#practical

The practical joker despises his victims, but at the same time he envies them because their desires, however childish and mistaken, are real to them, whereas he has no desire which he can call his own. His goal, to make game of others, makes his existence absolutely dependent upon theirs; when he is alone, he is a nullity. Iago’s self-description, I am not what I am, is correct and the negation of the Divine I am that I am. If the word motive is given its normal meaning of a positive purpose of the self like sex, money, glory, etc., then the practical joker is without motive. Yet the professional practical joker is certainly driven, like a gambler, to his activity, but the drive is negative, a fear of lacking concrete self, of being nobody. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#money

This ceremony and the intellectual aura associated with the Nobel Prizes have grown from the wisdom of a practical chemist who wrote a remarkable will. ↗

— Stanford Moore

#aura #ceremony #chemist #grown #intellectual

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#bored #creative #disappointed #dynamic #every

During practically all of my public life, I have been a sincere advocate of an agreement between the leading nations of the world to set up all the necessary international machinery that would bring about a practical abolition of war between civilized nations. ↗

— George William Norris

#about #advocate #agreement #been #between

There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life. ↗

— Thomas Huxley

#early #failures #few #greatest #life

You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label. ↗

— Edward Norton

#every #films #got #independent #independent films

The practical reality of managing cars in the family - I do 36-month leases. I think they're horrible investments. And you want to give them back after their warranty is over. ↗

— Kevin O'Leary

#back #cars #family #give #horrible

Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers. ↗

— Austin O'Malley

#knees #practical #prayer #shoes #soles

In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants. ↗

— John Boyd Orr

#british empire #brought #controlled #earth #empire

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures. ↗

— Michael Novak

#awful #bishop #character #even #every