Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with diligence.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe —because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles — kingons, or possibly queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

“Get in! Come along!” The crowd laughed. “D'you hear, she'll gallop!”

“Gallop indeed! She has not had a gallop in her for the last ten years!”

“She'll jog along!”

“Don't you mind her, mates, bring a whip each of you, get ready!”

“All right! Give it to her!”

They all clambered into Mikolka's cart, laughing and making jokes. Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman. She was dressed in red cotton, in a pointed, beaded headdress and thick leather shoes; she was cracking nuts and laughing. The crowd round them was laughing too and indeed, how could they help laughing? That wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to help Mikolka. With the cry of “now,” the mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Mikolka flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop.

“Let me get in, too, mates,” shouted a young man in the crowd whose appetite was aroused.

“Get in, all get in,” cried Mikolka, “she will draw you all. I'll beat her to death!” And he thrashed and thrashed at the mare, beside himself with fury.

“Father, father,” he cried, “father, what are they doing? Father, they are beating the poor horse!”

“Come along, come along!” said his father. “They are drunken and foolish, they are in fun; come away, don't look!” and he tried to draw him away, but he tore himself away from his hand, and, beside himself with horror, ran to the horse. The poor beast was in a bad way. She was gasping, standing still, then tugging again and almost falling. “Beat her to death,” cried Mikolka, “it's come to that. I'll do for her!”

“What are you about, are you a Christian, you devil?” shouted an old man in the crowd.

“Did anyone ever see the like? A wretched nag like that pulling such a cartload,” said another.

“You'll kill her,” shouted the third.

“Don't meddle! It's my property, I'll do what I choose. Get in, more of you! Get in, all of you! I will have her go at a gallop! . . .”

All at once laughter broke into a roar and covered everything: the mare, roused by the shower of blows, began feebly kicking. Even the old man could not help smiling. To think of a wretched little beast like that trying to kick!

Two lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to beat her about the ribs. One ran each side.

“Hit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes,” cried Mikolka.

“Give us a song, mates,” shouted someone in the cart and everyone in the cart joined in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and whistling. The woman went on cracking nuts and laughing.

. . . He [Raskolnikov] ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking once more.

“I'll teach you to kick,” Mikolka shouted ferociously. He threw down the whip, bent forward and picked up from the bottom of the cart a long, thick shaft, he took hold of one end with both hands and with an effort brandished it over the mare.

“He'll crush her,” was shouted round him. “He'll kill her!”

“It's my property,” shouted Mikolka and brought the shaft down with a swinging blow. There was a sound of a heavy thud.

“Thrash her, thrash her! Why have you stopped?” shouted voices in the crowd.

And Mikolka swung the shaft a second time and it fell a second time on the spine of the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches, but lurched forward and tugged forward with all her force, tugged first on one side and then on the other, trying to move the cart. But the six whips were attacking her in all directions, and the shaft was raised again and fell upon her a third time, then a fourth, with heavy measured blows. Mikolka was in a fury that he could not kill her at one blow.

“She's a tough one,” was shouted in the crowd.

“She'll fall in a minute, mates, there will soon be an end of her,” said an admiring spectator in the crowd.

“Fetch an axe to her! Finish her off,” shouted a third.
i
“I'll show you! Stand off,” Mikolka screamed frantically; he threw down the shaft, stooped down in the cart and picked up an iron crowbar. “Look out,” he shouted, and with all his might he dealt a stunning blow at the poor mare. The blow fell; the mare staggered, sank back, tried to pull, but the bar fell again with a swinging blow on her back and she fell on the ground like a log.

“Finish her off,” shouted Mikolka and he leapt beside himself, out of the cart. Several young men, also flushed with drink, seized anything they could come across—whips, sticks, poles, and ran to the dying mare. Mikolka stood on one side and began dealing random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long breath and died.

“You butchered her,” someone shouted in the crowd.

“Why wouldn't she gallop then?”

“My property!” shouted Mikolka, with bloodshot eyes, brandishing the bar in his hands. He stood as though regretting that he had nothing more to beat.

We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it's one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.

Timidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd, and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her immense crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring flame-coloured feather. Under this rakishly-tilted hat was a pale, frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in terror. Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather pretty, with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door.

And then it was as if Dogville just waited. Even the wind dropped, leaving the town in an unfamiliar calm. As if somebody had put a large cheese-dish cover over it, and created the kind of quietness that descends while you are awaiting visitors. After two days off, Grace had been put back to work. But the quietness remained. Indeed, it intensified.

Just as Dogville had done from its open frail shelf by the mountainside, quite unprotected from any capricious storms, Grace too had laid herself open. And there she dangled from her frail stalk like the apple in the Garden of Eden. An apple so swollen that the juices almost ran.

Grace: “So I'm arrogant? I'm arrogant because I forgive people?”

Grace's Father: “My God! Can't you see how condescending you are when you say that? You have this preconceived notion, that nobody, listen, that nobody can't possibly attain the same high ethical standards as you, so you exonerate them.

I cannot think of anything more arrogant than that!

You, my dear child, you forgive others with excuses that you would never in the world permit for yourself.”

Grace: “Why shouldn't I be merciful? Why?!”

Grace's Father: “No, no, no, you should be merciful when there's time to be merciful. But you must maintain your own standards, you owe them that. The penalty you deserve for you transgression, they deserve for their transgressions.”

Grace: “They're human beings, dad.”

Grace's Father: “No, no, no. But does every human being need to be accountable for their actions? Of course they do. But you don't even give them that chance! And that is extremely arrogant!

I love you to death, but you are the most arrogant person I've ever met, and you call me arrogant!”

Lars von Trier: I like these little stories to be there without being told. Yeah. I think that's very nice. In these few props we have, there are little stories that have nothing to do with the film, that are not told. That's kind of… Richness, it's called. Maybe it's not.

Interviewer: Background.

Lars von Trier: Background. Yeah. It's like the flavors that you do not recognize in a dish, right? But they're still there.

[Rick Bowers:] “There are those extremists who say that if a gay person were on fire you would burn in hell if you spit on them to put out the fire.”

The introjection of symboling into primate social life was revolutionary. Everything was transformed, everything acquired new meaning; the symbol added a new dimension to primate—now human—existence. An ax was no longer merely a tool with which to chop; it could become a symbol of authority. Mating became marriage, and all social relationships between parents and children and brothers and sisters became moral obligations, duties, rights, and privileges. The world of nature, from the stones beside the path to the stars in their courses, became alive and conscious spirits. “And all that I beheld respired with inward meaning” (Wordsworth). The anthropoid had at last become a man.

I hold in fact:

(1) That small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which is on the average flat; namely, that the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid in them.

(2) That this property of being curved or distorted is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave.

(3) That this variation of the curvature of space is what really happens in that phenomenon which we call the motion of matter, whether ponderable or ethereal.

(4) That in the physical world nothing else takes place but this variation, subject (possibly) to the law of continuity.

One of my favorite stories is about a Native American grandfather talking to his young grandson.

He tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other wolf is fear, greed and hatred.

“Which wolf will win, grandfather?” asks the young boy.

“Whichever one I feed,” is the reply.

As befits a commercial of the sobering-statistics school, “Forty Percent” opens with a black screen. We hear the opening bars of an upbeat-yet-feelingful rock tune, and this text appears: “40 percent of people who know they are H.I.V. positive do not tell their partners. Other than abstinence there is only one way to protect yourself. Use a condom every time.”

The black screen gives way to an image of a young couple strolling in slow motions through an urban vista. They're dressed for a date: She's in a glam little sweater and high boots, English-major curls tumbling around her face; he wears a pinstriped jacket over holey jeans, an artsy guy but clearly not broke. In a gesture of modern chivalry, he hands her a white earbud from the iPod he's carrying. As she listens, a smile of surpassing sweetness and sexiness spreads over her face. She gazes up at him, all cheekbones and auburn hair, a younger, randier Cate Blanchett. Their fingers intertwine against the backdrop of their crotches. The Trojan logo appears, and a voice-over tells us: “Pleasure you want. Protection you trust.”

It's a 30-second spot, but I swear by the time the thing was over, my husband was ready to run off to Paris with the female half of the couple, their suitcases filled with iPods and condoms. “It's so romantic!” he said. […]

Except that “Forty Percent” isn't romantic, really. When you think about the adorable couple within the framework of the statistical prologue, things turn dark. If 40 percent of people with H.I.V. don't tell their partners, which of these two cute daters is positive? Which one isn't telling? Or are they both negative, protecting themselves against each other like characters in a modern-day O. Henry story? All this confusion comes from the fact that the AIDS-awareness message is, God forgive me, a Trojan horse. The commercial gives us text telling us to worry about H.I.V., and images telling us to go have sex right now. And in television, image trumps word. The ad's real message is “Buy more condoms!”

I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking you this, so you think you're supposed to have an answer. But adults ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking. They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to see what it does.