Absurdists

"Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder."

"I lie in the lean hours awake listening to the swell born somewhere in the Atlantic rising and falling, rising and falling wave on wave on the long shore by the village that is without light and companionless. And the thought comes of that other being who is awake, too, letting our prayers break on him, not like this for a few hours, but for days, years, for eternity."

""Sunlight's a thing that needs a window Before it enter a dark room. Windows don't happen." So two old poets, Hunched at their beer in the low haze Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran Noisily by them, glib with prose."

"They left no books, Memorial to their lonely thought In grey parishes: rather they wrote On men's hearts and in the minds Of young children sublime words Too soon forgotten. God in his time Or out of time will correct this."

"There is blood in my veins That has run clear of the stain Contracted in so many loins."

"Art is recuperation from time. I lie back convalescing upon the prospect of a harvest already at hand."

"The nearest we approach God…is as creative beings. The poet, by echoing the primary imagination, recreates. Through his work he forces those who read him to do the same, thus bringing them... nearer to the actual being of God as displayed in action."

"Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth."

"It seems wrong that out of this bird, Black, bold, a suggestion of dark Places about it, there yet should come Such rich music, as though the notes’ Ore were changed to a rare metal At one touch of that bright bill."

"He looks like he’d be a hellcat in a fight. Tom and I agreed that he was easily the best qualified. But he doesn’t know anything about books, and I need educated people around me. That may sound snobbish, but so what?"

"I do believe that man is a rope between animal and superman. But the superman I'm thinking of isn't Nietzsche's. The real superhuman, man or woman, is the person who's rid himself of all prejudices, neuroses, and psychoses, who realizes his full potential as a human being, who acts naturally on the basis of gentleness, compassion, and love, who thinks for himself and refuses to follow the herd. That's the genuine dyed-in-the-wool superman."

"I, who hated the fat, smug, oily, stinking, ignorant, hypocritical, parasitical priests! And their unfeeling, merciless, cruel God!"

"You prize rank too highly."

"Chance, another word for destiny."

"“What does that mean?” “I don’t know, but it sounds deep. I’ll think up an explanation later.”"

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in our lousy genes. Or in the failure of one’s conquest of one’s self. The fault, dear Brutus, is in our fear of knowing ourselves."

"People who believed in Him were deluded. The believers in God might be intelligent, but they were mentally benighted. The gears in that part of the brain which dealt with religion had been put into neutral, and they were spinning. Or the circuit of religion had been disconnected from the main circuit of the intellect. That was a bad analogy. People use their intellect to justify the nonintellective, emotionally based phenomenon called religion. Often brilliantly. But, as far as she was concerned, uselessly."

"Burton thought the man was crazy, though he was discreet enough not to say so. He and his crew had fallen into the hands of fanatics. Fortunately, the god had told Metusael that his worshipers must hurt no one unless it was in self-defense. However, he knew from experience that “self-defense” could mean whatever a person or group wanted it to mean."

"Nightmare in paradise. Or what could have been paradise if so many human beings did not insist on make in a hell of it."

"TV, the worst thing that had happened to the twentieth century. After the atom bomb and overpopulation, of course."

"But he’s sincere. Which doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about."

"Dreams haunted The Riverworld."

"He was stiff and sometimes a little strange, which was what you’d expect from an engineer, but he had a moral backbone as inflexible as a fossilized dinosaur’s."

"“Would you like to talk?” “When I dream, I am talking.” “But to yourself.” “Who knows me better?” He laughed softly. “And who can deceive you better,” she said a little tartly."

"It was not that he was unintelligent. It was just that he was not emotionally able to comprehend democracy."

"A miracle: a chance distribution of events, occurring one time in a billion."

"But we may not be able to climb high enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise."

"Actors didn’t have to be politicians, but politicians had to be actors."

"Tell me, is this true or is it just one of those tales that people like to make up to worry others?"

"Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts."

"“I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!” “I don’t remember offering you any money.”"

"Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence."

"Where this area had been beautiful with its many trees and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been necessary to create ugliness to build a beautiful boat."

"“It’s a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks impressive and will kill a man. But it’s wasteful and inefficient.” “You make it sound like a congressman,” Sam said."

"His thinking wasn’t logical. But whatever the philosophers claimed, the main use of logic was to justify your emotions."

"I ought to arrest your assertions for vagrancy. They certainly are without any visible support."

"Styles was an old Mississippi pilot, a handsome youth, no liar, though given to inflating facts."

"Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate."

"Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half."

"The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights."

"Then she warned her self—for the ten thousandth time?—that she must not be as guilty of prejudice as others. Find the facts first and study them before judgment."

"“You must not stereotype!” Cyrano cried. “And you are right,” she said. “That is a feeling I loathe, and yet I find myself doing it all the time. However, so often…well, most people are living stereotypes, aren’t they?”"

"In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended."

"Kazz thought that putting a lump on Oskas’ head was very funny. He would have considered it to be even a better joke if the chief had drowned. Yet, among his crewmates, he was as sociable, tender, and compassionate a man as anyone could ask for. He was a primitive, and all primitives, civilized or preliterate, were tribal people. Only the tribe consisted of human beings and were treated as such. All outside the tribe though some might be considered friends, were not quite human. Therefore, they did not have to be treated as if they were completely human."

"All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter."

"Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”"

"Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last. Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness. Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone. It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness. A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?"

"His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him. He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!""

"The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side. The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity."

"Yesterday's monomaniac is tomorrow's messiah…"