raving QUOTES

21 " We went back into the Mens Apartments where there were others raving of Ships that may fly and silvered Creatures upon the Moon: Their Stories seem to have neither Head nor Tayl to them, Sir Chris. told me, but there is a Grammar in them if I could but Puzzle it out.

This is a mad Age, I replied, and there are many fitter for Bedlam than these here confin'd to a Chain or a dark Room.

A sad Reflection, Nick.

And what little Purpose have we to glory in our Reason, I continu'd, when the Brain may so suddenly be disorder'd? "

― Peter Ackroyd , Hawksmoor

22 " There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught. There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely nonintuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense. This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground. That’s all there is to know about dust. The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass. The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything. No one asks difficult questions. And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus. "

― Neal Stephenson , Cryptonomicon

23 " ...he would tell stories about the Holy City, about Solomon, a just king, a poet-king, a monarch with a thousand concubines. We weren't quite sure what concubines were, but we guessed: a concubine ... Concubines! One thousand! One thousand women in all colours and shapes - but all of them sexy, of course - one thousand - one thousand raving beauties lying side by side on a bed (what a bed! How wide it must have been!), all of them smiling, all of them reaching out their arms, all of them saying something in Hebrew - but the meaning was unmistakeable - " Come here, sweety." One thousand women. If one were to spend twenty, or fifteen minutes with each one of them, how long would it take to...? A problem that our math teacher never assigned us for homework...! "

24 " It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of death; to know that hope is gone, and recovery impossible; and to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long, nights - such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart, the pent-up, hidden secrets of many years, poured forth by the unconscious helpless being before you; and to think how little the reserve, and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been told in the wanderings of dying men; tales so full of guilt and crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by what they heard and saw; and many a wretch has died alone, raving of deeds, the very name of which, has driven the boldest man away.(" The Drunkard's Death" ) "

25 " I have tried to protect myself against men, to react against their madness to discern its source; I have listened and I have seen--and I have been afraid of acting for the same motives or for any motive whatever, of believing in the same ghosts or in any other ghost, of letting myself be engulfed by the same intoxications or by some other... afraid, in short, of raving in common and of expiring in a horde of ecstasies. "

― Emil M. Cioran

26 " How long can we maintain? I wonder. How long before one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family. Will he make that grim connection.. "

― Hunter S. Thompson , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

27 " The Bible's " it's better to give than receive" was not the raving of a lunatic. It goes back to a recurring theme that I've found in almost all my experiments: behaviour shapes your thoughts. My brain sees me giving a gift to Julie. My brain concludes I must really love her. I love her all the more. Which means I'm happier in my relationship, if a bit poorer. "

28 " You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so. "

― Doris Lessing

29 " Vulgar of manner overfed. Overdressed and underbred Heartless Godless hell's delight Rude by day and lewd by night Bedwarfed the man o'ergrown the brute Ruled by boss and prostitute Purple-robed and pauper-clad Raving rotting money-mad A squirming herd in Mammon's mesh A wilderness of human flesh Crazed with avarice lust and rum New York thy name's Delirium. "

30 " Fortunately the City is vigilant. It too has its secret weapons. Since the summer it has released safety valves that form part of a wonderful mechanism, known only to itself. For the past three months we’ve noticed the most heartening appearance all over the place of eccentrics, more or less raving lunatics, cranks, and reinvigorating crackpots. "

― Jacques Yonnet , Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City

31 " Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad. "

― Fyodor Dostoevsky

32 " I had an art teacher who's the reason I got there in high school who encouraged me to go to Alabama. That's where she had gone and kept raving over their art department. "

33 " But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac. "

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