Out here by myself in 2016 at a place almost totally inaccessible to normal people; motorcycle stuck on that hill for several hours. There’s no water! Nowadays I stay home, look at the picture.
He turned to Stephen and said:
—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.
—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.
—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.”
Ulysses by James Joyce
GO, and eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, because it is now that God favors your works. Enjoy life with the wife you love, all the days of the vain life granted you under the sun. This is your lot in life for the toil of your labors under the sun.
Anything you can turn your hand to, do with what power you have; for there will be no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in Sheol where you are going.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-10
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all, cling onto your back, and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it devour your remains – for all things will kill you, both slowly & fastly – but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
Kinky Friedman
Who but an atheist could think of leaving the world without having first made up his account?
It is then he will find in what mighty stead that heathen goddess, that virtue, which you and all other deists of the age adore, will stand him.
Tom Jones (1749) by Henry Fielding
Avoid at all cost the priorities in your life that aren’t in your top five, because they’re the ambitions insufficiently important to form the core of your life, yet seductive enough to distract you from the priorities that matter most.
Oliver Burkeman
Anomie Theory describes the effects of early industrialism and the resulting social division of labor with rising suicide rate. Accordingly, in times of social upheaval, “collective consciousness” is weakened and previous norms, moral convictions, and controls dwindle.
Durkheim
The world is a post-apocalyptic ecocide desert wasteland caused by societal collapse and warfare, where petrol and water are scarce resources.
Listen to preachers, listen to fools; watch them make their own rules. One is conditioned to rule & control. Media sells. You live the role.
–Black Sabbath
“Computer,” said Zaphod, “tell us again what our present trajectory is.”
“A real pleasure, feller,” it burbled, “we are currently in orbit at an altitude of 300 miles around the legendary planet of Magrathea.”
“Proving nothing,” said Ford. “I wouldn’t trust that computer to speak my weight.”
“I can do that for you, sure,” enthused the computer, punching out more tickertape. “I can even work out your personality problems to 10 decimal places if it will help.”
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)
When you’re in a place of natural silence, you’re not alone, and you can feel it. Whether it’s birdcalls from miles away or the proximity of a giant tree whose warm tones you can feel, there’s a presence, It’s a quieting experience.
–Gordon Hempton, in August 2023 Sun Magazine