conscious and intelligent manipulation

the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...we are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. this is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

edward bernays propoganda, 1928

the greatest of crimes

"All modern ethical writers regard unjust war as not only immoral, but as one of the greatest of crimes—murder on a large scale. Such are all wars of mere ambition, engaged in for the purpose of extending regal power or national sovereignty; wars of plunder, carried on from mercenary motives; wars of propagandism, undertaken for the unrighteous end of compelling men to adopt certain religious or political opinions, whether from the alleged motives of "introducing a more orthodox religion," or of "extending the area of freedom." Such wars are held in just abhorrence by all moral and religious people: and this is believed to be the settled conviction of the great mass of our own citizens."

Henry Halleck, Major General (Union Army) Elements of Military Art and Science, 1862

the kernel of eternity

at that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being — the reward he seeks — the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. it is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.

thomas wolfe of time and the river

cato, the younger

i saw close by me a solitary old man, worthy, by
his appearance, of so much reverence that never
son owed father more.
long was his beard and mixed with white hair,
similar to the hairs of his head, which fell to his
breast in two strands.
the rays of the four holy lights so adorned his
face with brightness that i saw him as if the sun
had been before him.

dante alighieri purgatorio: canto I

i found rome of clay, and leave her to you of marble

have i played the part well? then applaud as I exit...

gaius octavius thurinus (d. ceasar augustus)

1 august 1835

what i really need is to get clear about what i must do, not what i must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. what matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that i shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which i am willing to live and die.

soren kierkegaard journals

leaving from nowhere to return to nowhere

i am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. a nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. in this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea...

leaving from Plymouth to return to Plymouth feels like leaving from nowhere to return to nowhere...

therefore...

my intention is to continue the voyage, still nonstop toward the Pacific Islands where there is plenty of sun and more peace than in Europe. please do not think that i am trying to break a record. “record” is a very stupid word at sea. i am continuing non-stop because i am happy at sea, and perhaps because i want to save my soul.

bernard moitessier, legend

a whore's oath

he’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.

when we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

william shakespeare king lear

wanderers of the dark

Things that love night
Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry
Th’ affliction nor the fear.

william shakespeare king lear: act III, scene 2

fools by heavenly compulsion

this is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeits of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! my father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows, i am rough and lecherous. fut, i should have been that i am, had the maidenl’est star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

william shakespeare king lear: act I, scene 2

beautiful in my eyes

you're my piece of mind
in this crazy world
you're everything i've tried to find
your love is a pearl

you're my Mona Lisa
you're my rainbow skies
my only prayer is that you'll realize
you'll always be beautiful in my eyes

the world will turn
and the seasons will change
and all the lessons we will learn
will be beautiful and strange

we will have our fill of tears
and our share of sighs
my only is prayer is that you'll realize
you'll always be beautiful in my eyes

there are lines upon my face
from a lifetime of smiles
and when the time comes to embrace
for one long last while
we can laugh about
how time really flies
we won't say goodbye
cause true love never dies
you'll always be beautiful in my eyes...

joshua kadison painted desert serenade

empty achievements; meaningless pleasures

john 12:32 -- and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself.

Lord Jesus Christ, there is so much to draw us back: empty achievements, meaningless pleasures, unworthy concerns. there is so much to scare us back: a pride that is too cowardly to let itself be helped, a cowardly timidity that shirks to its own ruin, an anxiety of sin that shuns the purity of holiness as illness shuns the remedy. but you are still the strongest --so draw us, and even more strongly, to yourself. we call you our Savior and Redeemer, and you came to earth in order to free us from the chains in which we were bound or in which we had bound ourselves and in order to rescue the redeemed. this was your task, which you have completed and which you will complete until the end of time, for just as you yourself have said it, so will you do it: lifted up from the earth, you will draw all to yourself.

anti-climacus practice in christianity

les excréments de vie

is all i am a rake, a debauché, a libertine, a roué, a wastrel?

perhaps sometmie you’ll deny it,]
but how yuo defy it remains unseen,
love is a msytery, and a four-litre word.

years adn years and stil unhaerd>

vladimir and estragon trois excréments

alone and aching in the wilderness

where shall the weary rest?
when shall the lonely of heart come home?
what doors are open for the wanderer?...

immortal love, alone and aching in the wilderness, we cried to you:
you were not absent from our loneliness.

thomas wolfe of time and the river: volume I

the remote, demented wind

the remote, demented wind was howling in the barren trees, as he had heard it do so many times in his childhood, and far off, far-faint and broken by the wind, he heard the wailing cry of a great train, bringing to him again its wild and secret promises of flight and darkness, new lands, and a shining city. and there was something wild and dark and sweet in him that he could never quite utter. the strange and bitter miracle of life had filled him and he could not speak, and all he knew was that he was leaving home forever, that the world, the future of dark time, and of man's destiny lay before him, and that he would never live in his mother's house again.

thomas wolfe of time and the river: volume I

do you see the world through troubled eyes?

what do you think of the pain behind my eyes?

can you see the hope hidden behind the lies?

beaucoup bad shit

i am, as always, entirely and incidentally, just-about-averagely damned; although, to be fair, i am far better than i deserve.

have i wasted everything in profligacy?

has everything past been only degenerate, degraded, dissolute,
unrestrained, and deplorably dissipated dalliance?

is all i am a rake, a debauché, a libertine, a roué, a wastrel?





domine deus noster, miserere nobis.

merely gossip and tales for other times

there are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning,
the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. the rest is
merely gossip, and tales for other times.

annie dillard

the surface of the deep

it is hard to explain how much joy i have discovered sailing on the surface of the deep searching, almost desperately, for a gale, a situation that finds the majority of people sick and in search of an exit. it is while enclosed, confronted by this terror that i find a moments respite from my lackluster and forlorn life even in the midst of the angry wind which whistles screamingly by the ear, terrifying and overwhelming the senses, not from the sound solely, but from the movement of the water whipped up by its agitating force --an unsettling ride, where the smallest waves top out higher than a person stands. i miss it, acutely, even as i write down these tame observations.

peacocks and lilies

it is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

leo tolstoy the kreutzer sonata (1889)

the reason for the unreason with which you treat reason, so weakens my reason that with reason i complain of your beauty.

miguel de cervantes don quixote de la mancha (ch.1 pt.1)

remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.

john ruskin the stones of venice

in hoc signo vinces

the confidence of the founders of sigma chi was based upon a belief that the principles which they professed and the ideal of the fraternity which they sought were but imperfectly realized in the organizations by which they were surrounded.

the standard with which the fraternity started was declared by isaac m. jordan to be that of admitting no man to membership in sigma chi who is not believed to be:

a man of good character...
a student of fair ability...
with ambitious purposes...
a congenial disposition...
possessed of good morals...
having a high sense of honor and
a deep sense of personal responsibility.

sigma chi the jordan standard

seven point creed

• be true to yourself
• make each day your masterpiece
• help others
• drink deeply from good books, especially the bible
• make friendship a fine art
• build a shelter against a rainy day
• pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings everyday
  

john wooden

charitable deceptions of nostalgia

he was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.

gabriel garciá márquez love in the time of cholera

the hazards of illicit love

...it was difficult for him to comprehend that two free adults without a past and living on the fringes of a closed society's prejudices had chosen the hazards of illicit love. she explained, "it was his wish." moreover, a clandestine life shared with a man who was never completely hers, and in which they often knew the sudden explosion of happiness, did not seem to her a condition to be despised. on the contrary: life had shown her that perhaps it was exemplary.

gabriel garcía márquez love in the time of cholera

epitaph

the Body of B. Franklin, printer
like the Cover of an old Book
its Contents torn out
and stripped of its Lettering & Gilding
lies here Food for Worms
for, it will, as he Believed, appear once more
in a New and more Elegant edition
Corrected and Improved by the Author.

benjamin franklin

mentally handicapped

women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.

-scott adams dilbert