I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about . . . forgiveness . . . forgiveness . . .
EppsNet Archive: Quotations
She’s a lone forsaken beauty but she don’t trust anyone
I wish I was beside her but I’m not there, I’m gone
Things Seem To Be Proceeding at a Dizzy Rate
I wouldn’t have thought from reading Madame Bovary that Flaubert had much of a sense of humor, but here’s something he said in 1850 that’s not only quite funny but, except for the centuries count, will probably never go out of date: From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzy rate. We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to me more than a touch rotten. Soon society will go plummeting down and drown in nineteen centuries of shit. There’ll be quite a lot of shouting. Read more →
Long have I longed, till I am tired
Of longing and desire;
Farewell my points in vain desired,
My dying fire;
Farewell all things that die and fail and tire.
Bathtime With Sylvia Plath
There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Sylvia Plath And those few things can be cured by sticking your head in an oven . . . Read more →
And when they seek to oppress you
And when they try to destroy you,
Rise and rise again and again
Like the Phoenix from the ashes
Until the lambs have become lions and the rule of Darkness is no more
Life is Beautiful, Living is Pain
Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street. Hunter S. Thompson Read more →
Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?
— Thomas Sowell
Two Great Fears
We now know that the human animal is characterized by two great fears that other animals are protected from: the fear of life and the fear of death. — Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Read more →
Passing for Normal
The onset of the state of mind consisted in a loyalty to objects. She apologized to one egg for having boiled it, to another for not having selected it to boil. Since it was impossible to know with much precision whether an egg prefers to be boiled or not to, she was always in a state of indecision, followed, as soon as she had taken any action, by extreme remorse. Since this is not far from the predicament of most people of any sensitivity or conscience, she passed for normal. — Renata Adler, Speedboat Read more →
Be Thankful That You’re Miserable
I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable. — Alvy Singer Read more →
Sorrow Without Limits
The whole order of things fills me with a sense of anguish, from the gnat to the mysteries of incarnation; all is entirely unintelligible to me, and particularly my own person. Great is my sorrow, without limits. None knows of it, except God in Heaven, and He cannot have pity. — Sören Kierkegaard Read more →
Philistinism
Philistinism tranquilizes itself in the trivial — Kierkegaard — Paul Epps (@paulepps) June 17, 2018 Read more →
It Is Just Too Shaking and Wearing
We are just not strong enough to endure more! It is just too shaking and wearing. So often people in . . . ecstatic moments say, “It’s too much,” or “I can’t stand it,” or “I could die” . . . Delirious happiness cannot be borne for long. Our organisms are just too weak for any large doses of greatness. — Abraham Maslow Read more →
Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere. (Not to laugh, not to curse, not to lament, but to understand.) — Spinoza
Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production. — Herbert Marcuse
Tom Wolfe, 1930-2018
Everything that bloggers have done for journalism — and I personally think they’ve done a lot — Wolfe did it first, he did it 30 years earlier, and he did it better. And I think we’re still catching up to him. — Lev Grossman Tom Wolfe had a rare combination of ideas, insight and a virtuosity with language. A lot of writers do well with at most one out of the three. You can read Tom Wolfe quotes all over the web but I include one of my favorites (from The Bonfire of the Vanities) here: Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later . . . that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of… Read more →
The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint. — Charles Peguy
It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive. — Charles Peguy, Notre Patrie (1905)
What to Do and What to Have Done
All wisdom can be stated in two lines: What is done for you — allow it to be done. What you must do for yourself — make sure you do it. — Khawwas Read more →