Nonsense Friendship Quotes

Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.

If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.

The knives of betrayal and drama cut deep and hurt… but they also trim away the nonsense and reveal your true friends.

What's strange about the whole thing is that although it's riddled with nonsense, altogether it's true - Julie's told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. We even had the same dream at the same time. How could we have had the same dream at the same time? How can something so wonderful and mysterious be true? But it is. And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb - alive, alive, ALIVE.

My friends tried to ignore my quirks since they didn't have a clue what to do about them. It didn't seem hard on them though. They were already trained to ignore their parents' alcohol abuse, constant bickering, serial marriages, and nonsensical advice.

I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

...in his heart of hearts he could almost wish that, when he was grown up, his life should consist of nothing but nonsense: just music, love, literature, carefree friendship, a life brimming with glorious, intoxicating Olympian nonsense.

I am your boat! I am your crew Your rudder and your mast - Your friend, I am your limpet too And your elastoplast. - Tintinnabulum

You were spying on me?" I repeated, this time my tone was stern. "Nonsense! I was making sure you were safe." He answered, fluttering his wings and landing in front of me. "That's what friends do.

The usual consolations of life, friendship and sex included, appealed to Newton hardly at all. Art, literature, and music had scarcely more allure. He dismissed the classical sculptures in the Earl of Pembroke's renowned collection as "stone dolls." He waved poetry aside as "a kind of ingenious nonsense." He rejected opera after a single encounter. "The first Act I heard with pleasure, the 2d stretch'd my patience, at the 3d I ran away.

If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

What’s strange about the whole thing is that although it’s riddled with nonsense, altogether it’s true – Julie’s told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie’s written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I’m reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She’s right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can’t be landed, stuck in the climb – alive, alive, ALIVE.

I hate the phrase 'more than friends'," Joni told me one night not long ago. "It's such nonsense. When I'm going out with someone, we're not 'more than friends' - most of the time, we're not even friends. 'More than friends' makes no sense. Look at us. There's nothing more than us.

Upon my word, I most heartily despise that sex! I wish they would let our fathers and mothers alone; teasing them to tease us with their golden promises, and protestations, and settlements, and the rest of their ostentatious nonsense. How charmingly might you and I live together and despite them all!- But to be cajoled, wire-drawn, and ensnared, like silly birds, into a state of bondage or vile subordination: to be courted as princesses for a few weeks, in order to be treated as slaves for the rest of our lives

My conduct with my friends is motivated: each being is, I believe, incapable on his own, of going to the end of being. If he tries, he is submerged within a "private being" which has meaning only for himself. Now there is no meaning for a lone individual: bing alone would of itself reject the "private being" if it saw it as such (if I wish my life to have meaning for me, it is necessary that it have meaning for others: no one would dare give to life a meaning which he alone would perceive, from which life in its entirety would escape, except within himself). At the extreme limit of the "possible", it is true, there is nonsense . . . but only of that which had a prior sense: this is fulguration, even "apotheosis" of nonsense. But I don't attain the extreme limit on my own and, in actual fact, I can't believe the extreme limit attained, for I never remain there. If I had to be the only one having attained it (assuming that I had . . .), it would be as thought it had not occurred. For if there subsisted a satisfaction, as small as I can imagine it to be, it would distance me as much from the extreme limit. I cannot for a moment cease to incite myself to attain the extreme limit, and cannot make a distinction between myself and those with whom I desire to communicate. ~George Bataille, "Inner Experience" pg. 42

Have you ever considered what a friendship is, or what any of your current friendships are, and thought about how to present that to a prospective new friend...How do you convince a stranger to give you their real e-mail when you are definitely going to litter their gmail dot come with dumb nonsense.

I didn’t “grow” wise, spiritual, or happy.. I shrunk towards it. I didn’t add; I subtracted… There is wisdom in simplification… There is strength in recognizing that life is too short for nonsense… You find yourself spending time with people who make you laugh… Those who make you feel loved.. Simplify your life.. .that’s where happiness is found.

2 NOTES “You broke your other appointment, didn’t you?” “I did not! I told you on the phone—these people canceled at the last minute—” “Oh, Geo dear, come off it! You know, I sometimes think, about you, whenever you do something really sweet, you’re ashamed of it afterwords! You knew jolly well how badly I needed you tonight, so you broke that appointment. I could tell you were fibbing, the minute you opened your mouth! You and I can’t pull the wool over each other’s eyes. I found that out, long ago. Haven’t you—after all these years?” “I certainly should have,” he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally accepted bit of nonsense it is that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you.

[quoting British philosopher Edward Carpenter] I used to go and sit on the beach at Brighton and dream, and now I sit on the shore of human life and dream practically the same dreams. I remember about that time that I mention - or it may have been a trifle later - coming to the distinct conclusion that there were only two things really worth living for - the glory and beauty of Nature, and the glory and beauty of human love and friendship. And to-day I still feel the same. What else indeed is there? All the nonsense about riches, fame, distinction, ease, luxury and so forth - how little does it amount to! These things are so obviously second-hand affairs, useful only and in so far as they may lead to the first two, and short of their doing that liable to become odious and harmful. To become united and in line with the beauty and vitality of Nature (but, Lord help us! we are far enough off from that at present), and to become united with those we love - what other ultimate object in life is there? Surely all these other things, these games and examinations, these churches and chapels, these district councils and money markets, these top-hats and telephones and even the general necessity of earning one's living - if they are not ultimately for that, what are they for?

You make the choice concerning who you associate with on a daily basis. Whenever there are people around you who continually gossip or nag, you have the option to entertain that nonsense or leave it alone. The choice is yours. Most of the time people you hang around are a reflection of yourself. We often times attract people with like-minded personalities. So, if you enjoy that type of company it says much about your character.

What are you going to do? After we graduate. I don't know. Work in a university if I can. This phrase, 'if I can,' made it clear that Bobbi was trying to tell me something serious, something that couldn't be communicated in words but instead through a shift in the way we related to each other. Not only was it nonsense for Bobbi to say 'if I can' at the end of her sentence, because she came from a wealthy family, read diligently, and had good grades, but it didn't make sense in the context of our relationship either. Bobbi didn't relate to me in the 'if I can' sense. She related to me as a person, maybe the only person, who understood her ferocious and frightening power over circumstances and people. What she wanted, she could have, I knew that.

Oh, I must tell you, so interesting. You know that Birds man, who said he had written a Birds book too, and was cross, and I was afraid there would be another Main case? Well, this man, Mr Frank Baker, wrote me a nice letter and sent me his Birds to read, saying he had read mine in Penguin’s, and thought it very good. So I began his, rather smiling derisively, thinking it would be nonsense, and it’s frightfully good! Much more psychological politics than mine, and going into great Deep Thoughts, I was quite absorbed! His birds were not ordinary birds like mine, but great strange things from outer space (and this was written in 1936), and they turned out to be the souls of all the people in the world, who had somehow pushed them out of their inner selves; and so the wretched souls, turned into birds, were furious and sought revenge.

Alex has been trying to communicate with me in our dreams. She covered our childhood home in letters asking me to kill her! She thinks the only way we can save the Otherworld is by taking her life!" "That's terrible!" Red said. "Just because someone is dangerous doesn't mean they have to be killed to be stopped. Think about the Evil Queen - oh wait, I suppose that mirror thing was worse than death. . . . Well, think about the Enchantress - oh yeah, never mind. . . . But General Marquis -oops, he really died. . . . Well, the Masked Man didn't - oh, that's right, he did. . . . Sorry, I thought there were plenty of examples. You know, maybe Alex had a point -" "We're not killing my sister," Conner said. "I refuse to believe there isn't a way to break the curse she's under! Alex's emotions are being affected right now and she's jumping to conclusions. We'll find a way to help her." "Yes, we will," Goldilocks said confidently. "I know exactly what's going through Alex's mind right now. It wasn't long ago that I was in her shoes. She's feeling scared, embarrassed, and guilty, and she thinks there's no coming back from the place she's at. But luckily for her, she's got us to set her straight." "Oh, it's Goldilocks!" Red declared with a snap of her fingers. "She's the example I was looking for! Goldie was a lonely, miserable, and ill-tempered thief when we first met. But thanks to my friendship, she's turned her life around and become a social, happy, and balanced woman." Goldilocks sighed. "What can I say? I owe it all to you, Red." "You're quite welcome," Red said. "What I did for Goldilocks is exactly what we need to do for Alex. If she insists on being killed, then we'll just have to love her to death." Conner and his friends nodded politely and gazed outside the cage, hoping Red wouldn't come up with any more nonsensical anecdotes.

There are a few consolations. First and foremost, a ravaged incensed defiance, a fuck you to the universe and all those who peddle sentimental nonsense that doesn’t fit our reality. A certain kind of art works too, the sort created by unflinching genius realists who went through as much loneliness as we have, who understood our sadness ahead of time, grief-stricken masters like Baudelaire and Leopardi, Pessoa and Pascal, who can express our petty domestic sorrow in mighty transcendental terms and induct us to the most dignified kind of regret. They were there too and, in the most abstract accomplished ways, tell us ‘I know’. And we have friendship, not the kind that obliterates the loneliness, but that allows us to commune around it. We can’t help each other directly, we’re more like a group of the dying in a hospice talking circle who won’t be able to eradicate the end but know they are at least not alone with it. We get better too at understanding statistics: that this is normal for a benighted group of us. We belong to an important minority party in the parliament of human suffering.

Sometime soon, my cruelty would go too far, and now that her mother was dead, Reva’s head would start to clear of its superficial nonsense. She’d probably go back into therapy. She’d realize that we had no good reason to be friends, and that she would never get what she needed from me. She’d send me a long letter explaining her resentments, her mistakes, explaining how she had to let me go in order to move on with her life. I could already imagine her phrasing. “I’ve come to realize that our friendship is no longer serving me”-that was language her therapist would have taught her-“which is not a criticism of you.” But of course it was about me: I was the friend in the friendship she was describing….”I got your note,” I would begin. “You have confirmed what I’ve known about you since college.” I tried to think of the worst thing I could say about a person. What was the cruelest, most cutting, truest thing? Was it worth saying? Reva was harmless. She wasn’t a bad person. She’d done nothing to hurt me. I was the one sitting there full of disgust, wearing her dead mother’s shoes. “Good-bye.

Sometime soon, my cruelty would go too far, and now that her mother was dead, Reva’s head would start to clear of its superficial nonsense. She’d probably go back into therapy. She’d realize that we had no good reason to be friends, and that she would never get what she needed from me. She’d send me a long letter explaining her resentments, her mistakes, explaining how she had to let me go in order to move on with her life. I could already imagine her phrasing. “I’ve come to realize that our friendship is no longer serving me”-that was language her therapist would have taught her-“which is not a criticism of you.” But of course it was about me: I was the friend in the friendship she was describing….”I got your note,” I would begin. “You have confirmed what I’ve known about you since college.” I tried to think of the worst thing I could say about a person. What was the cruelest, most cutting, truest thing? Was it worth saying? Reva was harmless. She wasn’t a bad person. She’d done nothing to hurt me. I was the one sitting there full of disgust, wearing her dead mother’s shoes. “Good-bye.

In the course of my discussion with Ravenswood, I tried to get him to tell me how you got your scar, but he wouldn’t. He said I’d have to ask you.” Jane’s words came suddenly into his head: That’s why you haven’t shared this with your own family? That’s why you keep all of us out? Because you think it was your fault? Oh, my sweet darling, none of it was your fault. When Dom didn’t answer right away, Tristan went on, “I told Ravenswood you’d always brushed off the question with some nonsense about a fight you got into. But that isn’t true, I assume.” Dom ventured a glance at his brother and winced to see the hurt on his face. Jane had said, Every time you refuse to reveal your secrets, Dom, I assume that you find me unworthy to hear them. Apparently, that was how he’d made all of them feel. As if he were somehow too important to let them into his life. Only God could have stopped this disaster, and contrary to what you think, you aren’t God. When she’d said it, he hadn’t understood why she would accuse him of such a thing. Why she sometimes called him “Dom the Almighty.” But he understood now. By shielding his guilt from the world, he’d shut himself off from his family. From her. He’d pushed away the very people he should have embraced. Having just watched Jane retreat into fear and shut him out, he now knew precisely how painful it could feel to be on the receiving end. If he wanted to change all that, he would have to start opening his heart, letting his family--and her--see the things he was most ashamed of, most worried about. He would have to trust them to understand, to empathize, to love him in spite of everything. The only other choice was to keep closing himself up until, as she’d said at that ball last year: One day that church you’re building around yourself shall become your crypt. He didn’t want that. He took a steadying breath as he and Tristan walked up the steps to Ravenswood’s manor house. “As it happens, I did receive my scar in a fight. But it was a fight against the militia at the Peterloo Massacre.” When Tristan shot him a startled look, Dom halted at the top of the steps to face him. “If you want to hear the story, I’ll tell you all about it. Right now, if you wish.” Tristan searched his face, as if not quite sure he believed what he was hearing. “I’d like that very much.” Then he broke into a grin. “But only if we do it over a glass of Ravenswood’s brandy. That’s the best damned brandy I’ve ever tasted.” “One of the privileges of being a spymaster is that you can get your hands on the good stuff,” Dom said lightly, though his stomach churned at the thought of revealing his most humiliating secret, even to his brother. Still, as they headed inside, Tristan clapped him on the shoulder, and that reassured him. Telling Tristan about Peterloo represented a beginning of sorts, toward a closer friendship than Dom had allowed himself to have with his brother in recent years. Jane would be proud.

Cooper, a host of works by American nature writers, and I’ve never in reading a single one of those pages felt one tenth of the emotion that fills me before these shores. And yet I’ll keep on reading, and writing. Two or three times an hour, a sharp crack breaks up my thoughts. The lake is shattering along a fault line. Like surf, birdsong, or the roar of waterfalls, the crumpling of an ice mass won’t keep us awake. A motor running, or someone snoring, or water dripping off a roof, on the other hand, is unbearable. I can’t help thinking of the dead. The thousands of Russians swallowed up by the lake.5 Do the souls of the drowned struggle to the surface? Can they get past the ice? Do they find the hole that opens up to the sky? Now there’s a touchy subject to raise with Christian fundamentalists. It took me five hours to reach Elohin. Volodya welcomed me with a hug and a “Hello, neighbor.” Now there are seven or eight of us around the wooden table dunking cookies in our tea: some fishermen passing through, myself, and our hosts. We talk about our lives and I’m exhausted already. Intoxicated by the potluck company, the fishermen argue, constantly correcting one another with grand gestures of disgust and jumping down one another’s throats. Cabins are prisons. Friendship doesn’t survive anything, not even togetherness. Outside the window, the wind keeps up its nonsense. Clouds of snow rush by with the regularity of phantom trains. I think about the titmouse. I miss it already. It’s crazy how quickly one becomes attached to creatures. I’m seized with pity for these struggling things. The titmice stay in the forest in the icy cold; they’re not snobs like swallows, which spend the winter in Egypt. After twenty minutes, we fall silent, and Volodya looks outside. He spends hours sitting in front of the window pane, his face half in shadow, half bathed in the light off the lake. The light gives him the craggy features of some heroic foot soldier. Time wields over skin the power water has over the earth. It digs deep as it passes. Evening, supper. A heated conversation with one of the fishermen, in which I learn that Jews run the world (but in France it’s the Arabs); Stalin, now there was a real leader; the Russians are invincible (that pipsqueak Hitler bit off more than he could chew); communism is a top-notch system; the Haitian earthquake was triggered by the shockwave from an American bomb; September 11 was a Yankee plot; gulag historians are unpatriotic; and the French are homosexuals. I think I’m going to space out my visits. FEBRUARY 26 Volodya and Irina live like tightrope walkers. They have no contact with the inhabitants on the other side of Baikal. No one crosses the lake. The opposite shore is another world, the one where the sun rises. Fishermen and inspectors living north or south of this station sometimes visit my hosts, who rarely venture into the mountains of their

Once she and Edwin were alone, she shifted away from his curiously possessive hand. This would be hard. What could she say? How could she break it to him gently? Then Edwin glanced at her with the accusing gray eyes that made her feel like a schoolgirl being taken to task by her papa, and she squirmed guiltily. “I take it that you are not really heading to the duke and duchess’s town house from here,” he said coolly. Sweet Lord, but he was astute. “No.” “And I suppose that means that you and Rathmoor have renewed your…er…friendship.” Blunt, too. Not that she was surprised. Edwin had always been blunt. But he’d never taken that hard tone with her, and it rankled a bit. “Yes.” She tipped up her chin. “I’m afraid we have.” Edwin strolled over to the fireplace and stood with his back to her, rigid as the pokers next to him. “You and I had a deal.” A long sigh escaped her. “I realize that. And I feel bad about reneging on it. I was looking forward to helping Yvette in society. She deserves a good marriage.” She squared her shoulders. “But I think I deserve one, too. With a man who wants me to be more than just a companion to his sister.” He muttered something under his breath. “I did intend our marriage to be a real one, you know.” That was a shock. Edwin had always been cynical about the institution. “Surely you’re not serious.” She wished he would look at her again so she could better guess what he was thinking. “Don’t tell me you’re going to give me some nonsense about how you’ve fallen in love with me.” “No.” As if realizing how sharply he’d answered, he shot her a rueful glance. “I suppose I could eventually come to love you. I’d at least make the attempt.” Poor man. “There’s no attempting with love. You either love someone or you don’t. Trust me on that.” He searched her face. “Are you in love with Rathmoor, then?” “Yes.” The answer came without her even thinking about it. Because she was. She probably always had been. She’d told Dom that he’d killed her love for him, but the truth was, it was unkillable. Though she’d thought to root him out of her heart, he’d merely lain dormant in the wintry ground, waiting until spring when he could grow over her heart like the pernicious honeysuckle in Uncle’s arbor. She should have told Dom last night how she felt, but she’d been too afraid that loving him might mean forgiving him for what he’d done. And she hadn’t been quite ready for that. She wasn’t sure she was now, either. All she knew was she loved him. Whether she could live with him was another matter entirely.

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing 한국최고의 약국센터 깔끔한 거래와 고객님들의 신상정보를 안전하게 지켜드릴수있는 신용과신뢰의 약국이 되겠습니다 원하신다면 저희가 후불제로 드릴만큼 제품의 품질 효과를 담보해드릴수있습니다 There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills 카톡【ACD5】 텔레【KKD55】 여성최음제,여성흥분제,남성발기제,남성조루방지제,수면제 등많은 제품판매하고있습니다 원하시는제품있으시면 문의주세요 원하시는제품보다 더좋은제품으로 모셔드리겠습니다 Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense

In a job interview with McKinsey, they told him that he was not certain enough in his opinions. “And I said it was because I wasn’t certain. And they said, ‘We’re billing clients five hundred grand a year, so you have to be sure of what you are saying.’” The consulting firm that eventually hired him was forever asking him to exhibit confidence when, in his view, confidence was a sign of fraudulence. They’d asked him to forecast the price of oil for clients, for instance. “And then we would go to our clients and tell them we could predict the price of oil. No one can predict the price of oil. It was basically nonsense.

Friendship: When you can talk nonsense and have that nonsense respected.

Okay. Maybe each of us really needs a no-nonsense Builder to keep our finances in order, map our vacations, and make sure the cats have their latest battery of rabies shots. Perhaps that would make sense. But is that what our hearts secretly ache for? As Fisher starts out, her evidence is mostly anecdotal. She describes a classic match. Picture a hard-driving man, a fabulously successful business executive. He bangs heads, slashes the payroll, drives would-be challengers into oblivion. This guy gets things done. He's a Director. And chances are, FIsher says, he has a smooth-talking, problem solving wife, who quietly patches together all the friendships he shatters. She's a Negotiator. Those two types, Fisher says, "are very symbiotic. They will gravitate toward each other.

At dawn, King Lír rose up and saddled his horse. Before he mounted, he said to Schmendrick and Molly, “I would like it if you came to see me one day.” They assured him that they would, but still he lingered with them, twisting the dangling reins about his fingers. “I dreamed about her last night!” he said. Molly cried, “So did I!” and Schmendrick opened his mouth, and then closed it again. King Lír said hoarsely, “By our friendship, I beg you—tell me what she said to you.” His hands gripped one hand of each of theirs, and his clutch was cold and painful. Schmendrick gave him a weak smile. “My lord, I so rarely remember my dreams. It seems to me that we spoke solemnly of silly things, as one does—grave nonsense, empty and evanescent—” The king let go of his hand and turned his half-mad gaze on Molly Grue. “I’ll never tell,” she said, a little frightened, but flushing oddly. “I remember, but I’ll never tell anyone, if I die for it—not even you, my lord.” She was not looking at him as she spoke, but at Schmendrick. King Lír let her hand fall as well, and he swung himself into the saddle so fiercely that his horse reared up across the sunrise, bugling like a stag. But Lír kept his seat and glared down at Molly and Schmendrick with a face so grim and scored and sunken that he might well have been king as long as Haggard before him. “She said nothing to me,” he whispered. “Do you understand? She said nothing to me, nothing at all.” Then his face softened, as even King Haggard’s face had gone a little gentle when he watched the unicorns in the sea. For that moment he was again the young prince who had liked to sit with Molly in the scullery. He said, “She looked at me. In my dream, she looked at me and never spoke.” He rode away without good-bye, and they watched after him until the hills hid him: a straight, sad horseman, going home to be king.

Amantes Assemble Sonnet 56 Don't look for someone you can talk sense with, Find someone with whom you can talk nonsense. Call it friendship, call it love, call it whatever, Role of a companion isn't sensibility but acceptance. That's why I walk around in shabby clothes, That’s how I get to know about people's true nature. Everybody likes to butter up those in suits, Those who smile at the people with nothing, are the ones with real substance of character. If you wanna find out who your enemies are, Walk fancy and wait for the butter to pour in. If you wanna find out the humans amongst the leeches, Walk like a vagabond with your shirt not tucked in. Be cautious of those who applaud your accomplishment. And never lose those who walk by you in hopelessness.

A delicate trace of a smile appeared on Passer’s face. Jan knew that smile well. it was not a joyous or an approving smile, but a smile of tolerance. They had always been far apart in their views, and in the rare moments when their differences became too visible, they would smile that smile to assure each other that their friendship was not in danger. 295 When things are repeated, they lose a fraction of their meaning. Or more exactly, they lose, drop by drop, the vital strength that gives them their illusory meaning. 295-6 It takes so little, a tiny puff of air, for things to shift imperceptibly, and whatever it was that a man was ready to lay down his life for a few seconds earlier seems suddenly to be sheer nonsense. 297 Whenever her mother-in-law had wanted something from them, she would weep. Weeping was her way of blaming them, and there was nothing more aggressive than her tears. 114 I calculate that two or three new fictional characters are baptized here on earth every second. 109 We shall flee rest, we shall flee sleep, We shall outrun dawn and spring And we shall shape days and seasons To the measure of our dreams. 94 All mysticism is excessive. The mystic must not be afraid of ridicule if he wants to go to the limits, the limits of humility or the limits of sensual pleasure. 80

Only school friends know the real truth of all those nonsensical talks and keep them sequestered. Times like these never come back and memories never leave.

Lucien held his demitasse of espresso aloft and toasted his friend, who cringed at the sound of the cups clicking. “But I like brothels. My friends are there.” “They aren’t your friends.” “Yes they are, they like me just as I am.” “Because you pay them.” “No, because I’m charming. Besides, I pay all of my friends.” “No you don’t. You don’t pay me.” “I’m going to buy breakfast. On my account. Besides, I only pay them for the sex, the friendship is free.” “Don’t you worry about syphilis?” “Syphilis is a wives’ tale.” “It is not. You get a chancre on your manhood, then later you go mad, your limbs drop off, and you die. Manet died of syphilis.” “Nonsense. Syphilis is a myth. It’s Greek, I think—everyone has heard of the myth of syphilis.” “That’s the myth of Sisyphus. He spends his whole life pushing a large stone up a hill.” “With his penis? No wonder he has a chancre on it!” “No, that’s not the story.” “So you say. Shall I order more coffee?

And then we would go to our clients and tell them we could predict the price of oil. No one can predict the price of oil. It was basically nonsense.

In college, Nash studied John Locke’s state of nature—the idea that the best government is the least government because, put simply, it is closest to the state of nature, or what God intended. But in that state, we are animals. It is nonsense to think we are anything more. How silly to believe that man is above that and that love and friendship are anything but the ravings of a more intelligent mind, a mind that can see the futility and thus must invent ways to comfort and distract itself from it. Was

Amy sulked. 'And they're not even talking about anything. They never are. Just loads and loads of nonsense.' Meg patted her sister's arm. 'Only they know what they're talking about, Amy, but I do believe - in their own way - it's not nonsense.' 'Shipwrecks and sunken manuscripts and Jo's Venetian?!' Amy looked at Meg, confused. 'If that's not nonsense, what is it?' Meg circled her arm affectionately around her little sister's slender shoulders. 'He's Jo's Cherry King, don't you see?' 'I do,' said Amy. 'But does she?

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.