Another good selection this week as I’ve been catching up on all sorts of bits of reading.
Tax is imposed by parliament, people and corporations do not pay it voluntarily. The state coerces as much money as possible in the form of tribute to pay for the services and goods the state feels that it requires.
[brianist in a comment at http://www.badscience.net/2011/04/anarchy-for-the-uk-ish/]
The [fifth] duke [of Portland (1800-1879)], a notable eccentric landlord, gave each of his workmen a donkey and an umbrella, so they could travel to work in all weathers. He insisted that they should not salute or show him the slightest deference, and had a roller-skating rink especially constructed for their recreation.
[Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia; Pimlico Books (2001)]
Divorced, unemployed, and pissed
I aimed low in life – and missed.
[Prof. Ray Lees quoted in Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia]
Then we got softer clay and both of us turned out some quite nice little bowls and pots. It’s fearfully exciting when you do get it centred and the stuff begins to come up between your fingers. V[anessa Bell] never would make her penises long enough, which I thought very odd. Don’t you?
[Roger Fry to Duncan Grant quoted in Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia]
My dear, could you advance me a quid? There’s the most beautiful Gl passed out stone cold and naked as a duck in my kitchen.
[Nina Hamnett quoted in Mike Pentelow & Marsha Rowe; Characters of Fitzrovia. The image on the right is a torso of Nina Hamnett by sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska now in the Tate Gallery; Modigliani is supposed to have said (and Nina Hamnett oft repeated) that she had “the best tits in Europe”.]
Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.
[Will Rogers]
Relax. There are no gods and you are not going to burn in hell.
[Atheist in America at www.flamewarrior.com]
Each age finds in its favourite crimes images of what it would most love/hate to do. Our own generation of overworked, guilty, child-dominated couples makes of child-abduction the ultimate horror, perhaps because with a dark part of themselves they wish their children dead. The favourite Edwardian murder was undoubtedly centred upon adultery in the suburbs.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]
If any demonstration was needed that the battles of Ypres, Mons, Verdun, the Somme had been lunatic, it was provided in summer 1917 at Passchendaele, when Sir Douglas Haig launched an attack against the Messines Ridge south of Ypres. It was a repeat performance of the other acts of mass-slaughter: 240,000 British casualties, 70,000 dead, with German losses around 200,000. By a second attack, in November 1917, on Cambrai, Haig took the Germans by surprise and gained about four miles of mud. Ten days later the German counter-attack regained all their lost ground. If ever there was an object lesson in the folly of war, the sheer pointlessness, here it was shown in all its bloodiness.
[AN Wilson, After the Victorians]