β
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.
β
β
Dylan Thomas (Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)
β
...because I rant not, neither rave of what I feel, can you be so shallow as to dream that I feel nothing?
β
β
R.D. Blackmore (Lorna Doone)
β
Can I be honest with you?" Chaol leaned closer, and Celaena leaned to meet him as he whispered: "You sound like a raving lunatic.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass)
β
I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete β that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.
β
β
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
β
My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.
β
β
Phyllis Diller
β
Oh Blimey OβReilly's pantyhose...what is the point of Shakespeare? I know he is a genius and so on, but he does rave on.
What light doth through yonder window break?
It's the bloody moon, for God's sake, Will, get a grip!!
β
β
Louise Rennison (Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas (Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, #3))
β
Jane, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her. If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?"
"I do indeed, sir."
"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable. Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.
β
β
Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
β
If peace can only come through killing someone, then I don't want it.
β
β
Hiro Mashima
β
From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.
Which is the only way to love, isnβt it?
This isnβt a play ground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.
Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.
And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.
β
β
Mary Oliver (Thirst)
β
Being successful and fulfilling your lifes purpose are not at all the same thing; You can reach all your personal goals, become a raving success by the worlds standard and still miss your purpose in this life.
β
β
Rick Warren
β
Stark raving sane.
β
β
Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
β
I was stark raving mad, and my family was too polite to mention it. That's what living with the Yamanis does to people. They get so well-mannered they won't mention you're crazy.
β
β
Tamora Pierce (Page (Protector of the Small, #2))
β
If a man takes you to a restaurant of his choosing, donβt compliment him. Rave about the quality of the food and heβll be thrilled, because he took you there.
β
β
Ilona Andrews (Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, #1))
β
Everyone probably thinks that I'm a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I'd rather read a book.
β
β
Madonna
β
You take a bunch of people who don't seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment (Discworld, #31; Industrial Revolution, #3))
β
Miki held up a tennis ball, looked at Saraβs new Pack, and tossed it out into the forest away from the ongoing rave. They all watched it go, then they turned back to Miki.
βOkay. Goβ¦β
Sara and Angelina slapped their hands over their friendβs mouth before the word βfetchβ could come out of it.
They pulled her over to one of the food tables.
βAre you out of your ever-loving mind?! Everyone here but us is like Sara.β Angelina snapped.
βAnd after seeing them in action Iβd rather not fuck with them!β
Miki gave that innocent smile. βIt was just a little experiment.
β
β
Shelly Laurenston (Go Fetch! (Magnus Pack, #2))
β
Some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour- until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.
β
β
Stephen King (Needful Things)
β
You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.
β
β
Doris Lessing
β
A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.
β
β
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
β
The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though Iβll do my best. But youβre right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.
β
β
D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover)
β
Every single person is a fool, insane, a failure, or a bad person to at least ten people.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
At first we raced through space, like shadows and light; her rants, my raves; her dark hair, my blonde; black dresses, white. She's a purple-black African-violet-dark butterfly and I a white moth. We were two wild ponies, Dawn and Midnight, the wind electrifying our manes and our hooves quaking the city; we were photo negatives of each other, together making the perfect image of a girl.
β
β
Francesca Lia Block (Violet & Claire)
β
I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.
β
β
Lewis Black
β
Annihilation itself is no death to evil. Only good where evil was, is evil dead. An evil thing must live with its evil until it chooses to be good. That alone is the slaying of evil.
β
β
George MacDonald
β
How long can we maintain? I wonder. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection..
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
β
I respect your right to hold your religious beliefs, and if they help you, I think that's great. I would, however, like to inform you that you are a raving kook.
β
β
Scott Dikkers (You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day)
β
Many will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.
β
β
Robin Hobb (Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders, #1))
β
Strange, that some of us, with quick alternative vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
β
β
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
β
I'm bipolar, but I'm not crazy, and I never was. I'm stark raving sane.
β
β
Emilie Autumn
β
They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs.
β
β
Susan Hill
β
Has anyone seen a raving bitch with nice hair?β Holly shouted at the bottom of the stairs. Everyone who heard her pointed in a different direction.
β
β
Nicole Williams (Crash (Crash, #1))
β
Everyone has always said I look like Bailey, but I don't.
I have grey eyes to her green,
an oval face to her heart-shaped one,
I'm shorter, scrawnier, paler, flatter, plainer, tamer.
All we shared is a madhouse of curls
that I imprison in a ponytail
while she let hers rave
like madness
around her head.
I don't sing in my sleep
or eat the petals off flowers
or run into the rain instead of out of it.
I'm the unplugged-in one,
the side-kick sister,
tucked into a corner of her shadow.
Boys followed her everywhere;
they filled the booths at the restaurant where she waitressed,
herded around her at the river.
One day, I saw a boy come up behind her
and pull a strand of her long hair
I understood this-
I felt the same way.
In photographs of us together,
she is always looking at the camera,
and I am always looking at her.
β
β
Jandy Nelson (The Sky Is Everywhere)
β
I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood...
I was raving, if only to myself.
β
β
Robin McKinley (Sunshine)
β
We rant and rave against God for the evil we have to endure but hardly blink at the evil in our own hearts.
β
β
Joni Eareckson Tada (The God I Love: A Lifetime of Walking with Jesus)
β
She's stark raving mad!
β
β
Lewis Carroll
β
You cominβ or what?β Ryker returned.
Layne glanced through Merry and Cal, nodded and followed Ryker. It would seem big, scary, badass, looking like a raving lunatic Ryker needed his BFF.
Fuck.
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Golden Trail (The 'Burg, #3))
β
Bringing a child into the world without its consent seems unethical. Leaving the womb just seems insane. The womb is nirvana. Itβs tripping in an eternal orb outside the space-time continuum. Itβs a warm, wet rave at the center of the earth, but youβre the only raver. Thereβs no weird New Age guide. Thereβs no shitty techno. Thereβs only you and the infinite.
β
β
Melissa Broder (So Sad Today: Personal Essays)
β
One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!
β
β
Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2))
β
The brain can be a dangerous thing. Even more so if you haven't got one.
β
β
Dave Courtney (Raving Lunacy: Clubbed to Death - Adventures on the Rave Scene)
β
They've got these things called lockers," I raved on. "The Halls are lined with them. And you won't believe what they're for! They're for locking stuff away-so other people won't steal it! Why can't everyone share?" ~ Cap
β
β
Gordon Korman (Schooled)
β
Who can remember the pangs and sweetness of those early years? We remember our first real love no more clearly than the illusions that caused us to rave during a high fever.
β
β
Stephen King (Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4))
β
Wonderful, Annabeth thought. Her own mother, the most levelheaded Olympian, was reduced to a raving, vicious scatterbrain in a subway station. And, of all the gods who might help them, the only ones not affected by the Greek-Roman schism seemed to be Aphrodite, Nemesis and Dionysus. Love, revenge, wine. Very helpful.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
reason died in 1914, November 1914 ... after that everybody began to rave ...
β
β
Louis-Ferdinand CΓ©line (North (French Literature))
β
Love is a festering wound; a scab I compulsively must dig at deeper than the grave which calls me Heaven bound, for each day the Reaper comes to bury me safe and sound. Madly for it, I die...
β
β
The Raveness (Night Tide Musings)
β
GUIL: I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder then a man talking nonsense not to himself.
ROS: Or just as mad.
GUIL: Or just as mad.
ROS: And he does both.
GUIL: So there you are.
ROS: Stark raving sane.
β
β
Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)
β
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky
β
People rave about American football or hockey players or any type of sport. Ladies don't understand how sexy f1 racers are
β
β
Lauren Asher (Throttled (Dirty Air, #1))
β
And did anyone here bring me food? I'm famished."
[Gregor's] fingers found a stray fortune cookie from the night before and he pulled it out. "Here," he said.
Ripred reacted with exaggerated amazement. "Oh, heavens, is this whole thing for me?"
"Look, I didn't even know --" Gregor began.
"No, please. Don't apologize." Ripred's tongue darted out and flicked the cookie into his mouth. "Oh, yes, oh, my word," he raved as he chewed and swallowed. "I'm absolutely stuffed!
β
β
Suzanne Collins (Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods (Underland Chronicles, #3))
β
We would not be ashamed of doing some of the things we do in private, if the number of sane human beings who do them in public were large enough.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
I been silent so long now itβs gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But, please. Itβs still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But itβs the truth even if it didnβt happen.
β
β
Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckooβs Nest)
β
O seasons, O castles,
What soul is without flaws?
All its lore is known to me,
Felicity, it enchants us all.
β
β
Arthur Rimbaud (A Season in Hell & Other Poems)
β
The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I'll do my best.
β
β
D.H. Lawrence (Lady Chatterley's Lover)
β
I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies.
β
β
Emil M. Cioran
β
Stark raving mad.
β
β
Stieg Larsson
β
For me, the imagination which so often kept me awake and in terror as a child has seen me through some terrible bouts of stark raving reality as an adult.
β
β
Stephen King (Nightmares and Dreamscapes)
β
As a mere mortal with thirty years of earthly wanderings, I have found books to be the most significant of my findings.
β
β
The Raveness
β
Those in earthly purgatory, each day, have been engaging a death God for years...
β
β
The Raveness (Night Tide Musings)
β
To evade insanity and depression, we unconsciously limit the number of people toward whom we are sincerely sympathetic.
β
β
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
β
And somewhat as in blind night, on a mild sea, a sailor may be made aware of an iceberg, fanged and mortal, bearing invisibly near, by the unwarned charm of its breath, nothingness now revealed itself: that permanent night upon which the stars in their expiring generations are less than the glinting of gnats, and nebulae, more trivial than winter breath; that darkness in which eternity lies bent and pale, a dead snake in a jar, and infinity is the sparkling of a wren blown out to sea; that inconceivable chasm of invulnerable silence in which cataclysms of galaxies rave mute as amber.
β
β
James Agee (A Death in the Family)
β
Music frees my soul, under its spell I heal and sorrow continues to fail at keeping me enraged, caged as if a circus animal. Armed with it, ready and willing I sit to crush the horns of Baphomet.
β
β
The Raveness (Night Tide Musings)
β
I don't like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They're not as bad as movies, but they're certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight way, but it's not in a way that's fun to watch. And if the actor's really good, you can always tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it.
β
β
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
β
Hysteria may come as always, infernal dreams with their black haze. Still, I shall devour the days triumphantly chasing History and its stories.
β
β
The Raveness (Night Tide Musings)
β
The Devils have walked with me across many regions.
β
β
The Raveness (Night Tide Musings)
β
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
β
β
Attar of Nishapur (The Conference of the Birds)
β
The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
The Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.
β
β
Heraclitus
β
Remember that being offended is not the same thing as being right.
β
β
Dave Barry (Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster): Life Lessons and Other Ravings from Dave Barry)
β
I haven't had a lot of good, soft things in my life," he said against my forehead. "Not since my family sent me away. Apart from being your sire and feeling that pull to you, it's that goodness, that softness and warmth, along with the resolve and strength in you, that I love. Being turned hasn't taken that from you. If someone were going to design the perfect mate for me, it would be you. Even when you infuriate me with your pigheaded stubbornness and your temper and incredible lack of anything resembling self-preservationβ"
"Stop describing me please."
"You're the most fascinating, maddening, adorable creature I've ever met," he said, sighing and pushing my hair out of my eyes. "So, when I seem possessive or I'm raving like a lunatic, it's just that part of me is still very afraid that I'll lose thatβthat I'll lose you. I love you.
β
β
Molly Harper (Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men (Jane Jameson, #2))
β
Donβt tell me,β I snickered. βYouβre in a club that gathers together like raving Trekkies to share secrets of the afterlife. I bet you even have an Enigma CD you crank up to get in the mood.β βDonβt be silly.β His face lit up with an enormous grin. βWe listen to Enya, not Enigma.
β
β
J.A. Saare (Dead, Undead, or Somewhere in Between (Rhiannon's Law, #1))
β
all the teachers at this school attack their students? Or are you just a raving bitch?
β
β
Chris Cannon (Going Down in Flames (Going Down in Flames, #1))
β
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
β
β
John Keats (Ode on Melancholy)
β
To think of them and memories with - on days with mood dimmed by some traumatic spell of a haunting quite residual - is to have the brain become a cell and trapped inside there is only the music of the surly sullen bell.
β
β
The Raveness (Night Tide Musings)
β
He reached out with one bird-claw hand. He closed it around my wrist and I could feel the hot cancer that was loose and raving through his body, eating anything and everything left that was still good to eat.
β
β
Stephen King (It)
β
I cook better than you," Nick corrected absently. "I think monkeys can probably be taught to cook better than you."
"I'd like to have a monkey that cooked for me," said Jamie. " I would pay him in bananas. His name would be Alphonse."
"I agree, that would be awesome." Mae said. "People would come for dinner just to see the monkey chef."
"You're raving," Nick said, defrosting chicken in the microwave. Mae was a bit impressed with how he seemed to look at the appliance and instantly comprehend its mysteries, when she'd been heating up ready-made meals for years by a method of pressing random buttons and hoping. " I know that's the only way Jamie communicates with people, but I expected better of you, Mavis."
"We're cutting out the whole Mavis thing right now, Nick," Mae said warningly.
"How many bananas would be good payment for a monkey?" Jamie wanted to know. " I would want to pay Alphonse a fair wage.
β
β
Sarah Rees Brennan (The Demon's Covenant)
β
Matthey, a Geneva physician very close to Rousseau's influence, formulates the prospect for all men of reason: 'Do not glory in your state, if you are wise and civilized men; an instant suffices to disturb and annihilate that supposed wisdom of which you are so proud; an unexpected event, a sharp and sudden emotion of the soul will abruptly change the most reasonable and intelligent man into a raving idiot.
β
β
Michel Foucault (Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason)
β
You baffle me, addle me, drive me insane.
You muddle, befuddle, and rattle my brain.
My senses are mad,
Skewed judgment to blame.
You drive me half stark-raving bonkers!
(But the truly crazy thing is how I love it.)
β
β
Richelle E. Goodrich (Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year)
β
I can see that you go through life athwart it. You see the flow of events, you are able to tell how you could most easily fit yourself into it. But you dare to oppose it. And why? Simply because you look at it and say, 'this fate does not suit me. I will not allow it to befall me.'" Amber shook her head, but her small smile made it an affirmation. "I have always admired people who can do that. So few do. Many, of course, will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and on it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.
β
β
Robin Hobb (Ship of Magic (Liveship Traders, #1))
β
People get dumped all the time, and it sucks, but you know what you do? You cry; you smash a few plates; you go to a karaoke bar and make a fool of yourself. However you choose to deal with it, itβs your shit to handle. Itβs your burden to carry. You donβt drag other people down with you. You donβt turn up on the doorstep in the middle of the night acting like a raving lunatic.
β
β
Lang Leav (Sad Girls)
β
β¦Henry is tired of winter,
& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national
mind, & Spring (in the city so called)
Henry likes Fall.
HΓ© would be prepared to lΓve in a world of FΓ‘ll
for ever, impenitent Henry.
But the snows and summers grieve and dream;
These fierce & airy occupations, and love,
raved away so many of Henryβs years
it is a wonder that, with in each hand
one of his own mad books and all,
ancient fires for eyes, his head full
& his heart full, he's making ready to move on.
β
β
John Berryman (77 Dream Songs)
β
I think the best life would be one that's lived off the grid. No bills, your name in no government databases. No real proof you're even who you say you are, aside from, you know, being who you say you are. I don't mean living in a mountain hut with solar power and drinking well water. I think nature's beautiful and all, but I don't have any desire to live in it. I need to live in a city. I need pay as you go cell phones in fake names, wireless access stolen or borrowed from coffee shops and people using old or no encryption on their home networks. Taking knife fighting classes on the weekend! Learning Cantonese and Hindi and how to pick locks. Getting all sorts of skills so that when your mind starts going, and you're a crazy raving bum, at least you're picking their pockets while raving in a foreign language at smug college kids on the street. At least you're always gonna be able to eat.
β
β
Joey Comeau
β
I'll probably never produce a masterpiece, but so what? I feel I have a Sound aborning, which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette.
β
β
Lester Bangs (Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader)
β
When I got to college, the fake ID thing wasn't that important, since pretty much everyone could get away with drinking in New Orleans. But the drugs, well, that was a different story altogether, because drugs are every bit as illegal in New Orleans as anywhere else--at least, if you're black and poor, and have the misfortune of doing your drugs somewhere other than the dorms at Tulane University. But if you are lucky enough to be living at Tulane, which is a pretty white place, especially contrasted with the city where it's located, which is 65 percent black, then you are absolutely set.
β
β
Tim Wise (White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son)
β
All I know is I'm losing my mind," Franny said. "I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting - it is, it is. I don't care what anybody says . . .
I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete - that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a "splash.
β
β
J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)
β
...
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
β
β
W.B. Yeats
β
November Graveyard (1956)
The scene stands stubborn: skinflint trees
Hoard last year's leaves, won't mourn, wear sackcloth, or turn
To elegiac dryads, and dour grass
Guards the hard-hearted emerald of its grassiness
However the grandiloquent mind may scorn
Such poverty. No dead men's cries
Flower forget-me-nots between the stones
Paving this grave ground. Here's honest rot
To unpick the heart, pare bone
Free of the fictive vein. When one stark skeleton
Bulks real, all saints' tongues fall quiet:
Flies watch no resurrection in the sun.
At the essential landscape stare, stare
Till your eyes foist a vision dazzling on the wind:
Whatever lost ghosts flare,
Damned, howling in their shrouds across the moor
Rave on the leash of the starving mind
Which peoples the bare room, the blank, untenanted air.
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Sylvia Plath
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Jeremy will take her like the Angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and Roger will be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-ritual that will be the coming peace. She will take her husband's orders, she will become a domestic bureaucrat, a junior partner, and remember Roger, if at all, as a mistake thank God she didn't makeβ¦. Oh, he feels a raving fit coming onβhow the bloody hell can he survive without her? She is the British warm that protects his stooping shoulders, and the wintering sparrow he holds inside his hands. She is his deepest innocence in spaces of bough and hay before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true, and his lithe Parisian daughter of joy, beneath the eternal mirror, forswearing perfumes, capeskin to the armpits, all that is too easy, for his impoverishment and more worthy love.
You go from dream to dream inside me. You have passage to my last shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you've found life. I'm no longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are 'yours' and which are 'mine.' It's past sorting out. We're both being someone new now, someone incredibleβ¦.
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Thomas Pynchon (Gravityβs Rainbow)
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You should probably know right now, Eli Pace, that I do not appreciate being treated like an imbecile, nor do I appreciate being ordered around like some kind of subservient human being. If you want me to do something because you're concerned for my safety, tell me you're concerned and then ask me to do what you believe is necessary for me to preserve that safety. Don't turn into a raving barbarian, because all that's going to do is piss me the hell off.
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Christine Warren (Born to Be Wild (The Others, #15))
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Life was dense, dark, ancient. They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didnβt know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way
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Jack Kerouac (On the Road)
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We have gone sick by following a path of untrammelled rationalism, male dominance, attention to the visible surface of things, practicality, bottom-line-ism. We have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body, when it feels itself to be sick, it begins to produce antibodies, or strategies for overcoming the condition of dis-ease. And the 20th century is an enormous effort at self-healing. Phenomena as diverse as surrealism, body piercing, psychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culture, tattooing, the list is endless. What do all these things have in common? They represent various styles of rejection of linear values. The society is trying to cure itself by an archaic revival, by a reversion to archaic values. So when I see people manifesting sexual ambiguity, or scarifying themselves, or showing a lot of flesh, or dancing to syncopated music, or getting loaded, or violating ordinary canons of sexual behaviour, I applaud all of this; because it's an impulse to return to what is felt by the body -- what is authentic, what is archaic -- and when you tease apart these archaic impulses, at the very centre of all these impulses is the desire to return to a world of magical empowerment of feeling.
And at the centre of that impulse is the shaman: stoned, intoxicated on plants, speaking with the spirit helpers, dancing in the moonlight, and vivifying and invoking a world of conscious, living mystery. That's what the world is. The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery: our birth, our death, our being in the moment -- these are mysteries. They are doorways opening on to unimaginable vistas of self-exploration, empowerment and hope for the human enterprise. And our culture has killed that, taken it away from us, made us consumers of shoddy products and shoddier ideals. We have to get away from that; and the way to get away from it is by a return to the authentic experience of the body -- and that means sexually empowering ourselves, and it means getting loaded, exploring the mind as a tool for personal and social transformation.
The hour is late; the clock is ticking; we will be judged very harshly if we fumble the ball. We are the inheritors of millions and millions of years of successfully lived lives and successful adaptations to changing conditions in the natural world. Now the challenge passes to us, the living, that the yet-to-be-born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under; and that's what the psychedelic experience is about, is caring for, empowering, and building a future that honours the past, honours the planet and honours the power of the human imagination. There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet, as the human imagination. Let's not sell it straight. Let's not whore ourselves to nitwit ideologies. Let's not give our control over to the least among us. Rather, you know, claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination. Thank you very, very much.
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Terence McKenna (The Archaic Revival)
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terrified of being abandoned and all narcissists need Narcissistic Supply Sources. These narcissists prefer to direct their furious rage at people who are meaningless to them and whose withdrawal will not constitute a threat to the narcissists' precariously-balanced personalities. They explode at an underling, yell at a waitress, or berate a taxi driver. Alternatively, they sulk (silent treatment). Many narcissists feel anhedonic, or pathologically bored, drink or do drugs - all forms of self-directed aggression. From time to time, no longer able to pretend and to suppress their rage, they have it out with the real source of their anger. Then they lose all vestiges of self-control and rave like lunatics. They shout incoherently, make absurd accusations, distort facts, and air long-suppressed grievances, allegations and suspicions. These episodes are followed by periods of saccharine sentimentality and excessive flattering and submissiveness towards the target of the latest rage attack. Driven by the mortal fear of being abandoned or ignored, the narcissist debases and demeans himself to the point of provoking repulsion in the beholder. These pendulum-like emotional swings make life with the narcissist exhausting.
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Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)
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So a scientist and an engineer are tossed into separate rooms, stocked with tools and parts, and told that they aren't allowed out until they've produced a working prototype for a radio receiver. After two days, the scientist has covered the walls in scribbling and looks like a mad man, raving about how not only is it impossible to build a receiver with the parts given but that he's proven that radio is theoretically impossible anyway. When they check on the engineer, they find that he'd built the receiver in less than a day, fashioned a crude speaker and antenna, and had found a radio broadcast he liked and hadn't bothered to tell them he'd finished.
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Joshua Dalzelle
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A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE
There lived a king; his comeliness was such
The world could not acclaim his charm too much.
The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace;
It was a miracle to view his face.
If he had rivals,then I know of none;
The earth resounded with this paragon.
When riding through his streets he did not fail
To hide his features with a scarlet veil.
Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head;
Whoever spoke his name was left for dead,
The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled
With passion for this king was quickly killed.
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
Since few could bear his sight, they were content
To hear the king in sober argument,
But while they listened they endure such pain
As made them long to see their king again.
The king commanded mirrors to be placed
About the palace walls, and when he faced
Their polished surfaces his image shone
With mitigated splendour to the throne.
If you would glimpse the beauty we revere
Look in your heart-its image will appear.
Make of your heart a looking-glass and see
Reflected there the Friend's nobility;
Your sovereign's glory will illuminate
The palace where he reigns in proper state.
Search for this king within your heart; His soul
Reveals itself in atoms of the Whole.
The multitude of forms that masquerade
Throughout the world spring from the Simorgh's shade.
If you catch sight of His magnificence
It is His shadow that beguiles your glance;
The Simorgh's shadow and Himself are one;
Seek them together, twinned in unison.
But you are lost in vague uncertainty...
Pass beyond shadows to Reality.
How can you reach the Simorgh's splendid court?
First find its gateway, and the sun, long-sought,
Erupts through clouds; when victory is won,
Your sight knows nothing but the blinding sun.
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Attar of Nishapur
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For, indeed, this is the great horror, solitude, when the soul can no longer bathe in the ever-changing mind, laugh as its sunlit ripples lap its skin, but, shut up in the castle of a few thoughts, paces its narrow prison, wearing down the stone of time, feeding on its own excrement. There is no star in the blackness of that night, no foam upon the stagnant and putrid sea. Even the glittering health that the desert brings to the body, is like a spear in the soul's throat. The passionate ache to act, to think: this eats into the soul like a cancer. It is the scorpion striking itself in its agony, save that no poison can add to the tortue of the circling fire; no superflux of anguish relieve it by annihilation. But against these paroxisms is an eightfold sedative. The ravings of madness are lost in soundless space; the struggles of the drowning man are not heeded by the sea.
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Aleister Crowley (The Soul of the Desert)
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There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that wonβt fall down or airplanes that wonβt suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition donβt want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. Thatβs all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.
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Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon)
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WE ARE TO PLAY THE GAME OF DEATH
E are to play the game of death to-night, my bride and I.
The night is black, the clouds in the sky are capricious, and the waves are raving at sea.
We have left our bed of dreams, flung open the door and come out, my bride and I.
We sit upon a swing, and the storm winds give us a wild push from behind.
My bride starts up with fear and delight, she trembles and clings to my breast.
Long have I served her tenderly.
I made for her a bed of flowers and I closed the doors to shut out the rude light from her eyes.
I kissed her gently on her lips and whispered softly in her ears till she half swooned in languor.
She was lost in the endless mist of vague sweetness.
She answered not to my touch, my songs failed to arouse her.
To-night has come to us the call of the storm from the wild.
My bride has shivered and stood up, she has clasped my hand and come out.
Her hair is flying in the wind, her veil is fluttering, her garland rustles over her breast.
The push of death has swung her into life.
We are face to face and heart to heart, my bride and I.
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Rabindranath Tagore
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Itβs hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and theyβre disappointed if we canβt share their surprise when they have discovered that a hen lays an egg. Thereβs a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but itβs not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do oneβs best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. Itβs not very easy to give up oneβs ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do little to resolve them.
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W. Somerset Maugham (Theatre)
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If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword - or need for either - pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting.
To such a one we must say: Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name. Christians are few and far between (as the saying is). Therefore, it is out of the question that there should be a common Christian government over the whole world, or indeed over a single country or any considerable body of people, for the wicked always outnumber the good. Hence, a man who would venture to govern an entire country or the world with the gospel would be like a shepherd who should put together in one fold wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep, and let them mingle freely with one another, saying, βHelp yourselves, and be good and peaceful toward one another. The fold is open, there is plenty of food. You need have no fear of dogs and clubs.β The sheep would doubtless keep the peace and allow themselves to be fed and governed peacefully, but they would not live long, nor would one beast survive another.
For this reason one must carefully distinguish between these two governments. Both must be permitted to remain; the one to produce righteousness, the other to bring about external peace and prevent evil deeds. Neither one is sufficient in the world without the other. No one can become righteous in the sight of God by means of the temporal government, without Christ's spiritual government. Christ's government does not extend over all men; rather, Christians are always a minority in the midst of non-Christians. Now where temporal government or law alone prevails, there sheer hypocrisy is inevitable, even though the commandments be God's very own. For without the Holy Spirit in the heart no one becomes truly righteous, no matter how fine the works he does. On the other hand, where the spiritual government alone prevails over land and people, there wickedness is given free rein and the door is open for all manner of rascality, for the world as a whole cannot receive or comprehend it.
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Martin Luther (Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought))
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By Jove, it's great! Walk along the streets on some spring morning. The little women, daintily tripping along, seem to blossom out like flowers. What a delightful, charming sight! The dainty perfume of violet is everywhere. The city is gay, and everybody notices the women. By Jove, how tempting they are in their light, thin dresses, which occasionally give one a glimpse of the delicate pink flesh beneath!
"One saunters along, head up, mind alert, and eyes open. I tell you it's great! You see her in the distance, while still a block away; you already know that she is going to please you at closer quarters. You can recognize her by the flower on her hat, the toss of her head, or her gait. She approaches, and you say to yourself: 'Look out, here she is!' You come closer to her and you devour her with your eyes.
"Is it a young girl running errands for some store, a young woman returning from church, or hastening to see her lover? What do you care? Her well-rounded bosom shows through the thin waist. Oh, if you could only take her in your arms and fondle and kiss her! Her glance may be timid or bold, her hair light or dark. What difference does it make? She brushes against you, and a cold shiver runs down your spine. Ah, how you wish for her all day! How many of these dear creatures have I met this way, and how wildly in love I would have been had I known them more intimately.
"Have you ever noticed that the ones we would love the most distractedly are those whom we never meet to know? Curious, isn't it? From time to time we barely catch a glimpse of some woman, the mere sight of whom thrills our senses. But it goes no further. When I think of all the adorable creatures that I have elbowed in the streets of Paris, I fairly rave. Who are they! Where are they? Where can I find them again? There is a proverb which says that happiness often passes our way; I am sure that I have often passed alongside the one who could have caught me like a linnet in the snare of her fresh beauty.
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Guy de Maupassant (Selected Short Stories)
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Man's inhumanity to man will continue as long as man loves God more than he loves his fellow man. The love of God means wasted love. 'For God and Country' means a divided allegianceβa 50 per cent patriot.
The most abused word in the language of man is the word 'God.' The reason for this is that it is subject to so much abuse. There is no other word in the human language that is as meaningless and incapable of explanation as is the word 'God.' It is the beginning and end of nothing. It is the Alpha and Omega of Ignorance.
It has as many meanings as there are minds. And as each person has an opinion of what the word God ought to mean, it is a word without premise, without foundation, and without substance. It is without validity. It is all things to all people, and is as meaningless as it is indefinable. It is the most dangerous in the hands of the unscrupulous, and is the joker that trumps the ace. It is the poisoned word that has paralyzed the brain of man.
'The fear of the Lord' is not the beginning of wisdom; on the contrary, it has made man a groveling slave; it has made raving lunatics of those who have attempted to interpret what God 'is' and what is supposed to be our 'duty' to God. It has made man prostitute the most precious things of lifeβit has made him sacrifice wife, and child, and home.
'In the name of God' means in the name of nothingβit has caused man to be a wastrel with the precious elixir of life, because there is no God.
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Joseph Lewis (An Atheist Manifesto)
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Seventeen more days,β Jessi breathed wonderingly. βGod, you must be climbing the . . . er, walls . . . or whateverβs in there, huh?β
βAye.β
βSo, just what is in there, anyway?β She tested the glass by shaking it gently, and deemed it secure enough. It shouldnβt slide now.
βStone,β he said flatly.
βAnd what else?β
βStone. Gray. Of varying sizes.β His voice dropped to a colorless monotone. βFifty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven stones. Twenty-seven
thousand two hundred and sixteen of them
are a slightly paler gray than the rest. Thirty-six thousand and four are more rectangular than square. There are nine hundred and eighteen that have a
vaguely hexagonal shape. Ninety-two of
them have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked. Two paces from the center is a stone that protrudes slightly above the rest, over which I tripped for the first few
centuries. Any other questions?β
Jessi flinched as his words impacted her, taking her breath away. Her chest and throat felt suddenly tight. Uh, yeah, like, how did you stay sane in
there? What kept you from going stark raving mad? How did you survive over a thousand years in such a hell?
She didnβt ask because it would have been like asking a mountain why it was still standing, as it had been since the dawn of time, perhaps reshaped in subtle ways, but there, always there. Barring cataclysmic planetary upheaval, forever there. The man was strongβnot just physically, but mentally and
emotionally. A rock of a man, the kind
a woman could lean on through the worst of times and never have to worry that things might fall apart, because a man like him simply wouldnβt let them.
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Karen Marie Moning (Spell of the Highlander (Highlander, #7))
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You think I hate men. I guess I do, although some of my best friends...I don't like this position. I mistrust generalized hatred. I feel like one of those twelfth century monks raving on about how evil women are and how they must cover themselves up completely when they go out lest they lead men into evil thoughts. The assumption that the men are the ones who matter, and that the women exist only in relation to them, is so silent and underrunning that ever we never picked it up until recently. But after all, look at what we read. I read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and Freud and Erikson; I read de Montherlant and Joyce and Lawrence and sillier people like Miller and Mailer and Roth and Philip Wylie. I read the Bible and Greek myths and didn't question why all later redactions relegated Gaea-Tellus and Lilith to a footnote and made Saturn the creator of the world. I read or read about, without much question, the Hindus and the Jews, Pythagoras and Aristotle, Seneca, Cato, St.Paul, Luther, Sam Johnson, Rousseau, Swift...well, you understand. For years I didn't take it personally.
So now it is difficult for me to call others bigots when I am one myself. I tell people at once, to warn them, that I suffer from deformation of character. But the truth is I am sick unto death of four thousand years of males telling me how rotten my sex is. Especially it makes me sick when I look around and see such rotten men and such magnificent women, all of whom have a sneaking suspicion that the four thousand years of remarks are correct. These days I feel like an outlaw, a criminal. Maybe that's what the people perceive who look at me so strangely as I walk the beach. I feel like an outlaw not only because I think that men are rotten and women are great, but because I have come to believe that oppressed people have the right to use criminal means to survive. Criminal means being, of course, defying the laws passed by the oppressors to keep the oppressed in line. Such a position takes you scarily close to advocating oppression itself, though. We are bound in by the terms of the sentence. Subject-verb-object. The best we can do is turn it around. and that's no answer, is it?
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Marilyn French (The Women's Room)