January 23, 2005
Important Words
This is a collection a of excerpts from books, people, records, poems, and so on, that I've gathered (and continue to gather) in my head through the years, that for one reason or another mean something to me. Maybe at some time I'll delve into these meanings, but for now I'm content just to record them so that I don't forget any.
Some people wield quotes as though they are some kind of absolute truth. I don't bend to that temptation as I avoid subscribing to any absolute. Though there are many, many quotes I like and think hold some amount of truth, the ones I'll put here are those that strike a very strong chord with my personality and outlook on life.
Here we go...
Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum. - St. Paul, I Corinthians 13:12
To my way of thinking there is nothing more delightful than to be a stranger. And so I mingle with human beings because they are not of my kind, and precisely in order to be a stranger amongst them. - Unknown, The Arabian Nights
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhuastible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even coneive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. - Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate.
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
J. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of The Rings
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. - Carl Sagan
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. - Carl Sagan
With the basest of companions, I walked the streets of Babylon... - Augustine, Confessions II, 3
But I want something good to die for
To make it beautiful to live - Josh Homme, Songs for The Deaf