Poetry and Quotations Thread

[Donnadogsoth]

I ask them to take a poem 

and hold it up to the light 

like a color slide 

 

or press an ear against its hive. 

 

I say drop a mouse into a poem 

and watch him probe his way out, 

 

or walk inside the poem’s room 

and feel the walls for a light switch. 

 

I want them to waterski 

across the surface of a poem 

waving at the author’s name on the shore. 

 

But all they want to do 

is tie the poem to a chair with rope 

and torture a confession out of it. 

 

They begin beating it with a hose 

to find out what it really means. 

 

--Billy Collins, "Introduction to Poetry"

[Ninja]

I've heard truth has a power lies cannot possess.

 

That when in distress the truth is something you can count on.

 

It isn't what you feel.

 

It is

 

What is real.

 

Really,

 

its true.

 

The truth allows a person to realize they are not alone in their mind.

 

Inside you'll find that truth doesn't pertain to a thing but to its potential,

 

what remains is essential.

 

The truth doesn't need a name

 

It isn't what is known

 

but is what one comes to know.

 

It is alive

 

Continuing to grow

 

It is worth fighting for?,

 

What are YOU dying for?.

 

The truth is something one may confide,

 

without the truth humanity will cease to survive.

 

A perfect balance.

 

All that is required,

 

is that the world is admired,

 

in all its beauty,

 

in this moment

 

The truth is inspired.

 

I am not what I can say I've done

 

and I am not what you might think

 

I am

 

what I am

 

At any given moment

 

And

 

In that

 

I become distinct

 

 

Take a look around the world,

 

you will find this little girl,

 

at night she may be sleeping sound,

 

sinking deeper beneath the ground,

 

conceding in what

 

she'd once lost

 

and found

 

the truth

 

she found in everything. -Ninja

[Donnadogsoth]

THE RING OF POLYCRATES

 

by Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)

 

PON his battlements he stood,

And downward gazed in joyous mood,

On Samos' Isle, that owned his sway.

"All this is subject to my yoke;"

To Egypt's monarch thus he spoke,--

"That I am truly blest, then, say!"

 

"The immortals' favor thou hast known!

Thy sceptre's might has overthrown

All those who once were like to thee.

Yet to avenge them one lives still;

I cannot call thee blest, until

That dreaded foe has ceased to be."

 

While to these words the king gave vent,

A herald from Miletus sent,

Appeared before the tyrant there:

"Lord, let thy incense rise to-day,

And with the laurel branches gay

Thou well may'st crown thy festive hair!

 

"Thy foe has sunk beneath the spear,--

I'm sent to bear the glad news here,

By thy true marshal Polydore."

Then from a basin black he takes--

The fearful sight their terror wakes--

A well-known head besmeared with gore.

 

The king with horror stepped aside,

And then with anxious look replied:

"Thy bliss to fortune ne'er commit.

On faithless waves, bethink thee how

Thy fleet with doubtful fate swims now--

How soon the storm may scatter it!"

 

But ere he yet had spoke the word,

A shout of jubilee is heard

Resounding from the distant strand.

With foreign treasures teeming o'er,

The vessels' mast-rich wood once more

Returns home to its native land.

 

The guest then speaks with startled mind:

"Fortune to-day, in truth, seems kind;

But thou her fickleness shouldst fear:

The Cretan hordes, well skilled in arms,

Now threaten thee with war's alarms;

E'en now they are approaching here."

 

And, ere the word has 'scaped his lips,

A stir is seen amongst the ships,

And thousand voices" Victory!"cry:

We are delivered from our foe,

The storm has laid the Cretan low,

The war is ended, is gone by!"

 

The shout with horror hears the guest:

"In truth, I must esteem thee blest!

Yet dread I the decrees of heaven.

The envy of the gods I fear;

To taste of unmixed rapture here

Is never to a mortal given.

 

"With me, too, everything succeeds;

In all my sovereign acts and deeds

The grace of Heaven is ever by;

And yet I had a well-loved heir--

I paid my debt to fortune there--

God took him hence--I saw him die.

 

"Wouldst thou from sorrow, then, be free

Pray to each unseen Deity,

For thy well-being, grief to send;

The man on whom the Gods bestow

Their gifts with hands that overflow,

Comes never to a happy end.

 

"And if the Gods thy prayer resist,

Then to a friend's instruction list,--

Invoke thyself adversity;

And what, of all thy treasures bright,

Gives to thy heart the most delight--

That take and cast thou in the sea!"

 

Then speaks the other, moved by fear:

"This ring to me is far most dear

Of all this isle within it knows--

I to the furies pledge it now,

If they will happiness allow"--

And in the flood the gem he throws.

 

And with the morrow's earliest light,

Appeared before the monarch's sight

A fisherman, all joyously;

"Lord, I this fish just now have caught,

No net before e'er held the sort;

And as a gift I bring it thee."

 

The fish was opened by the cook,

Who suddenly, with wondering look,

Runs up, and utters these glad sounds:

"Within the fish's maw, behold,

I've found, great lord, thy ring of gold!

Thy fortune truly knows no bounds!"

 

The guest with terror turned away.

"I cannot here, then, longer stay,--

My friend thou canst no longer be!

The gods have willed that thou shouldst die

Lest I, too, perish, I must fly"--

He spoke,--and sailed thence hastily.

 

[This anonymous translation of "The Ring of Polycrates" was originally published in 1902.]

[Courtesy poetry-archive.com]

[Donnadogsoth]

Confucius say,

 

There are three methods that we may learn wisdom:  by reflection, which is noblest; by imitation; which is the easiest; and by experience, which is the bitterest.

[Donnadogsoth]

Confucius say,

 

It is easier to destroy than to create--except a mess.

[Rventurelli]

"Not an argument!"

- Stefan Molyneux.

[Donnadogsoth]

Confucius say,

 

Mountain say to miner:  pick on someone your own size!

[Rventurelli]

"Without music, life would be an error."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

[Donnadogsoth]

HOPE

 

by Friedrich Schiller

translated by William F. Wertz

 

All people discuss it and dream on end

Of better days that are coming,

After a golden and prosperous end

They are seen chasing and running

The world grows old and grows young in turn,

Yet doth man for betterment hope eterne.

 

’Tis hope delivers him into life,

Round the frolicsome boy doth it flutter,

The youth is lured by its magic rife,

It won’t be interred with the elder;

Though he ends in the coffin his weary lope,

Yet upon that coffin he plants—his hope.

 

It is no empty, fawning deceit,

Begot in the brain of a jester,

Proclaimed aloud in the heart it is:

We are born for that which is better!

And what the innermost voiceconveys,

The hoping spirit ne’er that betrays

[Rventurelli]

"If you know yourself and your enemy, you don't need to fear the result of a thousand battles"
- Sun Tzu.

[Donnadogsoth]

“Tenderness is not weakness, it is fortitude.”

--Pope Francis

 

“If the greatest obstacle in your life is seeing a Confederate battle flag on the background of someone's computer, you need more problems.”

--Ben Shapiro

[os.motic]

"Oh, curse of marriage

That we can call these delicate creatures ours

And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad

And live upon the vapor of a dungeon

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others' uses. "

- Othello, Act 3 Scene 3, 273-278

 

[Donnadogsoth]

“We are living at a time when G. K. Chesterton’s dictum has proven to be true. Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain, but meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. We have exhausted ourselves in this indulgent culture”

--Ravi Zacharias

[Donnadogsoth]

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater,

He sendeth more strength when the labors increase;

To added affliction, He addeth His mercy;

To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,

When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,

When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,

Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision,

Our God ever yearns His resources to share;

Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing;

The Father both thee and thy load will upbear.

His love has no limit; His grace has no measure.

His power has no boundary known unto men;

For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,

He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!

--Annie Johnson Flint

[Siegfried von Walheim]

"In every age;

In every place;

The deeds of Man;

Remains the same"

-Second Opening, Legend of the Galactic Heroes

 

"A good autocracy is superior to a good democracy; a bad democracy is superior to a bad autocracy"

 

"If the defense of our homeland and self-sacrifice are as necessary as you say, before you tell other people to 'do this and that', how about you actually do it yourselves? What is the most cowardly and shameful thing in human conduct? It is when people with power, and people who flatter them hide in safe places and extol war, force patriotism and self-sacrifice on others, then send them to the battlefield to die. For the sake of peace in the universe, before we continue this fruitless war with the Empire, must not we first start by exterminating such evil parasites?"

-Yang Wenli, Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

"People may need societies, but they do not necessarily need 'nations'."

-Yang Wenli, Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

"An army is a tool for violence, and there are two kinds of violence... Violence to control and oppress, and violence as a means of liberation. You know what we call a national army is fundamentally the former example. It is a pity, but history does not lie. When those in power confront popular opposition, there are not many examples of the army siding with the people. Far from it, in the past in country after country, the army itself evolved into a power structure and came to control the people with violence."

-Yang Wenli, Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

"Someone who cannot hate something cannot love something, either."

-Yang Wenli, Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

 

 

 

 

 

[Siegfried von Walheim]

"The world is an unfair and unjust place; we are ruled by the whims of tyrants and power-seekers. Sometimes our tyrant is a decent man seeking to protect us from other tyrants; other times he’s a lunatic hell-bent on destroying his own Kingdom. Either way, man exists in spite of the Kingdom, not because of it.”

-Ernst Drucker,

[ofd]

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

You can observe a lot by just watching.

It ain’t over till it’s over.

- Yogi Berra, philosopher and baseball player.

[Donnadogsoth]

“A society without strong beliefs,” declared Regis Debray in his interview with J.P. Enthoven in Le Nouvel Observateur, (October 10, 1981), ” is a society about to die.” Modern liberalism is particularly critical of nationalism. Hence, the question needs to be raised: Can modern liberal society provide strong unifying communal beliefs in view of the fact that on the one hand it views communal life as nonessential, while on the other, it remains impotent to envision any belief – unless this belief is reducible to economic conduct?

--Alain de Benoist and Tomislav Sunic, “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft”: A Sociological View of the Decay of Modern Society

[Ninja]

MaMuse Chico Gospel

[Ninja]

"The Preacher's Boy" by James Whitcomb Riley

THE PREACHER'S BOY   BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY I rickollect the little tad, back, years and years ago-- "The Preacher's Boy" that every one despised and hated so!  A meek-faced little feller, with white eyes and foxy hair,  And a look like he expected ser'ous trouble everywhere:  A sort o' fixed expression of suspicion in his glance;  His bare-feet always scratched with briers; and green stains on his pants;  Molasses-marks along his sleeves; his cap-rim turned behind-- And so it is "The Preacher's Boy" is brought again to mind!  My fancy even brings the sly marauder back so plain,  I see him jump our garden-fence and slip off down the lane;  And I seem to holler at him and git back the old reply:  "Oh, no: your peaches is too green fer such a worm as I!"  Fer he scorned his father's phrases--every holy one he had-- "As good a man," folks put it, "as that boy of his was bad!"  And again from their old buggy-shed, I hear the "rod unspared"-- Of course that never "spoiled the child" for which nobody cared!  If any neighber ever found his gate without a latch,  Or rines around the edges of his watermelon-patch;  His pasture-bars left open; or his pump-spout chocked with clay,  He'd swear 'twas "that infernal Preacher's Boy," right away!  When strings was stretched acrost the street at night, and some one got  An everlastin' tumble, and his nose broke, like as not,  And laid it on "The Preacher's Boy"--no powers, low ner high,  Could ever quite substantiate that boy's alibi!  And did nobody like the boy?--Well, all the pets in town  Would eat out of his fingers; and canaries would come down  And leave their swingin' perches and their fish-bone jist to pick  The little warty knuckles that the dogs would leap to lick-- No little snarlin', snappin' fiste but what would leave his bone  To foller, ef he whistled, in that tantalizin' tone  That made the goods-box whittler blasphemeusly protest  "He couldn't tell, 'twixt dog and boy, which one was ornriest!" 'Twas such a little cur as this, onc't, when the crowd was thick  Along the streets, a drunken corner-loafer tried to kick,  When a sudden foot behind him tripped him up, and falling so  He "marked his man," and jerked his gun--drawed up and let 'er go!  And the crowd swarmed round the victim--holding close against his breast  The little dog unharmed, in arms that still, as they caressed,  Grew rigid in their last embrace, as with a smile of joy  He recognized the dog was saved. So died "The Preacher's Boy"!  When it appeared, before the Squire, that fatal pistolball  Was fired at "a dangerous beast," and not the boy at all,  And the facts set forth established,--it was like-befittin' then  To order out a possy of the "city councilmen"  To kill the dog! But, strange to tell, they searched the country round,  And never hide-ner-hair of that "said" dog was ever found!  And, somehow, then I sorto' thought--and half-way think, to-day-- The spirit of "The Preacher's Boy" had whistled him away.

 

 

https://www.accuracyproject.org/t-Riley,JamesWhitcomb-ThePreachersBoy.html

[barn]

|clarity, reality, marriage|

fdr podcast 3885 - at around minute 175

"Feelings won't sustain the relationship. [...]If feelings sustained the relationship, everyone would stay married. Because everyone is pretty much happy on their..."

 

'tis true! Thanks for verbalising it Stefan.

[Siegfried von Walheim]

History is made in wisdom; repeated in ignorance.

[Ninja]

A poetic depiction of my father

[Donnadogsoth]

"Cultures that do not progress, die, because they cease to be human."
--Jason Ross

[Donnadogsoth]

"Our continent is wracked by guilt, tiredness, existential exhaustion, a whole range of things that means we're very vulnerable to anyone who says it's all our fault."
--Douglas Murray

[barn]

"You can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly."

- Elon Musk -

[barn]

Many thanks to Stefan Molyneux for bringing it up, I had been waiting for hearing him mention it.

-               -               -               -               -              

Do not go gentle into that good night
/Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953/

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-               -               -               -               -              

[barn]

Hi thinkers and alike,

I was wondering if there was a similar poem, such as the "Rifleman's Creed" just geared towards philosophy, truth, more.

Something, like:

"

This is my _principle_. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

    My  _principle_ is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

    Without me, my  _principle_ is useless. Without my  _principle_, I am useless. I must _apply_ my  _principle_ true. I must _aim_ straighter than my enemy who is trying to _deceive_ me. I must [...] ..."

p.s. (Happy b. day R. Lee Ermey, his biography is quite a read.)

[barn]

Tee-Heee!!!

'[...]To go to your college professor and ask how the real world works is ridiculous.

I mean... You really,.. you understand... It's like asking an Anglerfish how to get a good suntan?
They are NOT in the freemarket!...[...]'

- Stefan Molyneux -

ref.s:

podcast (Question 1)

Anglerfish

[J.L.W]

I'd like to have taken down some more Stefan quotes. I don't have many and remember transcribing a long section about the 'makers' and the 'takers' but that is a very long section. The Truth about Comey at 55 min:

Anyway:

Quote

Even if you can’t prevent people from getting lost you can shoot up a hell of a flare to help them find themselves again.

Stefan Molyneux. 33 min. The Rise and Fall and Survival of Western Civilisation.

Quote

Man is free to make the wrong choice but not free to succeed with it…free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.
– Ayn Rand

Stefan and Faith Goldy:

Quote

20:35: The Alt right is rising, and if you do not see that, you are asleep at the wheel. The difference between one demonstration, to the other, to the other, you’d be an idiot if you don’t see their numbers. You’d be an idiot if you do not see that the philosophical consistency that is being espoused not just from their spearheads but from many of the [inaudible] so to speak. It’s becoming a more organised and much more serious force, and I think that we will be looking at in the next couple of years basically it being formalised in a more official political way where we’ll see candidates running under these sorts of ideals, ambitions…

Quote

“Someday I will have revenge. I know in advance to keep this to myself, and everyone will be happier. I do understand that I am expected to forgive N and his girlfriend in a timely fashion, and move on to a life of vegetarian cooking and difficult yoga positions and self-realization, and make this so much easier and more pleasant for all concerned.”
― Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce

 

Quote

 

They say vanity got the best of him... But he sure left here in style. -Bob Dylan. Sweetheart like you.

 

 

Quote

And I heard that he froze, when the wind took your clothes, and I guess he just never got warm. And you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice. So please let me enter your storm. - Leonard Cohen. One of us cannot be wrong.

 

Quote

Had I the heavens embroidered cloths...

 

[barn]

" I have dreamed a dream and now that dream is gone from me. "

Daniel 2 (objectivity oriented)

Daniel 2 (source oriented)

(read it, worth it)

[barn]

 

"

Lets suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream,
and you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes.

You would have every kind of pleasure, you see,
and after several nights you would say, “well that was pretty great.”
But now lets have a surprise, lets have a dream which isn’t under control.
Well something is going to happen to me that i don’t know what it’s gonna be.
Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream, and finally you would dream where you are now.

"

Edited September 14, 2018 by barn
meaning for me: life's more adventurous than any dream could ever be;there's a greater unknown 'out there' than 'in-there'.

[barn]

"

Cooper: Brand. My daughter is ten years old. Couldn’t teach her Einstein’s theories before I left.

Brand: Couldn’t you have told her you were going to save the world?

Cooper: No. When you become a parent, one thing becomes really clear. And that is that you want to make sure your children feel safe. And it rules out telling a ten year old that the world’s endin’.

CASE: Cooper.
[Cooper looks out the window to see another massive wave approaching]

"

 

Perhaps this way of thinking wasn't appropriate in the times we live in. I'm having second thoughts...