I collect quotations, and keep them here for my own amusement. Here they are:
- “The positive method confirmed by the rational method enables us to establish an ideal type of Anarchist, whose mentality is the aggregate of common psychic characteristics. Every Anarchist partakes sufficiently of this ideal type to make it possible to differentiate [them] from other [people]. The typical anarchist, then, may be defined as follows: A [person] perceptible by the spirit of revolt under one or more of its forms, - endowed with a strong love of liberty, egoistic or individualistic, and possessed of great curiosity, a keen desire to know. These traits are supplemented by an ardent love of others, a highly developed moral sensitiveness, a profound sentiment of justice, and imbued with missionary zeal.”
-- Augustin Frédéric Hamon (Une Psychologie du Militaire Professionnel) - “One is happy as a result of one's own effort, once he knows the ingredients of happiness - simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscious. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.”
-- George Sand (Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand) - “The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more that the rest of us, and is this more disturbed that the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime, he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
-- H.L. Mencken - “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”
-- Susan B. Anthony - “The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. As Huck put it, lighting out for the territories.”
-- Paul Theroux (Dark Star Safari) - “The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.”
-- Aleister Crowley - “I\'m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can\'t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don\'t deserve me at my best.”
-- Marilyn Monroe - “You\'ve got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore
and you\'re not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.”
-- Steven D. Woodhull - “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don\'t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
-- Anaïs Nin - “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
-- C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves) - “As your lover describes you, so you are.”
-- Jeanette Winterson - “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn\'t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn\'t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn\'t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like \'maybe we should be just friends\' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It\'s a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
-- Neil Gaiman (The Kindly Ones)