (attracting two thousand letters), Life, a Harvard textbook on contract law, and other anthologies, it drew scorn from Norman Mailer, who famously mocked Shulman by declaring that he never would be married to a woman like her-he would never help his wife with the dishes!
 * Joyce Antler Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women's Liberation Movement (2018)

 * (“It was reported somewhere recently that your friend Norman Mailer said to you, in anger: "You're little, you're ugly, and you're as black as the ace of spades." But your comeback was not recorded.”) Oh, I just laughed. After all, it's true. But the point is, why, after all these years, did he have to say it? I mean, it's his problem, really, and I think it has to do with the fact that like most white liberals-though I'm not accusing him of being one exactly-he has always lied to himself about the way he really feels about Negroes.
 * 1969 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

 * if you are a success, you run the risk that Norman has run and that I run, too, of becoming a kind of show business personality. Then the legend becomes far more important than the work. It's as though you're living in an echo chamber. You hear only your own voice. And, when you become a celebrity, that voice is magnified by multitudes and you begin to drown in this endless duplication of what looks like yourself. You have to be really very lucky, and very stubborn, not to let that happen to you. It's a difficult trap to avoid. And that's part of Norman's dilemma, I think. A writer is supposed to write. If he appears on television or as a public speaker, so much the better or so much the worse, but the public persona is one thing.
 * 1984 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)

 * When you talk of Norman Mailer, right away I see van Gogh's work boots. Norman was a working man. Lord, did he work. From one end of his life to the other, he sat in solemn thought and left so much to read, so many pages with ideas that come at you like sparks spitting from a fire. He leaves them to a nation that has surrendered all its years to converting truth to an untruthful excuse for killing
 * Jimmy Breslin, as quoted in Associated Press report (10 November 2007)

 * Obviously, he was a great American voice.
 * Joan Didion, as quoted in Associated Press report (10 November 2007)

 * He was by nature bound to a style of excess … There were times when you would be fed up with him, but if you could conceive of American culture of the past 50 years without Norman Mailer, you would find it a lot drearier.
 * E.L. Doctorow, as quoted in "Norman Mailer, the Writer As Writer" by Hillel Italie, of the Associated Press (11 November 2007)

 * He was really the great chronicler of his time, the champion of personal reportage. His output was prodigious, his range of interests very wide, from Marilyn Monroe to Picasso to the art of graffiti to extreme forms of crime. His vaunted life as a public figure may have actually impeded serious critical attention to much of his work. Presumably, it will be possible now.
 * E.L. Doctorow, as quoted in Associated Press report (10 November 2007)

 * He was absolutely dauntless … He was quite weak in the end, but he still planned to write a seven-volume novel about Hitler.
 * Jason Epstein, as quoted "Remembering the ‘absolutely dauntless’ Mailer", Associated Press report at Today (10 November 2007)

 * He was a very sweet-natured person, despite what some people think. And he was very very patient. I would take one of his manuscripts and make some suggestions and he would be very nice about it and say, "Yes, you've given me something to think about." And I would get the manuscript back and I would see that he had included none of my ideas
 * Jason Epstein, as quoted in "Literary giant Norman Mailer dies at 84" by Richard Pyle, The Associated Press (11 November 2007)

 * Norman was ferociously smart, and surprised me at one point when he went off on a rant about the English and quinine and tonic water by interrupting himself when he realised I was English and being desperately keen to make sure I hadn't taken offense — the opposite of the pugnacious image he'd acquired. I … owed an enormous amount of why-Sandman-was-taken-seriously-in-the-early-years to Norman's quote on the cover of Season of Mists, for which I shall be forever grateful.
 * Neil Gaiman, in Journal (10 November 2007)

 * Norman was a splendid, surprising American writer, a good friend, a true New Yorker, and a man we will all miss. To me, it's like a thousand people just left the room. As a novelist, he never repeated himself, never succumbed to the temptation to write "The Naked and the Dead Go to Japan," and always made us imagine other lives, other choices, other varieties of human folly, grandeur and capacity for evil.
 * Pete Hamill, as quoted in "Literary giant Norman Mailer dies at 84" by Richard Pyle, The Associated Press (11 November 2007)

 * We would talk about everything … He knew he wasn't going to live very much longer, but he would still talk of taking on the greatest subjects. He always was working on something.
 * William Kennedy, as quoted "Remembering the ‘absolutely dauntless’ Mailer", Associated Press report at Today (10 November 2007)

 * He had such a compendious vision of what it meant to be alive. He had serious opinions on everything there was to have an opinion on, and everything he had was so original.
 * William Kennedy, as quoted in "Literary giant Norman Mailer dies at 84" by Richard Pyle, The Associated Press (11 November 2007)

 * men write about their life all the time. You know, Norman Mailer would put himself in his books, and no one made it seem that he was doing something less.
 * Jamaica Kincaid Interview with NPR (2013)

then write about it? Henry James and Wallace Stegner both said not to commit experience for the sake of the writing. Mailer questions that injunction and the notion of objectivity. The writer makes up the world out in the streets and at home in the ivory tower writing the story. I suppose we try to be as objective and as truthful as possible ("truthful" is the right word); still, we are affecting the truth.
 * I was inventing it as I went along. And I didn't know where I was going to end up, and I did not have a large shape in mind. I felt that I was making the path as I was going along. I like Armies of the Night, Norman Mailer writing the novel as history, history as novel. I teach Armies of the Night; I use it to show students how we make history in the same way we write a novel. And as we narrate what's going on, we shape history. I also like that book a lot because he writes about the responsibility of the writer. Does the writer actually go out in the street and perform politics and
 * 1996 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

In one way it was unfair: Mailer had had the courage to sponsor a talented pariah, and then something in Abbott's transition from prison went disastrously wrong. Mailer was personally aggrieved and pained, not only for Abbott but for Abbott's victim. It is true that certain writers adopt convicts: criminals, sinister, romantic and stupid as sharks, become the executive arms of intellectuals' violent fantasies. For some reason, intellectuals rarely understand that they are being conned: convicts are geniuses of ingratiation. Still, Mailer after all was not promoting a killer but a prose stylist and what he judged to be a salvageable human being. He miscalculated: he overrated the writer in Abbott and underestimated the murderer.
 * In the beginning, Mailer spins publicity for convict and murderer Jack Abbott, helps get Abbott's prison book published and Abbott paroled. The con with the prose style of a Doberman (all speed and teeth) obeys his muse again. Six weeks after parole, Abbott kills a man in New York City's East Village. … It was common to hear New Yorkers say that he should be tried as an accessory to murder. Mailer barged around giving interviews and suing a newspaper for libel, looking truculent and stricken.
 * Lance Morrow, in "The Poetic License to Kill" in TIME magazine (1 February 1982)

 * In high school, I'd devoured the works of Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, and Norman Mailer, moved by stories of men trying to find their place in an America that didn't welcome them. Later, studying the early civil rights movement in college, I'd been intrigued by the influence of Jewish philosophers like Martin Buber on Dr. King's sermons and writings.
 * Barack Obama A Promised Land (2020)

 * He could do anything he wanted to do — the movie business, writing, theater, politics. He never thought the boundaries were restricted. He'd go anywhere and try anything. He was a courageous person, a great person, fully confident, with a great sense of optimism.
 * Gay Talese, as quoted in Associated Press report (10 November 2007)

 * The crazy uncle of American literature … endearing and obnoxious, graceful and loutish, shrewd and clueless … his own biggest fan and his own worst enemy.
 * Erik Tarloff, as quoted in "Mailer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, dies aged 84" by David Usborne, in The Independent (11 November 2007)

 * One night, we had a dinner party for the express purpose of introducing Mailer to Neil Gaiman. Neil, as was his habit, was so charming that Norman wanted to read The Sandman. He liked the series enough to provide a cover blurb for the next trade paperback collection. Neil later reported that bookstore buyers told him that the Mailer quote persuaded them to stock graphic novels. And the rest, as they say, is history.
 * Martha Thomases, (comic book author) at comicmix.com, on a blurb by Mailer: "Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it's about time."

 * Mailer is no Balzac of the twentieth century. And he is engrossed in his own grim effort of self-validation...Mailer's adversary disposition recalls D. H. Lawrence, his predecessor in the line of literary minds dedicated to the renovation of society by means of a revolution in the individual consciousness. But of the two, Lawrence is actually closer to our present literary spirit, for he is not only the more subjective writer but also the more abstract.
 * Diana Trilling Claremont Essays (1965)

 * He was interesting, because he was interested. … I went to Provincetown a year or two ago and stayed with him and Norris. It was very pleasant. He was in good form. We both dislike the same things about our native land so we had lots to talk about.
 * Gore Vidal, as quoted in Associated Press report (10 November 2007)

 * The energy of American Jewish writers was so charged, so buoyant, that for a time they appeared to dominate American fiction. But there was so little Jewish energy in this art that one could invent parlor games over the ethnic or religious identity of its authors: Edna Ferber? Waldo Frank? Lillian Hellman? Nathanael West? Norman Mailer? E. L. Doctorow?
 * Ruth Wisse The Modern Jewish Canon (2000)

title: Norman Mailer


text:
Talk:William James

Carving nature at its joint
Anyone knows whether the expression "carving nature at its joint" is attributable to James? -noizy

 * No, I believe it's Plato/Socrates. --Jldb

Duplication of Quote
The following quotation appeared twice on the William James page: "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test."This quote was referenced to both Principles of Psychology (1890) and Talks to Teachers to Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899). In researching to see which source was correct, it turns out that both of them are. Here is the link to the Talks to Teachers quote source and here is the link to the quote source in Principles of Psychology. In his Preface to the Talks to Teachers, he wrote: "Readers acquainted with my larger books on Psychology will meet much familiar phraseology. In the chapters on habit and memory I have even copied several pages verbatim, but I do not know that apology is needed for such plagiarism as this." Since there's no real point in including both quotes on the page, I will leave it with its first appearance, i.e, the Principles of Psychology and will delete the duplicate quote. - InvisibleSun 04:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Michele or Guido ?
On the page William James, there is a link to, ascribed to "Reni Michele", but the sentence of William James (quoted in this article) is : "In the Louvre there is a picture, by Guido Reni, of St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck." This picture is reproduced in the Wikipedia article Guido Reni. Another (less good) reproduction of the same image is also, with more informations. Following William James, the painting is in the Louvre, but it is said that it is in Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (Rome). Two versions of the same painting ? In any case, I think the Christian name is Guido, not Michele. Pity that, on Commons, the best documentation is for the baddest reproduction. Marvoir 07:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote from this list please move it to William James. --Antiquary 19:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

 * The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.

 * A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

 * A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
 * Earliest occurence available onlineː "William James wrote that a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." inː Trust Management Update (1983), Issues 63–80, page civ. --Omnipaedista (talk) 19:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Garson O'Toole (the Quote Investigator) concluded that this quote should probably be attributed to William Fitzjames Oldham.--Hughh (talk) 17:51, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

)
 * Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.
 * Similar to a 1920-letters quote of the main article. (James, W. (1907). The Energies of Men. Science, 25(635), 321-332. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1632253

Inconsistent formatting
I don't understand why some entries are in bold, and others are not. 72.229.55.73 02:19, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
 * As with the selection of quotes in the articles, the bolding is a matter of presentation, largely determined by the editors themselves. This is an option in the presentation process which has always been permitted at Wikiquote, as a means of diminishing visual monotony, and permitting emphasis of quotes and particular parts of quotes. ~ Upuaut 03:52, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

About the unity of humans
One can find those two quotes attributed to James on the web : “Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground.” or more commonly "We are like islands in the sea; separate on the surface but connected in the deep" (quoted as so by the philosopher E. Laszlo). Isn't it a false quote ? If not, does anyone know the source ? - HD
 * Source: ~ DanielTom (talk) 10:38, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you ! As often, the "quote" has been altered and the original is richer. It also coresponds more clearly to a famous quote of John Donne : "no man is an island...". So should not this quote be in the page of important quotes ? - HD
 * You're welcome. I added it, per your suggestion. ~ DanielTom (talk) 20:06, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Good ! - HD

Dubious attribution, beautiful quotation
Here is attributed to William James the phrase: "Faith is the greatest cure for anxiety"

Can any establish this quotation's authorship?

Thanks, IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
Is this really a William James quote? What is its source? This is a common quote attributed by many to William James. I cannot find a source for it despite a thorough search. It does not appear in Wikiquote, and could not be found on Google books, even though I looked for many small segments from the quote. I like the quote and would like to read the original source.

title: Talk:William James


text:
The Country Wife

The Country Wife is an English Restoration comedy of manners from 1675 by William Wycherley.

Quotes from the play
call 'em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons, / and 'tis scandal they would avoid, not men.
 * Your Women of honour, as you
 * Mr. Horner, I.i.167–169

the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away; to taste the town the better when a man returns.
 * A mistress should be like a little country retreat near
 * Mr. Dorilant, I.i.218–219

and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome / woman agreeable without it.
 * Methinks wit is more necessary than beauty,
 * Mr. Horner, I.i.425–427

soldiers made constant and loyal by good pay, rather than by oaths and covenants, therefore I'd advise my friends to keep rather than marry;
 * Women, as you say, are like
 * Mr. Horner, I.1.464–467

 * 'Tis my maxim, he's a fool that marries; but he's a greater that does not marry a fool.
 * I.1.420.

Gathers together more gazers than if it shined out.
 * A beauty masked, like the sun in eclipse,
 * Alithea, III.i.

 of plays, and players, when I came in? you are her encourager in such discourses. the player men. them, there is no hurt in't —
 * [Mr. Pinchwife tells Mrs. Pinchwife of the pleasures of the town]
 * Mr. Pinchwife: But were you not talking
 * Mrs. Pinchwife: No indeed, Dear, she chide me just now for liking
 * Mr. Pin.: Nay, if she be so innocent as to own to me her liking

Folks. I hate a stranger. be like the naughty town women, who only hate their husbands, and love every man else, love plays, visits, fine coaches, fine clothes, fiddles, balls, treats, and so lead a wicked town-life. London is not so bad a place, Dear. of the town, and he is now setting her agog upon them himself. player men too? in the country?
 * [Aside]
 * Come my poor rogue, but thou lik'st none better than me?
 * Mrs. Pin.: Yes indeed, but I do, the Player Men are finer
 * Mr. Pin.: But you love none better than me?
 * Mrs. Pin.: You are mine own Dear Bud, and I know you,
 * Mr. Pin.: Ay, my Dear, you must love me only, and not
 * Mrs. Pin.: Nay, if to enjoy all these things be a town-life,
 * Mr. Pin.: How! If you love me, you must hate London.
 * Alithea: The fool has forbid me discovering to her the pleasures
 * Mrs. Pin.: But, Husband, do the town-women love the
 * Mr. Pin.: Yes, I warrant you.
 * Mrs. Pin.: Ay, I warrant you.
 * Mr. Pin.: Why, you do not, I hope?
 * Mrs. Pin.: No, no Bud; but why have we no player-men
 * II.i.67–96

 something more than bare "Sir". this penknife in your face. kisses and embraces — Write he had a sweet breath. Though I suffer'd last night your kisses and embraces — not, or I will spoil thy writing with this, I will stab out those eyes that cause my mischief.
 * [The penknife scene]
 * Mr. Pinchwife: Come begin — Sir —
 * [Dictates.]
 * Mrs. Pinchwife: Shan't I say, "Dear Sir"? You know one says always
 * Mr. Pin.: Write as I bid you, or I will write "whore" with
 * Mrs. Pin.: Nay good Bud — Sir —
 * [She writes.]
 * Mr. Pin.: Though I suffer'd last night your nauseous, loath'd
 * Mrs. Pin.: Nay, why should I say so, you know I told you,
 * Mr. Pin.: Write.
 * Mrs. Pin.: Let me but put out, loath'd.
 * Mr. Pin.: Write I say.
 * Mrs. Pin.: Well then.
 * [Writes.]
 * Mr. Pin.: Let's see what have you writ?
 * [Takes the paper, and reads.]
 * Thou impudent creature, where is nauseous and loath'd?
 * Mrs. Pin.: I can't abide to write such filthy words.
 * Mr. Pin.: Once more write as I'd have you, and question it
 * [Holds up the penknife.]
 * Mrs. Pin.: O Lord, I will.
 * IV.ii.92–114

 I followed you must know my Lady Fidget hither, 'tis the prettiest lodging, and I have been staring on the prettiest pictures. pretty'st piece of china, my Dear. don't think to give other people china, and me none, come in with me too. before now, but you shan't put me off so, come — has no more left. find. not have had it too, for we women of quality never think we have china enough. but I will have a Rol-waggon for you too, another time. understanding.
 * [The china scene – The husband of Lady Fidget and the grandmother of Mrs. Squeamish are listening front stage and nodding in approval, failing to pick up the double entendre which is obvious to the audience.]
 * Mrs. Squeamish: I can't find 'em — Oh are you here, Grandmother,
 * Enter Lady Fidget with a piece of china in her hand, and Horner following.
 * Lady Fidget: And I have been toyling and moyling, for the
 * Mr. Horner: Nay she has been too hard for me do what I could.
 * Squeam.: Oh Lord I'll have some china too, good Mr. Horner,
 * Hor.: Upon my honour I have none left now.
 * Squeam.: Nay, nay I have known you deny your china
 * Hor.: This Lady had the last there.
 * La. Fid.: Yes indeed Madam, to my certain knowledge he
 * Squeam.: O but it may be he may have some you could not
 * La. Fid.: What d'y think if he had had any left, I would
 * Hor.: Do not take it ill, I cannot make china for you all,
 * Squeam.: Thank you dear Toad.
 * [To Horn, aside.]
 * La Fid.: What do you mean by that promise?
 * Hor.: Alas she has an innocent, literal
 * [Apart to Lady Fidget.]
 * IV.iii.183–207

 our two bottles, let us speak the truth of our hearts. sure. On the pittance of Pleasure which they only give. We must not rejoice, With Wine and with noise. In vain we must wake in a dull bed alone. Whilst to our warm Rival the Bottle, they're gone. Then lay aside charms, And take up these arms.''
 * [The ladies' drinking scene ¬– The "brimmer" is a drinking cup passing from hand to hand.]
 * Lady Fidget: Now Ladies, supposing we had drank each of us
 * Mrs. Dainty Fidget and Mrs. Squeamish: Agreed.
 * La. Fid.: By this brimmer, for truth is nowhere else to be / found,
 * Not in thy heart false man.
 * [Aside to Hor.]
 * Mr. Horner: You have found me a true man I'm
 * [Aside to Lady Fid.]
 * La. Fid.: Not every way —
 * [Aside to Hor.]
 * But let us sit and be Merry.
 * Lady Fidget sings.
 * ''Why should our damnd Tyrants oblige us to live,

Because we live sober to men we submit. If for Beauties you'd pass. Take a lick of the Glass. 'Twill mend your complexions, and when they are gone, The best red we have is the red of the Grape. Then Sisters lay't on. And dam a good shape.''
 * '' 'Tis Wine only gives 'em their Courage and Wit,

plain dealing, let us throw our masques over our heads. sighted. eyes, drink eunuch. husband.
 * Dayn.: Dear Brimmer, well in token of our openness and
 * Hor.: So 'twill come to the glasses anon.
 * Squeam.: Lovely Brimmer, let me enjoy him first.
 * La. Fid.: No, I never part with a gallant, till I've tried / him. Dear Brimmer that mak'st our husbands short
 * Dayn.: And our bashful gallants bold.
 * Squeam.: And for want of a gallant, the butler lovely in our
 * La. Fid.: Drink thou representative of a husband, damn a
 * Dayn.: And as it were a husband, an old keeper.
 * Squeam.: And an old grandmother.
 * Hor.: And an English bawd, and a French surgeon.
 * V.iv.19–55

 reported yourself no man? love, and honour, you passed for that thing you do? and there's an end on't. us not fall out, but have a care of our honour; though we get no presents, no jewels of him, we are savers of our honour, the jewel of most value and use, which shines yet to the world unsuspected, though it be counterfeit. the world think so; for honour, like beauty now, only depends on the opinion of others.
 * [Squeamish, Dainty, and Lady Fidget have realized that that Horner is the secret lover of them all.]
 * Mrs. Squeamish: Did you not tell me, 'twas for my sake only, you
 * [Aside to Horner.]
 * Mrs. Dainty Fidget: Oh wretch! Did you not swear to me, 'twas for my
 * [Aside to Horner.]
 * 'Mr. Horner': So, so.
 * Lady Fidget: Come, speak Ladies, this is my false villain.
 * Squeam.: And mine too.
 * Dayn.: And mine.
 * Hor.: Well then, you are all three my false rogues too,
 * La. Fid.: Well then, there's no remedy, sister sharers, let
 * Hor.: Nay, and is e'en as good, as if it were true, provided
 * V.iv.159–176

Quotes about the play
"The only thing original about Wycherley, the only thing which he could furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy. It is curious to observe how everything that he touched, however pure and noble, took in an instant the colour of his own mind. Compare the Ecole des Femmes [Molière's School For Wives] with the Country Wife. Agnes [in the School For Wives] is a simple and amiable girl, whose heart is indeed full of love, but of love sanctioned by honour, morality, and religion. Her natural talents are great. They have been hidden, and, as it might appear, destroyed by an education elaborately bad. But they are called forth into full energy by a virtuous passion. Her lover, while he adores her beauty, is too honest a man to abuse the confiding tenderness of a creature so charming and inexperienced. Wycherley takes this plot into his hands; and forthwith this sweet and graceful courtship becomes a licentious intrigue of the lowest and least sentimental kind, between an impudent London rake and the idiot wife of a country squire. We will not go into details. In truth, Wycherley's indecency is protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters. It is safe, because it is too filthy to handle and too noisome even to approach." (Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1841)
 * Context: A famous and extreme outburst of Victorian distaste for Wycherley, in a review of Leigh Hunt's edition of Wycherley and other comic dramatists of the Restoration.

"When the play concludes with no poetical justice that makes Horner really impotent, leaving him instead still potent and still on the make, the audience laughs at its own expense: the women of quality nervously because they have been misogynistically slandered; the men of quality nervously because at some level they recognize that class solidarity is just a pleasing fiction" (Canfield, p. 128).

title: The Country Wife


text:
The Man with Two Brains

The Man with Two Brains is a 1983 comedy film about a brain surgeon who tries to end his unhappy marriage to spend more time with a disembodied brain.
 * Directed by Carl Reiner. Written by Steve Martin, Carl Reiner, and George Gipe.

So funny you'll laugh your head off.taglines

Dr. Hfuhruhurr

 * [Grabbing an expensive vase during a marital spat] Our marriage lies broken on the floor, like the shards of glass on our honeymoon suite! [He slams the vase to the ground, but it bounces back up into his hands.] Ahhh! Oh-ho! 19th-Century Indian rubber vase, eh?!

 * [After Dolores finally consummates her marriage to Dr. Hfuhruhurr…] I never knew it could be like that! [sighs] So… so… professional!

Dialogue

 * [A recurring scene in the operating room…]
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: Metzenbaum scissors!
 * Nurse: Metzenbaum scissors!
 * [A cat meows.]
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: Get that cat out of here!

 * [Dr. Brandon is arguing with Dr. Hfuhruhurr about his performing the operation on Dolores.]
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: But there's only one other person I'd trust to perform this operation — Beckerman!
 * Dr. Brandon: Well Dr. Beckerman was murdered in Europe! You know that!
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: Exactly! Not only is he dead, he's six thousand miles away!

 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: The only time we doctors should accept death is when it's caused by our own incompetence!
 * Dr. Necessiter: Nonsense! If the murder of twelve innocent people can help save one human life, it will have been worth it!

 * [Dr. Hfuhruhurr is rowing with Anne's enjarred brain, complete with sunhat and sunglasses, along an idyllic creek.]
 * Anne Uumellmahaye: I don't think there's a girl floating in any jar anywhere who's as happy as I am! Oh, Michael, you do so much for me, and I do nothing for you!
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: Are you out of your head? [pauses] Sorry, I forgot.

 * [Dr. Hfuhruhurr removes Anne's brain from the oven Dolores tried to bake her in. He tries to cool her off in the sink.]
 * Anne Uumellmahaye: I… I think I'm alright.
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: Count to ten!
 * Anne Uumellmahaye: 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… [pause] 10.
 * [Dr. Hfuhruhurr turns to Dolores in a rage.]
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: You! You cooked her nines!

 * [As the police try to stop the experiment…]
 * Inspector: You are playing God!
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: SOMEBODY has to!

 * [Dr. Hfuhruhurr is arguing with Delores.]
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: [Exasperated] Dolores, I am making a citizen's divorce.
 * Dolores: [laughing] What?
 * Dr. Hfuhruhurr: By the powers vested in me, I hereby declare our marriage null and void! E pluribus unum!

Taglines

 * So funny you'll laugh your head off.

 * DANGER: HEALTH WARNING: Watching This Movie May Cause Severe Brain Damage

 * Steve Martin Is A World Famous Surgeon. He Invented Screw Top, Zip Lock Brain Surgery. Trust Him.

Cast

 * Steve Martin - Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr
 * Kathleen Turner - Dolores Benedict
 * David Warner - Dr. Alfred Necessiter
 * Paul Benedict - Dr. Necessiter's butler
 * George Furth - Timon
 * Peter Hobbs - Dr. Brandon
 * Earl Boen - Dr. Felix Conrad
 * Randi Brooks - Fran
 * James Cromwell - realtor
 * Francis X. McCarthy - Olsen
 * Estelle Reiner - tourist in elevator
 * Merv Griffin - himself
 * Jeffrey Combs - Dr. Jones
 * Sissy Spacek - Anne Uumellmahaye (voice; uncredited)

title: The Man with Two Brains


text:
Talk:Tom Lehrer

 * If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it.

This is an actual quote, although slightly paraphrased. The exact quote from the LP cover of "That Was The Year That Was" is:

"If anyone should object to any statement I make I am quite prepared not only to retract it but also to deny under oath that I ever made it."

User:203.99.54.98

 * I thought there was a good chance it was genuine - it sounds like something he'd say - which is why I didn't delete it out of hand; but my copy of TWTYTW is in a box set with different liner notes, so I've only just had a chance to confirm it. The copy of TWTYTW I have in front of me has slightly different wording again, so I've gone with that. --Paul A 12:13, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Selling out
I found this on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BDyFuDxA-I with the eminently quotable lines:

 * It's so nice to have integrity
 * I'll tell you why
 * If you really have integrity
 * It means your price is very high

but I'm not going to put it in until I figure out how and when and whether this song was released so that I can attribute it properly. --Slashme (talk) 10:54, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

title: Talk:Tom Lehrer


text:
Talk:Rapping

fuck the wrath of khan its about my fury i get in your business like a credit inquiry the giant on a stomping spree flatten with wisdom im big enough to play a game jacks with the solar system..lead the pack like u.t.f.o thats a ole school crew L.L. thought he was cool until he peeped what i do.

title: Talk:Rapping