There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that we...re real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Freud makes much of the distinction between jokes which just barely make sense, and those whose main value lies in the sense they ...make. He calls the first kind "jests," and thinks them radically distinct from wit. In jests our motive is the mere pleasure that children have in talking nonsense, a pleasure that he thinks is not of itself comic. The fact that our nonsense does just barely, in another sense, make sense, serves only to appease our critical judgment and release us from our adult task of inhibiting these childish proclivities. The energy which we had been employing in this task, however, being thus liberated, not only greatly increases our pleasure in the nonsense, but, in some manner which Freud does not even try to explain, makes it a comic pleasure. When, however, besides barely making sense, a piece of nonsense actually "says a mouthful" on some subject of current interest, or taps our deeper reservoirs of sexual and aggressive passion, then the pleasure is still greater--and still more comic, I suppose--and the jest is properly called wit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and... release, rise and fall.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Time advances: facts accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect d...ay. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I drink the five o'clock martinis and poke at this dry page like a rough... goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood for a mother and lounge in sad stuff with love to catch and catch as catch can.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go, and catch a falling star, Get with child a mandrake root,... Tell me, where all past years are, Or who cleft the devil's foot, Teach me to her mermaids singing, Or to keep off envy's stinging, And find What wind Serves to advance an honest mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly. If th' assassination... Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success--that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all!--here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to come.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But, where the road runs near the stream, Oft through the trees they catch a glance... Of passing troops in the sun's beam-- Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance! Forth to the world those soldiers fare, To life, to cities, and to war!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »