I believe that there are things which humanity will never fully understand, for in the understanding of them, we will no longer be "human." One of these things is the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. I don't know how it works, and I don't want to know. It's a big universe and even with our limited understanding of it, it's pretty clear that the universe is in no way equipped to keep up with the bureaucracy of its particles and/or strings. There are things lurking in the dark, unwatched, unguarded recesses of reality. Things as beyond you or I as we are beyond an amoeba. It is quite obvious that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers draw their power from these unknowable horrors. They probably found it in the core of a meteor still half buried in the Earth, hideously pulsing with a light not unlike the color of blood and hate. So use your Magic Erasers while you still can, before they run out of meteor or they discover it causes cervical cancer or testicular cancer in men and women respectively.
Brian ClevingerRelated topics
amoeba believe beyond blood bury cancer cervical clean clear color dark draw earth found half hate women human men light limited longer meteor power pretty quite run understanding use way while works unknowable things pulsingRelated quotes
If the resistances in one direction are impossible to overcome, then the artist's invention and powers of expression turn to a goal the way to which is not obstructed, and it is very unusual for him even to be aware of the fact that his achievement is a substitute for the real thing. Even in the most liberal democracy the artist does not move with perfect freedom and unrestraint; even there he is restricted by innumerable considerations foreign to his art. The different measure of freedom may be of the greatest importance for him personally but in principle there is no difference between the dictates of a despot and the conventions of even the most liberal social order. If force in itself were contrary to the spirit of art, perfect works of art could arise only in a state of complete anarchy. But in reality the presuppositions on which the aesthetic quality of a work depends lie beyond the alternative presented by political freedom and compulsion.
Arnold Hauser
You are not traditionally beautiful; and you know it. We women do. But what most people mean by beauty is really a kind of aesthetic acceptability, not so much character as a lack of it, a set of features and lineaments that hide their history, that suggest history itself does not exist. But the template by which we recognize the features and forms in the human body that cause the heart to halt, threatening to spill us over into the silence of death-that is drawn on another part of the soul entirely...But all sing, chant, hymn the history of the body, if only because we all know how people regard bodies that deviate from the lauded and totally abnormal norm named beauty. Most of us would rather not recognize such desires in ourselves and thus avoid all contemplation of what the possession of such features means about the lives, the bodies, the histories of others, preferring instead to go on merely accepting the acceptable. But that is not who I am.
Samuel R. Delany
Since the mid-1970s, there's been an international consensus for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. [...] It's called a two-state settlement, and a two-state settlement is pretty straightforward, uncomplicated. Israel has to fully withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem, in accordance with the fundamental principle of international law, [...] that it's inadmissible to acquire territory by war. The West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, having been acquired by war, it's inadmissible for Israel to keep them. They have to be returned. On the Palestinian side and also the side of the neighboring Arab states, they have to recognize Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. That was the quid pro quo: recognition of Israel, Palestinian right to self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in Jerusalem. That's the international consensus. It's not complicated. It's also not controversial.
Norman Finkelstein
I had never heard a Mass like that one.. the church vault was split open, the walls were rasped and peeling, the altars were wrecked or had been thrown out; worst of all, that great dark hole at the end, where the high altar had been, the paving hidden beneath the powder and rubble, no pews to sit on, everyone standing or kneeling before a wooden table with a crucifix placed on it, a sunbeam shining sharply down through a gap in the vault and a cloud of flies dancing in the harsh light that illuminated the whole Church and made it seem as though we were hearing Mass in the middle of the street. [-] I had never heard a Mass like that one [-] The bread and the Wine appeared as though they were fresh: the Host appeared to be beating and, in the sunlight, when the Wine was poured into the chalice, it appeared to be blood that was flowing [-] and then the thought, the sentiment occurred to me that Mass should always be heard in this way, in fear and trembling.
Joan Maragall
When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man's passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted- as easily as his mood. Dorothea's entrance was the freshness of morning.
George Eliot