Quotes4study

"We want to create puppets that pull their own strings."

Ann Marion

The fibres of all things have their tension, and are strained like the strings of a lyre.

_Thoreau._

episode, I’d had a sense of déjà-vu, a sense of having read this article, or one very like it, at least once before. Oh, a dead parachutist: one of those. Everyone can recognize and understand that situation. Before I’d ever heard of Vanuatans, the first joke I learnt to tell as a child was about a classified ad for a used parachute, “no strings attached.” To the anthropologist, as I explained before, it’s generic episodes and phenomena that stand out as significant, not singular ones. To the anthropologist, there’s no such thing as a singular episode, a singular phenomenon—only a set of variations on generic ones; the more generic, therefore, the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled archetype.

Tom McCarthy

A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 1809- ----.     _The Voiceless._

The string that jars / When rudely touch'd, ungrateful to the sense, / With pleasure feels the master's flying fingers, / Swells into harmony and charms the hearers.

_Rowe._

He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

John Green

Our life contains a thousand springs, / And dies if one be gone; / Strange that a harp of thousand strings / Should keep in tune so long.

_Watts._

Responsibility's like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight.

William McFee (born 15 June 1881

Men of great learning or genius are too full to be exact, and therefore choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.

_Spectator._

These were the moments I wished I were dead, when I was too weak to do anything about it. It was nature’s cruel irony, stringing me along.

Pepper Winters

Nature is an ?olian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.

_Novalis._

Always have two strings to your bow.

Proverb.

Till the hand ... from reed or string / Draws out faint echoes of the voice Divine / That bring God nearer to a faithless world.

_Lewis Morris._

Cithar?dus / Ridetur chorda qui semper obberrat eadem=--The harper who is always at fault on the same string is derided.

Horace.

If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I 'ld whistle her off and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Othello. Act iii. Sc. 3._

He that is tied with one slender string, such as one resolute struggle would break, is prisoner only to his own sloth; and who would pity his thraldom?

_Decay of Piety._

We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.

Ann Marion

When two brethren strings are set alike, / To move them both but one of them we strike.

_Cowley._

The heart is like a musical instrument of many strings, all the chords of which require putting in harmony.

_Saadi._

Our peasant= (Burns) =showed himself among us, "a soul like an ?olian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate melody."

_Carlyle._

Woman's virtue is the music of stringed instruments, which sound best in a room; but man's that of wind instruments, which sound best in the open air.

_Jean Paul._

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.

Charlotte Brontë

Wilt thou know a man, above all a mankind, by stringing together beadrolls of what thou namest facts? The man is the spirit he worked in; not what he did, but what he became.

_Carlyle._

The brain is waking and with it the mind is returning. It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the head mass becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns. Now as the waking body rouses, subpatterns of this great harmony of activity stretch down into the unlit tracks of the stalk-piece of the scheme. Strings of flashing and travelling sparks engage the lengths of it. This means that the body is up and rises to meet its waking day.

Charles Scott Sherrington

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.

John Muir

Strange that a harp of thousand strings Should keep in tune so long!

ISAAC WATTS. 1674-1748.     _Hymns and Spiritual Songs. Book ii. Hymn 19._

Or almost like a spider, who, confin'd In her web's centre, shakt with every winde, Moves in an instant if the buzzing flie Stir but a string of her lawn canapie.

DU BARTAS. 1544-1590.     _First Week, Sixth Day._

Themistocles said that he certainly could not make use of any stringed instrument; could only, were a small and obscure city put into his hands, make it great and glorious.

PLUTARCH. 46(?)-120(?) A. D.     _Life of Themistocles._

O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, Art more engag'd! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel, Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 3._

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing Such notes as, warbled to the string, Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek.

JOHN MILTON. 1608-1674.     _Il Penseroso. Line 105._

The string o'erstretched breaks, and the music flies; / The string o'erslack is dumb, and music dies; / Tune us the sitar neither low nor high.

_Sir Edwin Arnold._

Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-1616.     _Troilus and Cressida. Act i. Sc. 3._

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

_Thomas Fuller._

A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility,-- Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part.

ROBERT HERRICK. 1591-1674.     _Delight in Disorder._

The Bible is the writing of the living God. Each letter was penned with an almighty finger. Each word in it dropped from the everlasting lips. Each sentence was dictated by the Holy Spirit. Albeit that Moses was employed to write his histories with his fiery pen, God guided that pen. It may be that David touched his harp, and let sweet psalms of melody drop from his fingers; but God moved his hands over the living strings of his golden harp. Solomon sang canticles of love and gave forth words of consummate wisdom; but God directed his lips, and made the preacher eloquent. If I follow the thundering Nahum, when his horses plough the waters; or Habakkuk, when he sees the tents of Cushan in affliction; if I read Malachi, when the earth is burning like an oven; if I turn to the smooth page of John, who tells of love; or the rugged chapters of Peter, who speaks of fire devouring God's enemies; if I turn aside to Jude, who launches forth anathemas upon the foes of God--everywhere I find God speaking; it is God's voice, not man's; the words are God's words; the words of the Eternal, the Invisible, the Almighty, the Jehovah of ages. This Bible is God's Bible; and when I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it, saying, "I am the Book of God. Man, read me. I am God's writing. Study my page, for I was penned by God. Love me, for He is my Author, and you will see Him visible and manifest everywhere."--_Spurgeon._

Various     Thoughts for the Quiet Hour

Chi troppo abbraccia nulla stringe=--He who grasps at too much holds fast nothing.

_It. Pr._

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

BISHOP HALL. 1574-1656.     _Christian Moderation. Introduction._

It's very sad to lose your child just when he was beginning to bind himself to you, and I don't know that it is much consolation to reflect that the longer he had wound himself up in your heart-strings the worse the tear would have been, which seems to have been inevitable sooner or later. One does not weigh and measure these things while grief is fresh, and in my experience a deep plunge into the waters of sorrow is the hopefullest way of getting through them on to one's daily road of life again. No one can help another very much in these crises of life; but love and sympathy count for something.

T. H. Huxley     Aphorisms and Reflections from the Works of T. H. Huxley

Strictly speaking, the imagination is never governed; it is always the ruling and divine power, and the rest of the man is to it only as an instrument which it sounds, or a tablet on which it writes; clearly and sublimely if the wax be smooth and the strings true, grotesquely and wildly if they are stained and broken.

_Ruskin._

There 's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy.

THOMAS HOOD. 1798-1845.     _Ode to Melancholy._

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.

_Lamb:._

We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

Alan Moore in Watchmen (born 18 November 1953

There are chords in the human heart, strange, varying strings, which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view.--_Dickens._

Maturin M. Ballou     Pearls of Thought

You ever pull a stunt like you did last night again and I will use your intestines to string your Les Paul.

Jay Crownover

Men of genius have acuter feelings than common men; they are like the wind-harp, which answers to the breath that touches it, now low and sweet, now rising into wild swell or angry scream, as the strings are swept by some passing gust.

_Froude._

Ridetur chorda qui semper oberrat eadem=--He is laughed at who is for ever harping away on the same string.

Horace.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Kahlil Gibran

There's not a string attuned to mirth / But has its chord in melancholy.

_Hood._

The standard freak show chic bullshit which had beset the generation after mine thanks to a string of wildly successful reality shows centering on competitive body modification. I’d had fun watching Manual Mutants and Oddfellas when they first started, but then The League of Zeroes came along and made things too grotesque. They lost me when Rectal Rachelle died on the table during her ass-neck implant surgery.

Jeremy Robert Johnson

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist... It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever... Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

Kurt Vonnegut (recent death

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

Ulysses S. Grant

Three merry boys, and three merry boys, And three merry boys are we, As ever did sing in a hempen string Under the gallows-tree.

JOHN FLETCHER. 1576-1625.     _The Bloody Brother. Act iii. Sc. 2._

Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string.

_Emerson._

Freends are like fiddle-strings; they maunna be screwed ower tight.

_Sc. Pr._

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,--there, if one must speak out, the real man.

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS. 121-180 A. D.     _Meditations. x. 38._

The Gordian Maxim:

    If a string has one end, it has another.

Fortune Cookie

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations

    Sign on a cabin door of a Soviet Black Sea cruise liner:

        Helpsavering apparata in emergings behold many whistles!

        Associate the stringing apparata about the bosums and meet

        behind, flee then to the indifferent lifesaveringshippen

        obedicing the instructs of the vessel.

    On the door in a Belgrade hotel:

        Let us know about any unficiency as well as leaking on

        the service. Our utmost will improve it.

        -- Colin Bowles

Fortune Cookie

Actually, typing random strings in the Finder does the equivalent of

filename completion.

(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands: file

completion vs. the Mac Finder.)

Fortune Cookie

But then it's a bit odd to think that declaring something int could

actually slow down the program, if it ended up forcing more conversions

back to string.

        -- Larry Wall in <199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org>

Fortune Cookie

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no

evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic operators together.

        -- Steve Higgins

Fortune Cookie

Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.

Fortune Cookie

Bacon's not the only thing that's cured by hanging from a string.

Fortune Cookie

Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings.

(With 8.0 they're rethinking that.  Of course, Perl rethought that from

the start.)

        -- Larry Wall in <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org>

Fortune Cookie

There is only one word for aid that is genuinely without strings,

and that word is blackmail.

        -- Colm Brogan

Fortune Cookie

A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who

had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether

various objects had Buddha-nature or not.  To such a question Tortue

invariably sat silent.  The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,

and a moonlit night.  One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and

asked the same question.  In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop

between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex

>string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk.  At that moment, the monk

was enlightened.

From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue.  Instead, he made string after

>string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,

who passed it on to theirs.

Fortune Cookie

We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.

        -- Ann Marion

Fortune Cookie

    Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines

of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...

    Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced

only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen.  In it his mind floated freely,

able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,

undistracted by any outside disturbances.  Logical structures no longer

inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.

All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,

became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships

not evident to ordinary vision.  Like beads strung on a string of their own

meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by

all.  Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming

all others.  And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,

destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.

    Time passed, unheeded.

    Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and

Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.

        -- Wayfarer

Fortune Cookie

"We want to create puppets that pull their own strings."

-- Ann Marion

"Would this make them Marionettes?"

        -- Jeff Daiell

Fortune Cookie

    A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a

>strings of pearls.  The spirit and intent of the program should be retained

throughout.  There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless

loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming

rigidity.

    A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'.  What is this

law?  It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the

way that astonishes him least.

    A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit.  The

program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward

appearances.

    If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of

disorder and confusion.  The only way to correct this is to rewrite the

program.

        -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

Fortune Cookie

Harp not on that string.

        -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"

Fortune Cookie

Engram, n.:

    1. The physical manifestation of human memory -- "the engram."

2. A particular memory in physical form.  [Usage note:  this term is no longer

in common use.  Prior to Wilson and Magruder's historic discovery, the nature

of the engram was a topic of intense speculation among neuroscientists,

psychologists, and even computer scientists.  In 1994 Professors M. R. Wilson

and W. V. Magruder, both of Mount St. Coax University in Palo Alto, proved

conclusively that the mammalian brain is hardwired to interpret a set of

thirty seven genetically transmitted cooperating TECO macros.  Human memory

was shown to reside in 1 million Q-registers as Huffman coded uppercase-only

ASCII strings.  Interest in the engram has declined substantially since that

time.]

        -- New Century Unabridged English Dictionary,

           3rd edition, 2007 A.D.

Fortune Cookie

Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure

that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing,

all-encompassing monster.  Allocate an array and free the middle third?

Sure!  Why not?  Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the

result to a float decimal?  Go ahead!  Free a controlled variable procedure

parameter and reallocate it before passing it back?  Overlay three different

types of variable on the same memory location?  Anything you say!  Write a

recursive macro?  Well, no, but Real Men use rescan.  How could a language

so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?

Fortune Cookie

Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate

it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around stringing</p>

cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons".

Well, you can forget it.  If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt,

the economy would collapse overnight.  The government would have to

intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving,

which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls

and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force

jets, killing and maiming thousands.  So, for the good of the nation, you

should go along with the Holiday Program.  This means you should get a large

sum of money and go to a mall.

        -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"

Fortune Cookie

Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem.  You see, during

a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin

parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around.  So,

to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the

end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the

page of the score before the bass cue.  As the basses grew more and more

inebriated, two of them fell asleep.  The conductor grew quite nervous (he

was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth;

the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out.

Fortune Cookie

Strange things are done to be number one

In selling the computer            The Druids were entrepreneurs,

IBM has their strategem            And they built a granite box

Which steadily grows acuter,        It tracked the moon, warned of monsoons,

And Honeywell competes like Hell,    And forecast the equinox

But the story's missing link        Their price was right, their future

Is the system old at Stonemenge sold        bright,

By the firm of Druids, Inc.        The prototype was sold;

                    From Stonehenge site their bits and byte

                    Would ship for Celtic gold.

The movers came to crate the frame;

It weighed a million ton!

The traffic folk thought it a joke    The man spoke true, and thus to you

(the wagon wheels just spun);        A warning from the ages;

"They'll nay sell that," the foreman    Your stock will slip if you can't ship

    spat,                What's in your brochure's pages.

"Just leave the wild weeds grow;    See if it sells without the bells

"It's Druid-kind, over-designed,    And strings that ring and quiver;

"And belly up they'll go."        Druid repute went down the chute

                    Because they couldn't deliver.

        -- Edward C. McManus, "The Computer at Stonehenge"

Fortune Cookie

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