ONE NAKED FARMER (1NF): fictional biographies

Showing posts with label fictional biographies. Show all posts

Showing posts with label fictional biographies. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

THOMAS MANN
Doctor Faustus

"With a people like ours,” I said, “the psychological is always the primary and really motivating factor; political action is of the second order, reflex, expression, instrument."

Monday, September 23, 2024

THOMAS MANN
Doctor Faustus

It is only annoying - if you don't want to call it pleasant - that in music - at least in music - there are things for which, even with the best will in the world, no truly characterizing adjective, or combination of adjectives, can be found in the whole realm of language. I have been struggling with this for a few days - you cannot find an adequate term for the spirit, the attitude, the gesture of this theme. Because there is a lot of gesture in it. Tragically bold? Defiant, emphatic, the spirit driven to the sublime? All of this is not good. And 'splendid'! Of course, that is just a silly capitulation. In the end you end up with the factual prescription, the name: Allegro appassionato, that is the best.

Sunday, September 22, 2024

THOMAS MANN
Doctor Faustus

It seems to me, however, that despite the logical, moral rigor music may appear to display, it belongs to a world of spirits, for whose absolute reliability in matters of human reason and dignity I would not exactly want to put my hand in the fire. That I am nevertheless devoted to it with all my heart is one of those contradictions which, whether a cause for joy or regret, are inseparable from human nature.

Saturday, September 21, 2024

THOMAS MANN
Doctor Faustus

Nature in her creative dreaming, dreamt the same thing both here and there, and if one spoke of imitation, then certainly it had to be reciprocal. Should one take the children of the soil as models because they possessed the depth of organic reality, whereas the ice flowers were mere external phenomena? But as phenomena, they were the result of an interplay of matter no less complex than that found in plants.

If I understood our friendly host correctly, what concerned him was the unity of animate and so-called inanimate nature, the idea that we sin against the latter if the boundary we draw between the two spheres is too rigid, when in reality it is porous, since there is no elementary capability that is reserved exclusively for living creatures or that the biologist could not likewise study on inanimate models.

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SOME QUOTES

MARGARET ATWOOD

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

DOROTHY ALLISON

If it’s true, I have the absolute right to terrify you with it.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hate in the world is religion and organized religion. Absolutely convinced of that. And I think it should be - religion - treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt.

So when I say that I think religion poisons everything, I’m not just doing what publishers like and coming up with a provocative subtitle. I mean to say it infects us in our most basic integrity.

It says we can’t be moral without “Big Brother,” without a totalitarian permission. It means we can’t be good to one another without this. It means we must be afraid.

We must also be forced to love someone whom we fear - the essence of sado-masochism, the essence of abjection, the essence of the Master/Slave relationship. And that it knows death is coming, and can’t wait to bring it on.

I say that is Evil.

And though I do, some nights, stay home, I enjoy more the nights when I go out and fight against this ultimate wickedness and this ultimate stupidity.

JACK LONDON

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time living.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

STEPHEN BATCHELOR

It has taken four billion years of evolution to generate this kind of organism with this kind of brain, and yet we wake up in the morning and feel bored. How extraordinary it is to be here at all!

DOROTHY PARKER

Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

There’s no right answer to the wrong question. Now what do we do?

CARL SAGAN

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues.

When the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites - now down to 10 seconds or less - lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

MARGARET MEAD

It seems to me very important to continue to distinguish between two evils. It may be necessary temporarily to accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good.