Home > Work > The Circus of Dr. Lao
1 " Whatsa mattah allee time talkee talk bear business? Me no savvee bear business. You no like this Gloddam show, you go somewhere else. "
― Charles G. Finney , The Circus of Dr. Lao
2 " I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy.And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal. "
3 " I was like you once, long time ago. I believed in the dignity of man. Decency. Humanity. But I was lucky. I found out the truth early, boy. And what is the truth, Stark? It's all very simple. There's no such thing as the dignity of man. Man is a base, pathetic and vulgar animal. "
4 " These are the sports, the offthrows, of the universe instead of the species; these are the weird children of the lust of the spheres. "
5 " Tomorrow will be like today, and the day after tomorrow will be like day before yesterday," said Apollonius. "I see your remaining days each as quiet, tedious collections of hours. You will not travel anywhere. You will think no new thoughts. You will experience no new passions. Older you will become but not wiser. Stiffer but not more dignified. Childless you are, and childless you shall remain. Of that suppleness you once commanded in your youth, of that strange simplicity which once attracted a few men to you, neither endures, nor shall you recapture any of them anymore. People will talk to you and visit with you out of sentiment or pity, not because you have anything to offer them. Have you ever seen an old cornstalk turning brown, dying, but refusing to fall over, upon which stray birds alight now and then, hardly remarking what it is they perch on? That is you. I cannot fathom your place in life's economy. A living thing should either create or destroy according to its capacity and caprice, but you, you do neither. You only live on dreaming of the nice things you would like to have happen to you but which never happen; and you wonder vaguely why the young lives about you which you occasionally chide for a fancied impropriety never listen to you and seem to flee at your approach. When you die you will be buried and forgotten and that is all. The morticians will enclose you in a worm-proof casket, thus sealing even unto eternity the clay of your uselessness. And for all the good or evil, creation or destruction, that your living might have accomplished, you might just as well has never lived at all. I cannot see the purpose in such a life. I can see in it only vulgar, shocking waste. "
6 " You no like this Gloddman show, you go somewhere else. "
7 " ...it obeys none of the natural laws of hereditary and environmental change, pays no attention to the survival of the fittest, positively sneers at any attempt on the part of man to work out a rational life cycle, is possibly immortal, unquestionably immoral, evidences anabolism but not katabolism, ruts, spawns, and breeds but does not reproduce, lays no eggs, builds no nests, seeks but does not find, wanders but does not rest. "
8 " The world is my idea; as such I present it to you. I have my own set of weights and measures and my own table for computing values. You are privileged to have yours. "
9 " This is the circus of Dr. Lao.We show you things that you don't know.We tell you of places you'll never go.We've searched the world both high and lowTo capture the beasts for this marvelous showFrom mountains where maddened winds did blowTo islands where zephyrs breathed sweet and low.Oh, we've spared no pains and we've spared no dough;And we've dug at the secrets of long ago;And we've risen to Heaven and plunged Below,For we wanted to make it one hell of a show.And the things you'll see in your brains will glowLong past the time when the winter snowHas frozen the summer's furbelow.For this is the circus of Dr. Lao.And youth may come and age may go;But no more circuses like this show! "