#ran

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#ancient-greeks #atheism #boredom #brotherhood #cana

I am a rank individualist. ↗

— Arthur Keith

#i #i am #individualist #rank

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. ↗

— Helen Keller

#awkwardness #barrier #book #discourses #disenfranchised

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. ↗

— Helen Keller

#lived #miles #potent #smell #thousands

Dave and I had been song writers in Nashville, trying to get around, out hustling, trying to meet people. We randomly met Hillary out in town one night. She said she was a singer. I asked her if she would like to write some songs with Dave and me, and a week later she came over. Instantaneously we had this chemistry. ↗

— Charles Kelley

#asked #been #came #chemistry #dave

I think my iTunes is a kind of strange and embarrassing mix of show tunes and artists that I have no perception of whether or not they're huge or not, you know? I'm the kind of person who doesn't realize that The Arcade Fire is a big deal, but then I expect everybody to know Cocoon, and people tend to not know Cocoon. ↗

— Anna Kendrick

#artists #big #big deal #cocoon #deal

I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant. ↗

— John F. Kennedy

#affiliation #against #american #away #either

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well. ↗

— Patrick J. Kennedy

#add #enough #fails #franklin #franklin roosevelt

If we are really anxious not to have nuclear weapons in Iran, the first thing is to call an international conference on abolishing all nuclear weapons, including Israeli nuclear weapons. ↗

— Bruce Kent

#call #conference #first #first thing #including

I don't think you can replaces great themes. But I think people do want to hear fresh arrangements of them. They don't want to hear them played the same way all the time. ↗

— Stan Kenton

#fresh #great #hear #i #i think