Favorite Quote: Aldous Huxley - The Devils of Loudon

" The idolatrous transformation - of the relative into the absolute, and the all-too-human into the divine - makes it possible for man to indulge his ugliest passion, in the firm belief that he is working for the highest good."

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A couple of my favorite poems:

all ignorance toboggans into know - e. e. cummings (1894 - 1962)

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever, even snow melts;
and if spring should spoil the game, what then?

all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five, i'd still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you, exceedingly too small.

Swoop (shrill collective myth) into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madgeandmabel dickanddave
--tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they'll scarcely find us (if they do,
we'll move away still further - into now
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From the 2nd Epistle, of his Essay on Man: - Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall:
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
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