Howling Quotes - page 2
"Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man's mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.”
He rattled his glass.
Nathan refilled it.
Faust drank. "But to ask why,” he continued, "implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.”
He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass.
He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.
Michael Swanwick
It was a day of gloom, and strange suspense,
And feverish, and inexplicable dread,
In Herculaneum's walls. The heavy, thick,
And torrid atmosphere; the solid, vast,
And strong--edg'd clouds, that through the firmament
In various and opposing courses moved:
The wild scream of the solitary bird
That, at long intervals, flew terror-driven
On high:--the howling of the red-ey'd dog
As he gaz'd trembling on the angry heavens:
The hollow moans that swept along the air,
Though every wind was lock'd,-portended all
That nature with some dire event was big,
And labour'd in its birth.
Edwin Atherstone
But this, this which we say before we're sorry,
This which we live behind our unseen faces,
Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither
Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished,
For we are incomplete and know no future,
And we are howling or dancing out our souls
In beating syllables before the curtain:
We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.
Delmore Schwartz
England, as I persuade myself, still contains in it many kings; possesses, as old Rome did, many men not needing "election" to command, but eternally elected for it by the Maker Himself. England's one hope is in these, just now. They are among the silent, I believe; mostly far away from platforms and public palaverings; not speaking forth the image of their nobleness in transitory words, but imprinting it, each on his own little section of the world, in silent facts, in modest valiant actions, that will endure forevermore. They must sit silent no longer. They are summoned to assert themselves; to act forth, and articulately vindicate, in the teeth of howling multitudes, of a world too justly maddened into all manner of delirious clamors, what of wisdom they derive from God.
Thomas Carlyle
On the short walk to the front past the others, either bowing or kneeling or whirling or howling, I feel glad that my life is this way; so full of jarring experience. Sometimes you feel that life is full and beautiful, all these worlds, all these people, all these experiences, all this wonder. You never know when you will encounter magic. Some solitary moment in a park can suddenly burst open with a spray of preschool children in high-vis vests, hand in hand; maybe the teacher will ask you for directions, and the children will look at you, curious and open, and you'll see that they are perfect.
Russell Brand