Osiris Oliphant > Osiris's Quotes

“To speak frankly, the family bond in the civilized regime causes fathers to desire the death of their children and children to desire the death of their fathers.”
― Charles Fourier

“effect the exchange of labor and services by means of an exchange of heartbeats. estimate every task in terms of heartbeats-the monetary unit of the future, in which all individuals are equally wealthy.”
― Velimir Khlebnikov

“Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me.”
― Antonio Porchia, Voces Completas / Gesammelte Stimmen

“Because one must produce,
one must by all possible means of activity replace nature wherever it can be replaced,
one must find a major field of action for human inertia,
the worker must have something to keep him busy,
new fields of activity must be created,
in which we shall see at last the reign
of all the fake manufactured products,
of all the vile synthetic substitutes
in which beautiful real nature has no part,
and must give way finally and shamefully
before all the victorious
substitute products
in which the sperm
of all the artificial insemination factories
will make a miracle
in order to produce armies and battleships.

No more fruit, no more trees, no more vegetables, no more plants pharmaceutical or otherwise
and consequently no more food,
but synthetic products to satiety,
amid the fumes,
amid the special humors of the atmosphere,
on the particular axes of atmospheres wrenched violently and synthetically from the resistances of a nature which has known nothing of war except fear.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I started out to be honest,
with everything on the square.
But a man can't fool with the Golden Rule
in a crowd that won't play fair.

You don't go down with a hard, short fall,
you just sort of shuffle along.
And loosen your load of the moral code,
'till you can't tell right from wrong.”
― Clarence Leonard Hay

“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians... the evil was there... waiting.”
― William S. Burroughs

“...much more than by its army, its administration, its institutions, and its police, society is held together with spells.”
― Antonin Artaud

“As an egg, when broken, never
Can be mended, but must ever
Be the same crushed egg forever —
So shall this dark heart of mine!
Which, though broken, is still breaking,
And shall never more cease aching
For the sleep which has no waking —
For the sleep which now is thine!”
― Thomas Holley Chivers

“The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it. The fault lies with your mouldy systems, your logic of 2 + 2 = 4. The fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, magistrates, doctors, who know nothing of the true mysteries of the body or the cosmic laws of existence. False scholars blind outside this world, philosophers who pretend to reconstruct the mind. The least act of spontaneous creation is a more complex and revealing world than any metaphysics.”
― Antonin Artaud

“I am an intellectual thug who has been slowly accumulating a private arsenal with every intention of using it. In a mindless age every insight takes on the character of a lethal weapon. Every man of good will is the enemy of society.”
― Marshall McLuhan

“I am the very first person who gives significance to the number 32.5.”
― Ibrahim Ibrahim, Quotable: My Worldview

“If our life lacks a constant magic it is because we choose to observe our acts and lose ourselves in consideration of their imagined form and meaning, instead of being impelled by their force.”
― Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double

“it only looks like crap,
its actually quite flavorless”
― bill mcneal

“The sky is an enormous man.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg

“[Death] was not at home by that time, he was in his yam garden.”
― Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard

“VOTERS STRIKE!
...above all, remember that he who solicits your vote is by that very fact revealed as a scoundrel, since in exchange for your advantage and fortune he promises a cornucopia of marvels he'll never deliver because he hasn't the power to deliver them. the man you elect represents neither your misery nor your aspirations- nor anything else of yours- but rather his own interests, which are all opposed to yours...do not imagine that the sorry spectacle at which you assist today is peculiar to one epoch or one regime, and that it will pass away. all epochs and all regimes are worth the same- that is, they are worthless. so go home, my good chap, and go on strike against universal suffrage. I tell you, you've nothing to lose... and at least it should keep you amused for a while. I tell you, good chap! go home! go on strike!”
― Octave Mirbeau

“--How I Was Visited By Messengers--
Something clicked in the clock on the wall, and I was visited by messengers. at first, I did not realize that I was visited by messengers. instead, I thought that something was wrong with the clock. but then I saw that the clock worked just fine, and probably told the correct time. then I noticed that there was a draft in the room. and then it shocked me: what kind of thing could, at the same time, cause a clock to click and a draft to start in the room? I sat down on a chair next to the divan and looked at the clock, thinking about that. the big hand was on the number nine, and the little one on the four, therefore, it was a quarter till four. there was a calendar on the wall below the clock, and its leafs were flipping, as if there was a strong wind in my room. my heart was beating very fast and I was so scared it almost made me collapse.
"i should have some water," I said. on the table next to me was a pitcher with water. I reached out and took the pitcher.
"water should help," I said and looked at the water.
it was then that I realized that I had been visited by messengers, and that I could not tell them apart from the water. I was scared to drink the water, because I could, by accident, drink a messenger. what does that mean? nothing. one can only drink liquids. could the messengers be liquid? no. then, I can drink the water, there is nothing to be afraid of. but I couldn't find the water. I walked around the room and looked for the water. I tried putting a belt in my mouth, but it was not the water. I put the calendar in my mouth -- that also was not the water. I gave up looking for the water and started to look for the messengers. but how could I find them? what do they look like? I remembered that I could not distinguish them from the water, therefore, they must look like water. but what does water look like? I was standing and thinking. I do not know for how long I stood and thought, but suddenly I came to.
"there is the water," I thought.
but that wasn't the water and instead I got an itch in my ear.
I looked under the cupboard and under the bed, hoping that there I might find the water or the messengers. but under the cupboard, in a pile of dust, I found a little ball, half eaten by a dog, and under the bed I found some pieces of glass.
under the chair I found a half-eaten steak, I ate it and it made me feel better. it wasn't drafty anymore, the clock was ticking steadily, telling the time: a quarter till four.
"well, this means the messengers are gone," I said quietly and started to get dressed, since I had a visit to make.
-August 22, 1937”
― Daniil Kharms

“To Time. (1615)

Thou Register of old Antiquities,
Observer of the worlds iniquities,
Surveying life from birth till Death intoombe,
From Adam's making, to the day of doom:
That in thy restless cunning dost admit
Of actions lawful, or of things unfit,
And hast thy head behind of purpose ball'd,
Because thou never wilt be back recall'd;
But wear'st a lock before I understand,
On which I never yet could lay my hand.
I have expected (thou grave ancient father)
Thy helping hand, and I protest the rather,
Because they say that Time by turns doth go,
And hitherto I have not found it so:
Therefore for some good turn, one of these days,
I challenge thee, or I'll disprove thy praise,
And I write of thee according as I find,
That thorow age thou art both ball'd and blind;
Find out a time, good Time, for to relieve me,
For at this time, Time very bad doth grieve mee.”
― Samuel Rowlands, The Melancholie Knight

“You are my song, my dark blue dream
Of doves, of winter's drowsy drone,
And sleighs that slow and golden go
Through gray blue shadows on the snow.”
― Velimir Khlebnikov

“I AM ROWING (a hex poem)

i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life
i have cursed the streets your steps plod through
the things your hands touch
i have cursed the inside of your dreams

i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore
an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore
a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand
anymore

i have frozen you in the soul of your body
iced you in the depths of your life
the air you breathe suffocates you
the air you breathe has the air of a cellar
is an air that has already been exhaled
been puffed out by hyenas

the dung of this air is something no one can breathe
your skin is damp all over
your skin sweats out waters of great fear
your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt

animals drop dead as you pass
dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house
you cant run away
you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet

your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body
your fatigue is a long caravan
your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan
your fatigue is inexpressible

your mouth bites you
your nails scratch you
no longer yours, your wife
no longer yours, your brother
the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake

someone has slobbered on your descendents
someone has drooled in the mouth of your laughing little girl
someone has walked by slobbering all over the face of your domain

the world moves away from you

i am rowing

i am rowing

i am rowing against your life

i am rowing

i split into countless rowers
to row more strongly against you

you fall into blurriness
you are out of breath
you get tired before the slightest effort

i row

i row

i row

you go off drunk tied to the tail of a mule
drunkenness like a huge umbrella that darkens the sky
and assembles the flies

dizzy drunkenness of the semicircular canals
unnoticed beginnings of hemiplegia

drunkeness no longer leaves you
lays you out to the left
lays you out to the right
lays you out on the stony ground of the path

i row
i row
i am rowing against your days

you enter the house of suffering

i row
i row

on a black blinfold your life is unfolding
on the great white eye of a one eyed horse
your future is unrolling

I AM ROWING”
― Henri Michaux

“I worship you like night's pavilion,
O vase of sadness, o great silent one,
And love you more since you escape from me,
And since you seem, my night's sublimity,
To mock me and increase the leagues that lie
Between my arms and blue immensity.

I move to the attack, besiege, assail,
Like eager worms after a funeral.
I even love, o beast implacable,
The coldness which makes you more beautiful.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“...beneath the temple of Emesa there is a system of special sewers wherein the human blood rejoins the plasma of certain animals. Through these sewers, coiling into broiling corkscrews whose circles diminish the further they descend to the depths of the earth, the blood of those sacrificed according to the needful rites will find its way back to the geological seams, the congealed cracks of chaos. This pure blood, thinned and refined by the rituals, and rendered acceptable to the god of the underworld, splashes the groaning deities of Erebus, whose breath finally purifies it.”
― Antonin Artaud, Heliogabalus; or, the Crowned Anarchist

“I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.—Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;—be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.”
― William Wordsworth

“~Enueg II

world world world
and the face grave
cloud against the evening

de moriturus nihil nisi

and the face crumbling shyly
too late to darken the sky
blushing away into the evening
shuddering away like a gaffe

veronica mundi
veronica munda
give us a wipe for the love of Jesus

sweating like Judas
tired of dying
tired of policemen
feet in marmalade
perspiring profusely
heart in marmalade
smoke more fruit
the old heart the old heart
breaking outside congress
doch I assure thee
lying on O'Connell Bridge
gogglin at the tulips of the evening
the green tulips
shining round the corner like an anthrax
shining on Guinness's barges

the overtone the face
too late to brighten the sky
doch doch I assure thee”
― Samuel Beckett

“The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him.”
― Kenneth Patchen

“It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.”
― Kenneth Patchen

“It seems to be a requirement of great and powerful magicians that they live on public assistance.”
― Francis King

“Insane asylums are deliberate and premeditated receptacles
of black magic,

and it is not only that doctors encourage magic with their
untimely and hybrid therapies,
it is that they practice it.

If there had been no doctors
there would never have been patients,
no skeletons of the diseased
dead to butcher and flay,
for it is through doctors and not through patients that
society began.

Those who live, live off the dead.
And it is likewise necessary that death live;
and there is nothing like an insane asylum for calmly incubating
death, and for keeping dead people in incubators.”
― Antonin Artaud

“A magic spell to protect you from
snake bites, evil enemies,
and all the healed wounds

Five for black vespers, three for the priest, hurry to the church and arrive on time, ten for the bronze thread, and for the red mare, how the water maddens with a backward wind, six for the witches next to the well, ferry them across with his one arm lost, thirteen for the shipper and again for the saint, up and down the dungeon the eleven ladies pace, and one for the son of the dragon sire, watch him, he will drown them in a rotten skiff.”
― Jenny Mastoraki, The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding: Three Collections by Contemporary Greek Women Poets

“I love three things, I then say. I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth.

And which do you love best?

The dream.”
― Knut Hamsun, Pan