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1 " You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough. "
― Aldous Huxley
2 " The Devil answer'd: bray a fool in a morter with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him; if Jesus Christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbaths God? murder those who were murder'd because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defense before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments; Jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules. "
― William Blake , The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: In Full Color
3 " In the books I find the thrum of everything unsayable. The characters weep the way I want to, love the way I want to, cry, die, beat their breasts, and bray with life. "
― Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich , The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir
4 " THOMAS GuiltyOf mankind. I have perpetrated human nature. My father and mother were accessories before the fact, But there’ll be no accessories after the fact, By my virility there won’t! Just see me As I am, like a perambulating Vegetable, patched with inconsequential Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the meansOf life, balanced on folding bones, my sexNo Beauty but a blemish to be hiddenBehind judicious rags, driven and scorched By boomerang rages and lunacies which neverTouch the accommodating artichokeOr the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed:I defend myself against pain and death by painAnd death, and make the world go round, they tell meBy one of my less lethal appetites:Half this grotesque life I spend in a state Of slow decomposition, using The name of unconsidered God as a pedestal On which I stand and bray that I’m bestOf beasts, until under some patientMoon or other I fall to pieces, Like a cake of dung. Is there a slut would Hold this in her arms and put her lips against it?JENNETSluts are only human. By a quirkOf unastonished nature, your obscene Decaying figure of vegetable funCan drag upon a woman’s heart, as thoughHeaven were dragging up the roots of hell. What is to be done? Something compels us into The terrible fallacy that man is desirable and there’s no escaping into truth. The crimesAnd cruelties leave us longing, and campaigning Love still pitches his tent of light amongThe suns and moons. You may be decay and a platitudeOf flesh, but I have no other such memory of life. You may be corrupt as ancient applies, well thenCorruption is what I most willingly harvest. You are Evil, Hell, the Father of Lies; if soHell is my home and my days of good were a holiday:Hell is my hill and the world slopes away from itInto insignificance. I have come suddenlyUpon my heart and where it is I see no help for. "
― Christopher Fry
5 " An ass may bray a good while before he shakes the stars down. "
― George Eliot
6 " The very end of me mom's road is the back entrance to Bray Head. Usually climb it when I get home. "
7 " I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am. "