User:Hithladaeus

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There is always More for those who want to know.

I am a retread. If I do more than poke at a few disgraces, I'll register with the authorities.

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<!-- 7. Francisco: “...for all the murders, rapes, and thefts,
 * Committed in the horrid lust of war,
 * He that unjustly caus'd it first proceed,
 * Shall find it in his grave and seed.” – John Webster, The White Devil IV “i” 8 – 12

8. “the stains and blemishes found in our state; which springing from the root of human frailty and corruption, not only are, but have been always more or less, yea and (for any thing we know to the contrary) will be till the world's end complained of, what form of government so ever take place.” – Richard Hooker, “Preface” Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

9. “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” – Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States 1928

10. “Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity, as well as individuals? Nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity, equally at least with private persons, can account for the major part of those transactions of which we read in history.” – Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752)

11. "Honour and Politeness! this is the coin of the world, and passes current with the fools of it. You have substituted the shadow Honour, instead of the substance Virtue; and have banished the reality of friendship for the fictitious semblance which you have termed Politeness: politeness, which consists in a certain ceremonious jargon, more ridiculous to the ear of reason than the voice of the puppet." -- Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling.

12. “I would therefore know, whether for the ending of these irksome strifes. . . ye be content to refer your cause to any other higher judgment than your own, or else intend to persist and proceed as ye have begun, till yourselves can be persuaded to condemn yourselves.” – Richard Hooker, “Preface” Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.

13. “as those old Romans robbed all the cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens to set out our own sterile plots.” – Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy.

14. “No, sir, a sthrike iv financeers wudden't worry anny wan. 'Tis a sthrange thing whin we come to think iv it that th' less money a man gets f'r his wurruk, th' more nicissry it is to th' wurruld that he shud go on wurrukin'. Ye'er boss can go to Paris on a combination wedding an' divoorce thrip an' no wan bothers his head about him. But if ye shud go to Paris – excuse me f'r laughin' mesilf black in th' face – th' industhrees iv the counthry pines away.” – Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley Says.

15. (On "actors" available to play Job)
 * Mr. Nickles: "There must be
 * Thousands! Whats that got to do with it?
 * Thousands -- not with camels either:
 * Millions and Millions of mankind
 * Burned, crushed, broken, mutilated,
 * Slaughtered, and for what? For thinking!
 * For walking round the world in the wrong
 * Skin, the wrong-shaped noses, eyelids:
 * Sleeping the wrong night wrong city --
 * London, Dresden, Hiroshima.
 * There never could have been so many
 * Suffered more for less. But where do
 * I come in?" -- Archibald MacLeish, J.B. Prolog

16. “One had much better, as Alexander, the sixth pope, long since observed, provoke a great prince than a begging friar, a Jesuit, or a seminary priest, I will add, for inexpugnabile genus hoc hominum, they are an irrefragable society, they must and will have the last word, and that with. . . eagerness, impudence, abominable lying, falsifying, and bitterness in their questions. . ." -- Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy

17. “The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy. Means are as important as ends.” – Final Report of the Church Committee, 1976.

18. "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." -- John Stuart Mill

19. :"This man is fortunate who can get for himself
 * praise and good will;
 * very difficult it is when a man lays claim
 * to what is in another's heart." -- "Sayings of the High One" 8, Poetic Edda.

20. "For today everything seems to need justification: the family, the state, causality, the individual, chemistry, vegetables, the way one's hair grows, one's mood, one's life, education, bathing suits; only one thing -- one wonders why -- needs no justification, and that is the need to justify to one and all." -- Odo Marquard, "Unburdenings: Theodicy Motives in Modern Philosophy," in In Defense of the Accidental.

21. “There is nothing more unjust, than the vulgar Opinion by which Physicians are misrepresented, as Friends to Death. On the contrary, I believe, if the Number of those who recover by Physic could be opposed to that of the Martyrs to it, the former would rather exceed the latter.” – Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

22. “I see no reason why an epicure or idle drone, a rich glutton, a usurer, should live at ease, and do nothing, live in honour, in all manner of pleasures, and oppress others, whenas in the meantime a poor labourer, a smith, a carpenter, an husbandman that hath spent his time in continual labour, as an ass to carry burdens, to do the commonwealth good, and without whom we cannot live, shall be left in his old age to beg or starve, and lead a miserable life worse than a jument.” – Thomas More (Utopia Bk II) quoted in Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (emphasis mine)

23. “In this strange country (the United States), where the people are certainly not up to the level of their institutions, everything is done 'squarely' – cities, houses, and follies.” – Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days, ch. 27

24. “There are the weightier matters of the law, 'judgment, and mercy, and fidelity.' These things we ought to do; and these things, while we contend about less, we leave undone. Happier are they whom the Lord when he cometh shall find 'doing' in these things, than disputing about 'Doctors, Elders, and Deacons.'” – Richard Hooker, “Preface,” Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity

25. “My curse on Sweeny!
 * His guilt against me is immense,
 * he pierced with his long swift javelin
 * my holy bell.


 * The holy bell that thou hast outraged
 * will banish thee to branches,
 * it will put thee on a par with fowls –
 * the saint-bell of saints with sainty-saints.


 * Just as it went prestissimo
 * the spear-shaft skyward,
 * you too, Sweeny, go madly mad-gone
 * skyward.


 * Eorann of Conn tried to hold him
 * by a hold of his smock
 * and though I bless her therefore,
 * my curse on Sweeny.” – Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (parody of Lady Gregory et al.)

--> 26. “the nearer we search into human Nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the Moral Virtues are the Political Offspring which Flattery begot upon Pride.” – Bernard de Mandeville, Fable of the Bees

27. “. . . it is probable, he (Square) at first intended to have contented himself with the pleasing ideas which the Sight of Beauty furnishes us with. These the gravest Men, after a full Meal of serious Meditation, often allow themselves by Way of Desert: For which Purpose, certain Books and Pictures find their Way into the most private Recesses of their Study, and a certain liquorish Part of natural Philosophy is often the principal Subject of their Conversation.” – Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

28. “He that shall examine this iron age wherein we live, where love is cold, et jam terras Astraea reliquit, Justice fled with her assistants, virtue expelled, Justitiae soror,/ Incorrupta fides, nudaque veritas, all goodness, gone, where vice abounds, the devil is loose, and see one man vilify and insult over his brother, as if he were an innocent or a block, oppress, tyrannize, prey upon, torture him, vex, gall, torment and crucify him, starve him, where is charity?” – Robert Burton, ''The Anatomy of Melancholy Pr. 3, sec. 1.

29. "Money well timed, and properly applied, will do anything." – John Gay, The Beggar's Opera, II xii

30. "Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton which they called their flag; which, had you sold it in any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?" -- Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

If I've maligned you
I probably haven't, you know.


 * 1. For the time being at least, I have a job. You probably have a job. This is not a job. A critical difference is that no one is anyone's boss, here. I am a single voice, and so are you. You have more important things to do than worry about me, and I have many more important things to do than worry about you.
 * 2. I do not exist. Neither do you. We are collections of words. That is all we are. Because we operate behind pseudonyms, we neither get the credit for our "real world" credentials nor the burdens of them, but we also do not have reputations, fame, or ill fame. We're just ideas, words, and symbols in a philosophical discourse. We are powerful or weak to the degree that our propositions carry persuasion.
 * 2A. I do not like anything which spikes #2. This includes "community" that promulgates personal attachments above the value of persuasion and ideas. Some of my friends feel differently. That's ok.
 * 2B. The only guard to the ephemeral nature of "one voice" is transparency, and that's why I really don't like hidden discussions. Other people do, though.
 * 3. I almost surely won't remember what you said. I wish you'd do the same for me.
 * 4. I promise that I will be wrong. It's a given. I can only say that I will do my best to be wrong when I least know it. As a corollary, I'm likely to be quite sure that I'm not wrong when I am wrong.
 * 5. I may remember it if you're dismissive and lordly or assert prerogative. That kind of thing is really aggravating to everyone, and I rather suspect those who do it intend it. Even then, though, no hard feelings. If topics weren't so rare, I'd rather be writing.