As an egotist I hate death because I should cease to I.
~W.N.P. Barbellion

…the ignominy of being dead! What voluble talker likes his mouth to be stopped with earth, who relishes the idea of the carrion worm mining in the seat of the intellect?
~W.N.P. Barbellion

As an artist in life, I ought to die; it is the only artistic ending – and I ought to die now or the Third Act will fizzle out in a long doctors bill.
~W.N.P. Barbellion

What a delightful thing the state of Death would be if the dead passed their time haunting the places they loved in life and living over again the dear delightful past – if death were one long indulgence in the pleasures of memory! If the disembodied spirit forgot all the pains of its previous pains of its previous existence and remembered only the happiness.
~W.N.P. Barbellion

When I come to quit this world I scarcely know which will be the greater regret: the people I have never met, or the places I have never seen.
For me it would have to be the people I’d never met, they can tell you about all of the places they’ve been to. Once again a great quote on death from W.N.P. Barbellion

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the minds door at 4 am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them. Who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
~Joan Didion On Keeping A Notebook

What I discovered in Spain was a culture that held children to be its meringues and eclairs. My own culture, it seems to me in retrospect, tended to regard children as a sort of toxic waste product: a necessary evil, maybe, but if it’s not our own we don’t want to see it or, God help us, smell it.
~Barbara Kingsolver Somebody’s Baby

That test I failed twenty years ago was no predicition of my ultimate competence as a driver, anymore than my doll-care practices (I liked tying them to the back of my bike, by the hair) were predictive of my parenting skills (heavens be praised).
~Barbara Kingsolver Somebody’s Baby

It was either magic or God – I’ve forgotten what I believed in at that time.
~Larry Carlat

[Motion] Pictures are for entertainment. Messages should be delivered by Western Union.
Of all things Samuel Goldwyn said this, I’m not sure I agree but I like the quote.

Capra was now between heaven and hell. As hell has the best dialogue, the film was a great success.
I forget what movie Gore Vidal was talking about, but I agree.

To be great is to be misunderstood.
~Emerson. Sigh…so very true.

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.
~ Emerson. He knows me so well.

A man is a god in ruins.
Once again Emerson can’t stop talking about me.  okay I’ll stop.

Books are the best of things, well used, abused, among the worst.
I should just have a list of quotes that are sad but true. This one is also from Emerson.

For the past is past and will never return, the future we know not and only the present can be called our own.
~ Marie Corelli. And what am I doing? Sitting here making a web page.

Think what 60 seconds was to Matthew Shepard. It’s a short time if you’re eating an ice cream cone. It’s a long time if you’re descending into hell not knowing what fate will meet you there.
~Cal Reruch, Prosecuting attorny in Shepard murder trial.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.
I John, 3:15

East and West are at cross purposes only because the West is determined, i.e., at once resolved and economically ‘determined,’ to keep on going it knows not where, and it calls the rudderless voyage ‘Progress.’
~Ananda Coomaraswamy

To the…argument concerning the Holy Scripture which says that the sun revolves, etc., one would say that it is here conforming to the manner of common human speech, just as is done in several [other] places, e.g., where it is written that God is repentant and that he is angry and pacified and all other things which are not just as they sound. Also appropriate your question, we read that God covers the heaven with clouds:…and yet in reality the heaven covers the clouds.
~Oresme

Every fundamental innovation in a scientific specialty inevitably transforms neighboring sciences and, more slowly, the worlds of the philosopher and the educated layman.
The Copernican Revolution Ch.7, p.230

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