Quotes

[MJRH]

Shit. Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don't want them to. —Roger Zelazny

If people can't control their own emotions, they have to try to control other people's behaviour —anon

Personalize your sympathies; depersonalize your antipathies. —W.R. Inge

[DudleyGray]

Surely these have been posted by now, but along the lines of the Haider and dandyism in WTF. Lifted from wiki but no less relevant:

Charles Baudelaire defined the dandy, in the later "metaphysical" phase of dandyism,[5] as one who elevates æsthetics to a living religion,[6] that the dandy's mere existence reproaches the responsible citizen of the middle class: "Dandyism in certain respects comes close to spirituality and to stoicism" and "These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking .... Dandyism is a form of Romanticism. Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind."

Albert Camus said in L'Homme révolté (1951) that:

The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. But it is an aesthetic of negation. "To live and die before a mirror": that according to Baudelaire, was the dandy's slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy is, by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance. Up to now, man derived his coherence from the Creator. But from the moment that he consecrates his rupture from Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility. Therefore he must take himself in hand. The dandy rallies his forces and creates a unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is only coherent as an actor. But an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others' faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it's true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live it.[20]

Jean Baudrillard said that dandyism is "an aesthetic form of nihilism".[21]

Carlos Espartaco said about the American philosopher and poet Eduardo Sanguinetti:

"Only the dandy, last heir of the stoic tentative, has imposed himself in the world of appearance as a thing and has evaded fashion in the name of a "mode" that would be inseparable of him. Actually, it is necessary to summon the void in itself, to conqueror the cool way that qualifies the dandy, which is "thousand of kilometers farther from immediate sensations". And for Eduardo Sanguinetti this means, in terms of the multiple strategics he will use in the passages from "anti-fashion" to "look" a radical self-emptying that emancipates from time, but that does not reject the effort that has to do to register the emerging novelty. Obtaining this space resembles a landscape, where, in accordance with Baudelaire "carries Hercules upon his shoulders".[22]

[Faust]

I should probably write an article on this. One has been brewing in my mind for a while now.

[Bosseh]

“Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

[DNHT]

I should probably write an article on this. One has been brewing in my mind for a while now.

One of the things that I find interesting about Beau Brummell’s 18th-century dandyism is the formal severity and simplicity of his appearance, which was opposed to the ‘fashionable’ and flamboyant “Macaronis” that preceded him. It doesn't seem too much of a stretch to suggest that some of the designers that are popular on SZ, not to mention some of the members here who wear their clothes, are pursuing a modern dandyism that is, if not in opposition to, at least clearly distinct (not just in appearance) from the Macaroni-ish peacocking of the Pitti crowd.

But since this is the quote thread:

“When asked…why he did not devote himself to greater purpose than fashion, [Brummell] rejoined that he knew human nature well enough to realise that such was his best and fastest route ‘to separate himself from the ordinary herd of men’” Count Barbey d’Aurevilly

[Faust]

/\ correct on all accounts, sir.

[Faust]

"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[Faust]

"Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting." - Hubert Selby Jr., from the preface to the 2000 edition of Requiem For a Dream.

[PopCultWear]

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."
-Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

[interest1]

George Washington: I cannot tell a lie.
Richard Nixon: I cannot tell the truth.
Donald Trump: I cannot tell the difference.

[DudleyGray]

"Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you even know the difference?"
-Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son

[clamence]

"The updated version of Descartes’s Cogito is ‘I am seen, therefore I am’ – and that the more people who see me, the more I am"
- Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity by Zygmunt Bauman

[mne]

“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.”


― Henri Bergson

[goldsamxo]

"They remind me of myself. I really believed that I was a kind-hearted human, but I was mistaken. There were a few humans that were important to me, but I couldn't careless about the majority of them. I don't care about taking the side of those I cannot see. I fight for those close to me."
- Sui Ishida

[Faust]

You left off the last sentence!

“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance. That's when they find StyleZeitgeist.”


― Henri Bergson