A garland of quotations LXV

Culled from the finest Spectrists (Knish, Morgan, etc.) in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday

(If you live in the Tristate Area so-called, come see me this Saturday, May 4, 12–5, at a Creepy Pop-Up Market in the Conti Building, 415 Howe Ave, Shelton, Conn. I’ll do (free) sketches, sign books, chat amiably, all that you desire. Details, such as they are, here.)

Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows
•Leonard Cohen, “The Old Revolution” (1969).

On his way back to the squad Lei Fang thought to himself, “I’m going to make sure that this red scarf never loses its color and is never dirtied with the dust of bourgeois thinking. One day there will come a time when the whole world will be as red as this scarf and the children of the whole world will wear a scarf like this. This scarf is my Red starting point. I shall walk this Red road for the rest of my life.”
•Ding, Lu, Cui, & Feng, “Lei Fang” (1965).

Âkosem had brought oranges from the capital. They were all gone. The Gosâvi began to ask for them. “Oh, drop dead!” the Gosâvi said. “Give me oranges, I tell you!”
Âbâïsem said, “Lord, the oranges are all gone. There aren’t any left, Lord.”
“Oh, drop dead! Give me them! Give me them! Give me them, I tell you!” he insisted.
They got two silver coins’ worth of oranges from Mehkar, but by then the Gosâvi had changed his mind. So they sold the oranges and put the two silver coins to use in the service of the Gosâvi.
•Mhâïmbhat, Rddhipuralîlâ (1287).

Better break your neck than show a “streak of yellow.”
•Not in the Curriculum: A Book of Friendly Counsel to Students (1903).

Dice are the sprig of green which wards off the devil...The devil would indeed catch me napping if he surprised me without dice.
•Rabelais, The Third Book of the Heroic Deeds and Sayings of the Noble Pantagruel (1546).

It must be a boy because it’s turning blue.
•The Dead Milkmen, “Let’s Get the Baby High” (1993).

Alas, it is so easy to screw one’s self up into higher and ever higher altitudes of Transcendentalism and see nothing under one but the everlasting snows of Himmalayah, the Earth shrinking to a Planet, and the indigo firmament sowing itself with daylight stars; easy for you, for me; but whither does it lead? I dread always, To inanity and mere injuring of the lungs!—“Stamp, Stamp, Stamp!”—
•Carlyle, letter to Emerson (1842).

Virgins promised when I died,
That they would each primrose-tide
Duly, morn and evening, come,
And with flowers dress my tomb.
—Having promised, pay your debts,
Maids, and here strew violets.
•Herrick, “An Epitaph upon a Child” (ca. 1648).

The whole modern world is corrupt because people see things in shades of red-orange-yelow-green-blue-indigo-violet instead of in clear black and white.
•Shea & Wilson, Illuminatus! (1975).

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.
•Jack Handey, Deeper Thoughts: All New, All Crispy (1993).

References: Cohen: Songs from a Room (1969); Ding et al.: trans. Endymion Wilkinson in Chesneaux, Eco, & Nebiolo, eds., The People’s Comic Book (Anchor, 1973); Mhâïmbhat: trans. Anne Feldhaus, The Deeds of God at Rddhipur (Oxford UP, 1984); Rabelais: trans. M.A. Screech, Gargantua and Pantagruel (Penguin, 2006); Milkmen: Not Richard, But Dick (1993); Carlyle: Charles Eliot Norton, ed., The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872, Vol. 2 (Chatto & Windus, 1883); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.