Wild Sentences I Have Known

Discussion in 'Books' started by bungadiri, Sep 21, 2005.

  1. Ombak

    Ombak Moderator
    Staff Member

    Flamengo
    Apr 19, 1999
    Irvine, CA
    Club:
    Flamengo Rio Janeiro
    Nat'l Team:
    Brazil
    Kills an entire species?

    But if God kills a kitten when you google... is he still killing kittens when you... hmmm... you know...

    Or can I do that guilt-free now?
     
  2. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    ---
    how would we know what you're thinking? do you know what we're thinking?
     
  3. Speed_Racer

    Speed_Racer Neuwbie

    Jul 4, 2005
    San Diego, CA
    Is that a sea hare?
     
  4. DamonEsquire

    DamonEsquire BigSoccer Supporter

    Sep 16, 2002
    Kentucky
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    ON VIRTUES AND VICES** p.g. 1982 THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ARISTOTLE volume one The noble is the object of praise, the base of blame: at the head of what is noble stand the excellences, at the head of what is base the vices; the excellences, then, are objects of praise, but so also are the causes of the excellences and their accompaniments and results, the opposites are objects of blame.
     
  5. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Quoted in The Orientalist, by Tom Reiss. A "lieutenant colonel in the British-Indian Army, just returned from Turkestan in 1920" recounts the pleas from a "deputation from Bukhara" for help against the Bolshevic advance.

     
  6. Speed_Racer

    Speed_Racer Neuwbie

    Jul 4, 2005
    San Diego, CA
    I've held onto this description since my high school years;

    Edit - Sorry, sentence is by Tom Wolfe, if you're interested. Book title (almost as equally long) - ;) "The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby."
     
  7. DamonEsquire

    DamonEsquire BigSoccer Supporter

    Sep 16, 2002
    Kentucky
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This dialogue is on a topic of great interest to Plato's comtemporaries that figure little in our own discussions in philosophy of language: the 'correctness of names'. Edited by John M. Cooper p.g 101 PLATO COMPLETE WORKS Cratylus p.g. 151
    CRATYLUS: To give instruction, Socrates. After all, the simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing.
    SOCRATES: Prehaps you mean this, Cratylus, that when you know what a name is like, and it is like the thing it names, then you also know the thing, since it is like the name, and all like things fall under one and the same craft. Isn't that why you say that whoever knows a thing's name also knows the thing?
    CRATYLUS: Yes, you're absolutely right.
    SOCRATES: Then let's look at that way of giving instruction about the things that are. Is there also another one, but inferior to this, or is it the only one? What do you think?
    CRATYLUS: I think that it is the best and only way, and that there are no others.
     
  8. DamonEsquire

    DamonEsquire BigSoccer Supporter

    Sep 16, 2002
    Kentucky
    Club:
    Leeds United AFC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    p.g. 229 Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns
    In this dialogue Socrates is different. Except for two passing allusions his usual profession of ignorance has been dropped. He never says that he cannot teach because he does not know. In the Gorgias he does know, he is eager to teach--at times he talks with fervor of an evangelist...
    PLATO: COLLECTED DIALOGUES GORGIAS p.g. 284-286
    SOCRATES: And what about his father, Meles? Do you think he looked to what is for the best, when he sang to his lyre? He did not even look to what is most pleasant, for his audience found his songs most tiresome. But think it over, Do you not consider that all music for the lyre and dithyrambic poetry were invented to give pleasure?
    CALLICLES: I do.
    SOCRATES: And what is the aim of that stately and marvelous creture, tragic drama? Is it her endeavor and ambition, in your opinion, merely to gratify the spectators; or, if there be anything pleasant and charming, but evil, to struggle against uttering it, but to declaim and sing anything that is unwelcomebut beneficial, whether they like it or not? For which of these two aims do you think tragic poetry is equipped?
    CALLICLES: It isindeed quite evident, Socrates, that her impulse is rather toward pleasure and the gratifaction of the spectators.
    SOCRATES: And did we not just now describe such an activity as flattery?
    CALLICLES: Certainly.
    SOCRATES: Well now, if you should strip from all poetry its music, rhythm, and meter, the residue would be nothing else but speech?
    CALLICLES: That must be so.
    SOCRATES: And these speeches are addressed to a huge mob of people?
    CALLICLES: I agree.
    SOCCRATES: Then poetry is a kind of public address?
    CALLICLES: Evidently.
    SOCRATES: Must it not be a rhetorical public address? Do you not consider that the poets engage in rhetoric in the theaters?
    CALLICLES: I do.
    SOCRATES: Then we have now discovered a form of rhetoric addressed to a people composed alike of cildren and women and men, slaves and free-- a form which we cannot much admire, for we describe it as a kind of flattery.
    CALLICLES: Certainly.
    SOCRATES: Well, but what of the rhetoric addressed to the Athenian people and other free peoples in various cities-- what does that mean to us? Do the orators seem to you always to speak with an eye to what is best, their sole aim being to render the citizens as perfect as possible by their speeches, or is their impulse also to gratify the citizens, and do they neglect the common good for their personal interest and treat the peoplelike children, attempting only to please them, with o concern whatever whether such conduct makes them better or worse?
    CALLICLES: This is not a single question you are asking, for some sa what they say in the interest of the citizens, but there are others such as you describe.
    SOCRATES: That is sufficient for me, for even if there are two sides to this, yet one part of it, I suppose, would be flattery and shameful mob appeal, while the other is something fine--the effort to perfect as far as possible the souls of the citizens and the struggle to say always what is best, whether it be welcome or unwelcome to the hearers. But you yourself have ever seen rhtoric of this kind, or if you can mention any such orator, why do you not tell me his name at once?
     
  9. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    From Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn

    p 331, a description of the national reaction to news of the annihilation of Custer and his command:

    "Like cats hit with a spade, wits addled, state after state joined the national ululation."
    ----------------------
    p 264, quoting a telegram from Gen Terry, describing intelligence about the encampment of Indians he (with Custer as part of his command) had been sent to pacify:

    "May 14: 'It is represented that they have fifteen hundred lodges, are confident and intend making a stand.'"
    ----------------------
    p 53, from a letter written by a soldier who'd survived the action on "Reno Hill":
    "Late that afternoon they began to hear an unfamiliar noise" Zing! instead of Zip!"

    ' When a zing-g-g sound came,' Lit. Varnum wrote Graham, 'That made you take notice.' What it meant was that Custer's battalion had been destroyed and the Indians were using 7th Cavalry carbines."
    ----------------------------
    Oh, what the heck, how about the first 3 paragraphs of this fantastic book:

    Lt. James Bradley led a detachment of Crow Indian scouts up the Bighorn Valley during the summer of 1876. In his journal he records that early Monday morning, June 26, they saw the tracks of four ponies. Assuming the riders must be Sioux, they followed these tracks to the river and came upon one of the ponies, along with some equipment that had evidently been thrown away. An examination of the equipment disclosed, much to his surprise, that it belonged to some Crows from his own command who had been assigned to General Custer's regiment a few days earlier.

    While puzzling over this circumstance, Bradley discovered three men on the opposite side of the river. They were about two miles away and appeared to be watching. He instructed his scouts to signal with blankets that he was friendly, which they did, but for a long time there was no response. Then the distant men built a fire, messages were exchanged by smoke signal, and they were persuaded to come closer.

    They were in indeed Crow scouts: Hairy Moccasin, Goes Ahead, White Man Runs Him. They would not cross the river, but they were willing to talk.

    Bradley did not want to believe the story they told, yet he had a feeling it was true. In his journal he states that he could only hope they were exaggerating, "that in the terror of the three fugitives from the fatal field their account of the disaster was somewhat overdrawn."
     
  10. Iceblink

    Iceblink Member

    Oct 11, 1999
    Chicago
    Club:
    Ipswich Town FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    One of my favorite lines from Shakespeare. I use this all the time in my classes to show an example of alliteration & assonance and iambic pentameter.

    "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!"

    Anyone recognize it and know who said it and what had just happened?
     
  11. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Hamlet has just stuck that doddering old coot, Polonius, who was hiding under the arras.
     
  12. Crimen y Castigo

    May 18, 2004
    OakTown
    Club:
    Los Angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Speaking of Hamlet, here's one of my favorite passages from Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

    Not a sentence but probably shorter than many others:

    Rosencrantz: What a shambles! We're just not getting anywhere! Not even England. And I don't believe in it anyway.
    Guildenstern: In what?
    Rosencrantz: England.
    Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, you mean?
     
  13. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    "In Bulgaria, in 1934, on a muddy street in the river town of Vidin, Khristo Stoianev saw his brother kicked to death by fascist militia."
     
  14. JohnW

    JohnW Member

    Apr 27, 2001
    St. Paul
    In the original (sans accents):

    --"Y no te importa que a unos metros de tu casa un pobre desvalido duerma sin abrigo al relente de la noche. Hasta tus criados se agitan en sus camas porque una digestion torpe les dificulta el sue~no y, sin embargo, unas esquinas mas alla, en un patio humilde, un anciano se echa a descansar con el estomago vacio por el ayuno de todo un dia. El lino, la lana y los cobertores de pluas te dan abrigo en tu blanda cama, y mientras, en una calle cercana, sin mas cobijo que las estrellas del cielo ni mas indumentaria que la piel, desnuda y tiritante, un ni~no se muere de frio...

    --"Si Francisco --musito la joven--; pero ni tu ni yo vamos a remediar tan tristes faltas.

    --"?Quien si no?

    --"Dios, solo Dios--replico Clara

    --"Para todos esta cosas, mi pobre Clara --dijo entonces Francisco-- !Dios somos nosotros!"

    from El ciego de Asis, Antonio Ros
     
  15. JohnW

    JohnW Member

    Apr 27, 2001
    St. Paul
    Translation (it's been awhile):

    "And isn't it important to you that a few meters from your house a poor, destitute man sleeps without covering in the night?

    "Even your servants are restless in their beds because they are so full they cannot sleep, while just a few blocks away, in a simple patio, an old man lays down to rest with an empty stomach because he hasn't eaten all day.

    "The linen, wool and feather covers give you comfort in your soft bed while in a street nearby, without more cover than the stars in the sky or even more clothing than his skin, naked and shivering, a little boy is freezing to death..."

    "Yes, Francis," mused the young woman. "But neither you nor I can fix such sad problems."

    "If not us, then who?" asked Francis.

    "God, only God can," replied Clara.

    "But in all these things, my poor Clara," replied Francis, "we are God."
     
  16. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    A costermonger, roused, is a terrible thing.
     
  17. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    She was from Birmingham, runner up for the third ugliest city in the world.
     
  18. DoctorJones24

    DoctorJones24 Member

    Aug 26, 1999
    OH
    "My little sister is lack toast and tolerant."
    -excerpt from a recent college essay
     
  19. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    ---
    if she's over 18, my nephew would like to meet her, to butter her up, so to speak...
     
  20. Crimen y Castigo

    May 18, 2004
    OakTown
    Club:
    Los Angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    "My mother is a fish."
     
  21. Dadinho

    Dadinho Member

    Feb 19, 2005
    San Diego
    Club:
    Vitoria Salvador
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    ...until finally the minute hand covers the hour hand, it is midnight, the happiness of freedom. For one brief moment time has released mankind, has allowed them to live their own lives, time stands aside and looks on, ironic, benevolent, as people embrace one another, friends and strangers, men and women kissing at random. These are the best kisses of all, kisses without any future.

    -The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
     
  22. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It is the specifically reflexive form of the knowledgeability of human agents that is most deeply involved in the recursive ordering of social practices.
     
  23. royalstilton

    royalstilton Member

    Aug 2, 2004
    SoCal
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    ---
    i don't agree, not in the least.

    i think that gratuitous serependipity impinges on the juxtaposition of causal elements to vitiate the effect of the recursive ordering of social practices.
     
  24. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Friggin' knuckleheads:

    Social praxis orders discursive reflexivity, which vitiates the duplicitous gratuity that juxtaposes human agency with the epistemological serendipity of specification.

    They talked about this when the discussed Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge on Oprah's book club last month. It's not that hard, people. Oprah and Judith Butler went over it pretty quickly before moving on to meatier topics.
     
  25. bungadiri

    bungadiri Super Moderator
    Staff Member

    Jan 25, 2002
    Acnestia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Yet Giddens has clearly demonstrated that Foucault’s “infantile and totally gay exaltation” of the impact of multifarious serendipity (including gratuitous, moderate and even severe serendipity) and its concomitant, incidentality, on the knowledgeability of actors is flawed not only by the demonstrable impermeability of the coincidental to the practical, but also by Foucault’s facile and egregiously glib cooptation of the dialectic.
     

Share This Page