Tempto etiam

“A “typical” suicide might be conceived as that of a gaunt young person, preferably a poet or a rejected suitor, hanging himself or taking poison in a dreary tenement on a sad November day. Statistics, however, show that more old people than young people kill themselves, that people than thin people kill themselves, that more people kill themselves in May than in any other month, and that “Gay” Vienna and “Sunny” San Diego have the world’s highest suicide rates.”

— Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense, A. A. Knopf, 1946.

“When man reared up on his hind legs he gained the free use of his hands, which, it was formerly believed, led to the development of his brain which, it was formerly believed, was worth it. Both of the latter assumptions are now disputed.”

— Bergen Evans, The Natural History of Nonsense, A. A. Knopf, 1946.

“Je me demande si la conversation réelle en temps réel ne va pas céder la place à des dialogues aseptisés et faciles, de la même façon que le fait de tuer, d’écorcher et de dépecer un animal pour le manger a été remplacé par l’accès aux paquets sous cellophane sur les étals de supermarché.”

— Susan Greenfield, 2009, lors d’un débat à la Chambre des Lords.

“It’s the strange thing about this church : it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say, we, with our permissive society and our rude jokes are obsessed. No! We have a healthy attitude : we like it, it’s fun , it’s jolly ; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult…
It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting! The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese and that in erotic terms are the Catholic Church in a nutshell.”

— Stephen Fry, Débat sur BBC World «L’Église catholique est-elle une force du bien dans le monde ?» 7 novembre 2009.

“Doesn’t he understand, these people are *British*? You’re not allowed to talk to your neighbours until you’ve nodded at them for fifteen years.”

— George, Being Human, premier épisode.

“Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn his lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and that to aspire is betty than to be blindly and impotently happy.”

— Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland, a romance of many dimensions, 1884, via Feedbooks.

“Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to set sail! (…) From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sail, they pray.”

— Euron Crow-Eye, A Feast for Crows, quatrième tome de A Saga of Ice and Fire de George R.R. Martin.

“Ce que notre civilisation a gagné en naturel, en familiarité, en proximité, elle l’a perdu en intérêt, en richesse, en modestie, et, d’abord, en sens du récit.”

— Philippe Lançon, Les voix de la nuit, chronique dans le Charlie Hebdo n° 905, 21 octobre 2009.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad.
It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
We know things are bad - worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is,”Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”
Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot - I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad.You’ve got to say, “I’m a human being, Goddamnit! My life has value!”

— Peter Finch dans le rôle de Howard Beale, Network de Sidney Lumet, 1976.