Dandyism is the last flicker of heroism in decadent ages.... Dandyism is a setting sun; like the declining star, it is magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of democracy, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away these last champions of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons.
- Charles Baudelaire
topic: Stars, Pride, Water, Flicker, Dandyism
Today is tomorrow, and present is past. Nothing exists and everything will last. There is no beginning, there was no end. No depth to fall, no height to ascend. There is only this moment, this flicker of light That illuminates nothing, but oh! So bright! For we are the spark that flutters in space, Consuming an eternity of a moment’s grace. For today is tomorrow and present and past. Nothing exists and everything will last.
- Jane Roberts
source: Jane Roberts (2012). “The “Unknown” Reality: Volume One: A Seth Book in Two Volumes”, p.571, Amber-Allen Publishing
topic: Fall, Past, Light, Flicker
Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought - and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.
- Rajneesh
topic: Beauty, Beautiful, Flower, Starry Night, Flicker
We live thetime that a match flickers; we pop the corkof a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake?
- Robert Louis Stevenson
topic: Beer, Thinking, Earthquakes, Devouring, Ginger
There are some dogs which, when you meet them, remind you that, despite thousands of years of manmade evolution, every dog is still only two meals away from being a wolf.
- Neil Gaiman
source: "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch". Book by Neil Gaiman, May 1, 1990.
topic: Dog, Years, Two, Flicker, Campfire
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
- T. S. Eliot
source: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 84 (1917)
topic: Greatness, Ice, Cake, Snickers, Flicker
What you call your personality, you know? --it's not like actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It's more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there's no sign of it, like it had never been.
- Joyce Carol Oates
source: Joyce Carol Oates (2009). “I Am No One You Know: And Other Stories”, p.85, Zondervan
topic: Flames, Wind, Personality, Flicker
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
- Neil Gaiman
source: "The Sandman: Brief Lives". Comic book series by Neil Gaiman, 1994.
topic: Life, Stars, Mean, Flicker, Sandman
Billboards, billboards, drink this, eat that, use all manner of things, everyone, the best, the cheapest, the purest and most satisfying of all their available counterparts. Red lights flicker on every horizon, airplanes beware; cars flash by, more lights. Workers repair the gas main. Signs, signs, lights, lights, streets, streets.
- Neal Cassady
topic: Airplane, Light, Car, Flicker, Red Lights
I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.
- Olaf Stapledon
source: Olaf Stapledon (1975). “To the End of Time”, Macmillan Reference USA
topic: Stars, Philosophy, Men, Olaf, Lucidity
... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.
- Adrienne Rich
topic: Growing Up, Real, Flames, Flicker, Real Knowledge
