#sca

What Pascal overlooked was the hair-raising possibility that God might out-Luther Luther. A special area in hell might be reserved for those who go to mass. Or God might punish those whose faith is prompted by prudence. Perhaps God prefers the abstinent to those who whore around with some denomination he despises. Perhaps he reserves special rewards for those who deny themselves the comfort of belief. Perhaps the intellectual ascetic will win all while those who compromised their intellectual integrity lose everything. There are many other possibilities. There might be many gods, including one who favors people like Pascal; but the other gods might overpower or outvote him, à la Homer. Nietzsche might well have applied to Pascal his cutting remark about Kant: when he wagered on God, the great mathematician 'became an idiot. ↗

— Walter Kaufmann

#faith

My friend Paul Ryan talks about fiscal responsibility, but voted to put two wars on a credit card. ↗

— Steny Hoyer

#card #credit #credit card #fiscal #fiscal responsibility

The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it: so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. ↗

— Elbert Hubbard

#failure #fine #know #line #often

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#contrast #even #everything #little #need

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course. ↗

— John Hurt

#character #course #darkness #dimension #else

I saw a guy being really abusive to his girlfriend. She was asking people to help, but no one would. When he grabbed her, I tried to separate them, but he turned on me. I punched him and knocked him down. It wasn't a scandal; I was just doing what anybody should. ↗

— Timothy Hutton

#asking #being #doing #down #girlfriend

The existence is a tremendous curiosity, with in the course of the years, the discovery of yourself in your inmost evolutions. With the age you feel better than you are, what you represent. Which means a little at the planet's scale. ↗

— Jacky Ickx

#better #course #curiosity #discovery #evolutions

'Detroit 1-8-7' - the numbers are police slang for murder - is filmed in that blue-collar Michigan city, providing a flavor of authenticity. Detroit offers a unique visual landscape that tells the story of the city and what it's been through. ↗

— Michael Imperioli

#been #blue-collar #city #detroit #filmed

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. ↗

— John Irving

#almost #day #described #diary #drawing

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible. ↗

— Washington Irving

#become #charm #distance #fades #fairy