“to say a man is fallen in love … carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man: —this is recurring again to Plato’s opinion, which with all his divinityship,— I hold to be damnable and heretical”

“Of the few legitimate sons of Adam whose breasts never felt what the sting of love was, —(maintaining first, all misogynists to be bastards,)….”

“Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.”

“I am persuaded of it, madam, as much as can be, that both man and woman bear pain and sorrow (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.”

“for that wit and judgement in this world never go together, inasmuch as they are two operations differing from each other as wide as east from west —so says Locke—so are farting and hiccuping, say I.”

“It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates every thing to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you hear, read, or understand. This is of great use.”

“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —they are the life, the soul of reading!”

namely, that one raises a sum, and the other a laugh at your expence, and thinks no more about it. Interest, however, still runs in both cases”

“The Mortgager and Mortgagee differ the one from the other not more in length of purse, than the Jester and Jestée do …. But in this comparison between them runs, as the scholiacists call it, upon all-four, which bye the bye is upon one or two more legs than some of the best of Homers can pretend to

We eventually got Souls out of it so it’s probably still a net win despite Nintendo spending the next three decades running away from Metroid.

Both Hunter S Thompson and Thomas Pynchon in these passages sense a key element of American political life. Progress feels inevitable, yet people feel powerless to enact it.

Anyway, Dr Oz is in charge of Medicaid now.

“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Thinking about East of Eden today.

“No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His anger and frustration will grow without limit. And he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it . . .”

“the Grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out on the line. … He is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything.”