Peyton > Recent Status Updates

For in almost every artist nature is inborn a wanton and treacherous proneness to side with the beauty that breaks hearts, to single out aristocratic pretensions and pay them homage.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous—to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Development is destiny; and why should a career attended by the applause and adulation of the masses necessarily take the same course as one which does not share the glamour and the obligations of fame? Only the incorrigible bohemian smiles or scoffs when a man of transcendent gifts outgrows his carefree prentice stage, recognizes his own worth and forces the world to recognize it too and pay it homage[…]

Without being in the faintest connoisseurs, they think to justify the warmth of their commendations by discovering in it a hundred virtues, whereas the real ground of their applause is inexplicable—it is sympathy.

For an intellectual product of any value to exert an immediate influence which shall also be deep and lasting, it must rest on an inner harmony, yes, an affinity, between the personal destiny of its author and that of his contemporaries in general. Men do not know why they award fame to one work of art rather than another.

The sigh of relief I just let out when, after over twenty pages of the narrator basically just ranting about Bunny, he finally states that Henry has a plan.

“And it may be a superhuman effort to lose oneself so completely, but that’s nothing compared to the effort of getting oneself back again.”

“The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he’s worked so hard to subdue.”

All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.

I’m always saying “Glad to’ve met you” to somebody I’m not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

Mothers are all slightly insane.

And what is connection, really, if not shared judgement?

Maybe that’s all passion is—sadness plus desire to connect.

“I looked for death in battle. But I have not died, and battle still goes on.”

It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.

Few artists thrive in solitude, and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.

A society consists of human beings whose behavior as individuals is unpredictable. But if one takes enough of the basic units, then certain laws begin to appear—as was discovered long ago by life insurance companies. No one can tell what individuals will die in a given time—yet the total number of deaths can be predicted with considerable accuracy.

“It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for Man.”

Yet among all the distractions and diversions of a planet which now seemed well on the way to becoming one vast playground, there were some who still found time to repeat an ancient and never-answered question:
“Where do we go from here?”

No Utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.

Fifty years is ample time in which to change a world and its people almost beyond recognition. All that is required for the task are a sound knowledge of social engineering, a clear sight of the intended goal—and power.

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

“Nothing makes me happy. I like nothing.”

“I don’t want to care. If I care about things, it’ll just be worse, it’ll just be another thing to worry about. It’s less painful if I don’t care.”

“Burn, fuckers. Burn.”

“If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.”

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.”

-Faramir

“Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!”

Sums up how I feel about this book so far.

Already she seemed to him, as by men of later days Elves still at times are seen: present and yet remote, a living vision of that which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time.

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still, there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“Don’t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.”