Once in A While: A Happy Ending

Young beagle dog - Free Image on 4 Free Photos4,000 beagles rescued from animal experiments, now being adopted.

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Personal Response to Graham Greene’s “The Destructors”

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46 + 2 Bona-Fide, Essential Classic Films

(in no particular order, as selected by film teacher, aficionado, and former AB film classifier Richard Davies)

The Godfather I and II (really one long, conjoined film) (1972-1974)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
All About Eve (1950)
Psycho (1960)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The Graduate (1967)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Dr. Strangelove (1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
King Kong (1933)
The Third Man (1949)
Fantasia (1950)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
A Hard Day`s Night (1964)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
North by Northwest (1959)
Annie Hall (1977)
La Dolce Vita (1961)
War and Peace (1964-1967)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Jaws (1975)
Persona (1966)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest (1976)
American Graffiti (1973)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
The Last Picture Show (1971)
Nashville (1975)
Schindler`s List (1993)
Blow-Up (1966)
Wings of Desire (1988)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
The Verdict (1982)
High Noon (1952)
Klute (1971)
A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946)
Rear Window (1954)
Network (1976)
Patton (1970)
Hamlet (1948)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)

……………………

late additions:

12 Angry Men (1957)

Ran (1985)

The dangers of watching nothing but Netflix: How many of the above are in their system? Subscribers are kidding themselves if they really think they are getting great or classic movies on Netflix with their limited/limiting offers.

Most of my choices were from the 1940s to 1970s. My list ends in 1993. I don’t know that there’s anything after that I’d consider a bona-fide classic in the traditional/lasting/old-skool sense of the word after that date.

Foreignly-speaking, Fellini, Antonioni, Bergman, Wenders, Bondarchuk, Lester, Reed, Olivier, Powell/Pressburger, Kurosawa, and Kubrick made the list.

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Typical Stupid US Politics Headline:

“Snooki is trolling Oz.”

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Marcus Aurelius:

“Remember this–very little is needed to make a happy life.”

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Passing of Oilers’ Biggest Superfan:

Ben Stelter, 6, of brain cancer.
A lovable little guy who galvanized the Oilers season and playoff run. Tributes from Connor and other Oilers this morning. He shall be greatly missed.

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Telling Comments by/about Trump

He was chiding the military for not supporting him like Hitler’s generals.
First off, that tells you he identifies with Hitler, one of the most evil dictators that ever lived.
Secondly, that he expects absolute support from everyone around/’below’ him.
When it was pointed out that Hitler’s generals were not as loyal as Trump thinks and that they tried to kill him three times, Trump, of course–supreme doofus-ignoramus that he is–did not know that or believe that contradictory truth, living on fantasized, vainglorious, egoic surfaces as he always does and has. (Recall he wanted a European-WW2-style parade with tanks.)

I am waiting for his first indictment to break out the bubbly. I shall also break it out when he is legally prevented from running again. And I shall break out yet another bottle when the shackles are put on and he is led off as his enemies shout “Lock him up”.

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The Wisdom of Aldous Huxley

Huxley (1894-1963) was a notable intellectual, mystic, witty novelist, and consciousness expert and the author of Brave New World. He was long involved with Eastern philosophies and, notably, the human potential movement.

-All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

-It is necessary for us to be open to and conscious of information from all systems, sources, and worlds.

-It is necessary to balance reason with immediate experience.

-Life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything.

-My mind is so busy thinking about values that I don’t have time to experience them.

-Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody’s happy.

-Happiness is like coke–something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.

-Never put off the fun you can have today.

-We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

-Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, for their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

-The secret of genius to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

-Societies are composed of individuals and are good insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life.

-Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

-A love of nature keeps no factories busy.

-My father considered a walk among the mountains the equivalent of churchgoing.

-We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence.

-The proper study of mankind is books.

-The writer proposes, the readers dispose.

-Every man’s memory is his private literature.

-Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the way in which they exist, to make their life full, significant, and interesting.

-The creation by word power of something out of nothing–What is it but magic? And what may I add, what is that but literature?

-Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly–they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

-Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.

-Words are man’s first and most grandiose invention. With language he created a whole new universe.

-Much of one’s life is a prolonged effort to avoid thinking.

-…man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.

-The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline toward the region of solitude.

-If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.

-Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

-An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

-The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

-The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

-However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for.

-You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.

-One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

-Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

-That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

-It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.

-Real progress is progress in charity, all other advances being secondary thereto.

-Cruelty and compassion come with the chromosomes.

-Maybe this planet is another planet’s hell.

-Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.

-The most nearly free men have always been those who combined virtue with insight.

-At their first appearances, innovators have always been described as fools and madmen.

-I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

-There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that’s your own self.

-The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing, who in fact he is.

-Contemplation and consciousness go together. Our consciousness can be liberated by breaking the back of ego. Our most memorable experiences are ones felt/experienced upsurges of consciousness.

-Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.

-We don’t want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.

-If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

-For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

-We live together, take action, we react to one another; but always , and in all circumstances, we are by ourselves.

-You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world.

-Love is a mode of knowledge.

-One touches and, in the act of touching, one’s touched.

-After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

-Perhaps it is good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he is happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

-People believe in God because they’ve been conditioned to believe in God.

-It is natural to believe in God when you’re alone–quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.

-The only truly consistent are the dead.

-There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.

-It is a bit embarrassing, to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try to be a little kinder’.

-To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence, the constant popularity of dogs.

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The Wit and Wisdom of GBS

George Bernard Shaw Quotes:

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

You see things, you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.

The best way to get your point across is to entertain.

Animals are my friends. I don’t eat my friends.

Youth is wasted on the young.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

The biggest problem in communication is the illusion it has taken place.

Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

He knows nothing, and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

All great truths start as blasphemies.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honour.

We learn from experience that man can never learn anything from experience.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and, at last, you create what you will.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes might not be the same.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery–it’s the sincerest form of learning.

A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.

There is always danger for those who are afraid.

The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination.

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

I don’t know what I think until I write it.

There is only one religion, though a hundred versions of it.

I have my own soul. My own spark of divine fire.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.

She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.

He who has never hoped can never despair.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

We are all savages.

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them.

From a very early age, I’ve had to interrupt my education to go to school.

A man’s interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself.

Old men are dangerous; it does not matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

We don’t stop playing because we get old—we grow old because we stop playing.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who don’t have it.

Without good manners and humour, society would be intolerable and impossible.

Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

If a writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will take care of itself.

A soldier always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

I want to be all used up when I die.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

Those who cannot their minds cannot change anything.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

The things that most people want to know are usually none of their business.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future, today is a gift—that’s why it’s called the present.

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Oscar Wildeisms

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

“An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

“I can resist anything except temptation.”

“Be yourself; everybody else is already taken.”

“Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes.”

“Irony is wasted on the stupid.”

“Create yourself. Be yourself, your poem.”

“Never love anybody who treats you like you’re ordinary.”

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“I put my talent into my works; I put my genius into my life.”

“Perhaps one never seems so much at one’s ease as when one has to play a part.”

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

“I wrote when I did not know life; now that I do know the meaning of life, I have no need to write. Life cannot be written, life can only be lived.”

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”

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