Nathan Jerpe > Nathan's Quotes

“Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?”
― Edgar Allen Poe

“He would give every penny he has (such is the malignity of the germ) to write one little book and become famous; yet all the gold in Peru will not buy him the treasure of a well-turned line.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Bow down, I am the emperor of dreams.”
― Clark Ashton Smith, The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith

“But 'why then publish?' There are no rewards
Of fame or profit when the world grows weary.
I ask in turn why do you play at cards?
Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary.
It occupies me to turn back regards
On what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery,
And what I write I cast upon the stream
To swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.”
― Lord Byron, Don Juan

“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.”
― Frank Zappa

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
― William Shakespeare , Julius Caesar

“Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.”
― John Keats

“I prayed aloud, less to plead for divine favor than to intimidate the tribe with articulate speech.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain

“They're in love. Fuck the war.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

“As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“Their laughter rose to the ceiling and shook hands there.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big

“I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by Mexicans.”
― Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach

“...and also celebrate the Skill of the Scythians in that Art, who sent once to Darius King of Persia an Embassador that made him a present of a Bird, a Frog, a Mouse, and five Arrows, without speaking one word; and being ask'd what those Presents meant, and if he had Commission to say any thing, answer'd that he had not; Which puzzl'd and gravell'd Darius very much; till Gobrias, one of the seven Captains that had kil'd the Magi explain'd it, saying to Darius, By these Gifts and Offerings the Scythians silently tell you, that except the Persians like Birds fly up to Heaven, like Mice hide themselves near the Centre of the Earth, or like Frogs dive to the very bottom of Ponds and Lakes, they shall be destroyed by the Power and Arrows of the Scythians.”
― François Rabelais

“You know, the Chinese have forgotten more about sailing than the rest of the world ever knew.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“It turns out to be the new Planet, which, a decade and a half later, will be known first as the Georgian, and then as Herschel, after its official Discoverer, and more lately as Uranus.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

“This was the very limit beyond which none of them had ever speculated, or even known that there was any speculation to be done.”
― Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything

“Dirac found that the ratio of the electric force to the gravitational force of an electron-proton pair is roughly equal to the ratio of the age of the universe to the time it takes light to traverse an atom.”
― Michael Flynn, Eifelheim

“Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“The Iliad is only great because all life is a battle, The Odyssey because all life is a journey, The Book of Job because all life is a riddle.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“...so claim'd are the Surveyors in their contra-solar Return by Might-it-bes, and If-it-weres, - not to mention What-was-thats.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“I am alone in possessing a key to this barbarous sideshow.”
― Rimbaud

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Only a hundred years ago the idea that an order might arise without a personal Author appeared so nonsensical to you that it inspired seemingly absurd jokes, like the one about the pack of monkeys hammering away at typewriters until the Encyclopedia Britannica emerged. I recommend that you devote some of your free time to compiling an anthology of just such jokes, which amused your forebears as pure nonsense but now turn out to be parables of Nature.”
― Stanisław Lem, Imaginary Magnitude

“The mentally disturbed do not employ the Principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.”
― John Barth

“If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
"No", said the priest, "not if you did not know."
"Then why," asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek