A collection of quotes from Sage's readings and a phot

The other end of the tree bailing process...


QUOTES:

All sins are attempts to fill voids.
-Simone Weil, as quoted in "Sunbeams," The Sun, December 2006

The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can’t separate them. They’re wedded.
–Henry Miller as quoted in “Sunbeams,” The Sun, December 2006

Final set of quotes from Moby Dick:

Aye, Aye, Aye... D’ye,... There she blows.
(for Bone's benefit who asked last week where were the aye's)

But by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not. (Rachel is a ship looking for lost sailors)

Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.

Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that.

and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.

On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.

from Nan Graham's, Turn South at the Next Magnolia:
POOP: People’s Organization for Outhouse Preservation

While animals build their lives around smells, we act as if it were an optional sense.

Other Quotes:
In their own words they [jihadist] have said that the purpose of the attacks of September 11 was to goad the United States into an exaggerated retaliation against the Muslim world. Then they could frame the U.S. military response as a ‘war against Islam.’ The irony is that it didn’t work at first. The war in Afghanistan had almost unanimous support in the Arab and Muslim worlds, even from some of the U.S.’s staunchest enemies… Bin Laden’s plan hadn’t worked. Then, as wel all know, we turned around and attacked Iraq, and what bin Laden had hoped the war in Afghanistan would become, the war in Iraq became.
-Reza Aslan in “The War within Islam” by Arnie Cooper, The Sun, December 2006

Yes, it is too late for a do-over of the decision to go to war. It's too late to go back to the days when many fewer Americans dared to question the wisdom of the invasion. But it is not too late to make some distinction between those who were flat wrong, like the president and so many of his advisers, those who knew better and went along anyway, like former secretary of state Colin Powell, and those who argued against involvement from the get-go and have been proved horribly right, like Gore.
-Melinda Henneberger at the Huffington Post.

If you want more quotes, check out Kevin Stilley's blog. He normally posts quotes on Monday night and normally draws from more serious sources.