Objects Quotes - Page 28

• A book is a physical object in a world of physical objects. It is a set of dead symbols. And then the right reader comes along, and the words—or rather the poetry behind the words, for the words themselves are mere symbols—spring to life, and we have a resurrection of the word.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Spring, Book, World

  Jorge Luis Borges, Calin Andrei Mihailescu (2002). “This Craft of Verse”, p.4, Harvard University Press

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• Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Art, Mean, Men

  Leo Tolstoy (2009). “Last Steps: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy: The Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy”, p.98, Penguin UK

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• Purchasing power is a license to purchase power. The old proletariat sold its labour power in order to subsist; what little leisure time it had was passed pleasantly enough in conversations, arguments, drinking, making love, wandering, celebrating and rioting. The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he’s not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he’s being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy. The ideology of consumption becomes the consumption of ideology.

  Raoul Vaneigem

  Drinking, Order, Making Love

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• Adrian was easily distractible by wacky topics and shiny objects.

  Richelle Mead

  Topics, Wacky

  Richelle Mead (2012). “The Golden Lily: A Bloodlines Novel”, p.83, Penguin

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• How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return.

  David Foster Wallace

  Running, Mirrors, Games

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “Infinite Jest”, p.128, Hachette UK

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• Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

  Terry Pratchett

  Wind, Desire, Ships

  Terry Pratchett (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• They who love to inform themselves, are never idle. Though I have no business of consequence to take care of, I am nevertheless continually employed. I spend my life in examining things: I write down in the evening whatever I have remarked, what I have seen, and what I have heard in the day: every thing engages my attention, and every thing excites my wonder: I am like an infant, whose organs, as yet tender, are strongly affected by the slightest objects.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Writing, Attention, Care

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• Expel the object!" Freak shouts. "Regurgitate, you big moron!" and he gives me another thump and I cough up this yucky mess, but I'm still laughing so hard my nose is running.

  Rodman Philbrick

  Running, Laughing So Hard, Giving

  Rodman Philbrick (2015). “Freak the Mighty”, p.20, Usborne Publishing Ltd

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• Am I jealous? he thought, astonished. Jealous of the chance object to which she has attached herself? Jealous of something that does not concern me? One can be jealous of a love that has turned away, but not of that to which it has turned.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Jealous, Doe, Chance

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• I’ve always wanted to be liked. It grieved me that I was treated with indifference. Left an orphan by Fortune, I wanted—like all orphans—to be the object of someone’s affection. This need has always been a hunger that went unsatisfied, and so thoroughly have I adapted to this inevitable hunger that I sometimes wonder if I really feel the need to eat. Whatever be the case, life pains me.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Pain, Needs, Affection

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• I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

  Frederick Douglass

  Thinking, Sight, Reptiles

  Frederick Douglass (2016). “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, p.81, Frederick Douglass

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• And that taught me you can't have anything, you can't have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it - but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Moving, Desire, Trying

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Echoes of the Jazz Age Collection: The Beautiful and Damned, Winter Dreams, The Great Gatsby, Babylon Revisited, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and many more”, p.411, e-artnow

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• It's a very small object to be capable of doing many wonderful things, don't you think?" "It does much more that that," Valkyrie said, opening up a game and showing it to him. His eyes widened. "What wonder is this?" "It's called Angry Birds. Now do you believe me?

  Derek Landy

  Believe, Eye, Thinking

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• Love is an optical illusion that makes you believe the object of your affection is the most beautiful person in the world.

  Tom Holt

  Beautiful, Believe, Love Is

  Tom Holt (2008). “In Your Dreams”, p.91, Hachette UK

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• I shall possess this woman; I shall steal her from the husband who profanes her: I will even dare ravish her from the God whom she adores. What delight, to be in turns the object and the victor of her remorse! Far be it from me to destroy the prejudices which sway her mind! They will add to my happiness and my triumph. Let her believe in virtue, and sacrifice it to me; let the idea of falling terrify her, without preventing her fall; and may she, shaken by a thousand terrors, forget them, vanquish them only in my arms.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Husband, Believe, Fall

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• Instinct of love toward an object demands a mastery to obtain it, and if a person feels they can't control the object or feel threatened by it, they act negatively toward it.

  Sigmund Freud

  Mastery, Demand, Instinct

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• By the Angel, Bridget’s depressing,” said Henry, setting down his newspaper directly on his plate and causing the edge to soak through with egg yolk. Charlotte opened her mouth as if to object, and closed it again. “It’s all heartbreak, death and unrequited love.” “Well, that is what most songs are about,” said Will. “Requited love is nice, but it doesn’t make much of a ballad.

  Cassandra Clare

  Song, Depressing, Nice

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• But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space.

  Terence McKenna

  Real, Technology, Animal

  Terence McKenna (1998). “True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival”, M J F Books

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• Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice... Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?

  Andrea Dworkin

  Hate, Mean, Men

  Andrea Dworkin (2008). “Intercourse”, p.134, Hachette UK

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• Then they grow away from the earth then they grow away from the sun then they grow away from the plants and the animals. They see no life. When they look they see only objects. The world is a dead thing for them the trees and the rivers are not alive. the mountains and stones are not alive. The deer and bear are objects. They see no life. They fear. They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves.

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  Animal, Rivers, Tree

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• I was a hundred-percent sick, I felt as if I had no further use for my legs, they just hung over the edge of my bed like unimportant and rather ridiculous objects.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Sick, Bed, Use

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• I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Long, Doe, Lovers

  Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “The Wisdom of Kierkegaard”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• It has long been known to me that certain objects want you as much as you want them. These are the ones that become important, the objects that you hold dear. The others fade from your life entirely. You wanted them, but they did not want you in return.

  Sheila Heti

  Long, Important, Want

  Sheila Heti (2012). “How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life”, p.56, Macmillan

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• The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Important, World, Information

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales”, Vintage

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• No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.

  Paul Goodman

  Compassion, Anxiety, Feelings

  Paul Goodman (1977). “Nature Heals”

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