If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.
Tom Robbins
Related I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ... KELLY JONES New Orleans has to rebuild not just its buildings and its political culture, but its image, ... The ... JOEL KOTKIN We sometimes find ourselves at a loss as to whether we should be more appalled at the Bush Administr... ERIC ALTERMAN Laziness acknowledges the relation of the present to the past but ignores its relation to the future... W.H. AUDEN Knowledge, like energy, expands; it is not weakened when it is expended between people. The force of... LINDA CHANDLER A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather ... LIONEL TRILLING Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters. JEFFREY FRY [The Church] has lived through its early travails and has now come to accept an easier way of life. ... A.W. TOZER The present moment is significant, not as the bridge between past and future, but by reason of its c... DAG HAMMARSKJOLD Rotten Tomatoes is such a great website, in that it has one foot in the Internet world and one foot ... JOHN LASSETER One way to measure the size of a company, industry, or economy is to determine its output. But a bet... MICHAEL SPENCE It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no ... COLM TOIBIN If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism -- at le... LUDWIG FEUERBACH If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at l... LUDWIG FEUERBACH Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a... JEANETTE CORON The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of ... JOHN BERGER A NATIONS FUTURE IS NOT IN THE HANDS OF ITS LEADERS BUT ITS TEACHERS ! DR.PRASAD RAJHANS The Past lives o'er again,
In its effects, and to the guilty spirit
The ever-frowning Present ... SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Cultural survival is not about preservation, sequestering indigenous peoples in enclaves like some s... WADE DAVIS Belfast is a city which, while not forgetting its past, is living comfortably with its present and l... JAMES NESBITT Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH History always constitutes the relation between a present and its past. Consequently fear of the pre... JOHN BERGER PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL NATALIE URQUIETA I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future.... RACHEL CARSON Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON I know I want and do not have what I want. A weight hangs suspended from a hook; being suspended, it... CARLO MICHELSTAEDTER One is forced to speak not of what is held in common between the cultures, but what is held in commo... CARL GUSTAV JUNG Now is everything Now is the essence Now is the focus Focus on the now For that ... KAREN HACKEL The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or milita... HERBERT READ The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the... MICHAEL HARRIS Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH New Orleans is probably the only city in America that has its own culture. There are things you can'... BRANFORD MARSALIS London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And ... ANNA QUINDLEN the majority of its time and effort in policing New Orleans and restoring law and order. BOB MANN Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such... GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ We cannot live without it, ... A River and its City: The Nature of Landscape in New Orleans. ARI KELMAN A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period. When there is an incompa... COCO CHANEL To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to i... MATTHEW FOX The world of an animal is reduced to its perimeter. Human world is reduced to its perimeter, but doe... SORIN CERIN If one sees the personality not as an apparatus that is essentially
constructed by the time childhoo... ERIK H ERICKSON In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they ha... DAISETZ T. SUZUKI The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us i... ROBERT HUGHES If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well ... MATTHEW ARNOLD The artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite... FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER ...panic is a synonym for being; in its delays, in its swerving and rushing syntax, its frantic list... LOUISE GLüCK We fall back into the past, we jump ahead into the future, and in this we lose our entire lives. THICH NHAT HANH The children are taught more of the meanest state in Europe than of the country they are born and br... HENRY LAWSON Its culture: the fruit of its life, the product of its own efforts in thought and art. This culture ... CORNELIU ZELEA CODREANU If the Nation is living within its income, its credit is good. If, in some crises, it lives beyond i... FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT The creative work is a blend of past and present that is uniquely newspaper media. Newspaper media i... EARL COX All is as if the world did cease to exist. The city's monuments go unseen, its past unheard, and its... NATHAN REESE MAHER Realists see the world as it really is in all of its beauty and all if its horror. TERENCE T. GORSKI The local church is the hope of the world, and its future rests primarily in the hands of its leader... BILL HYBELS New Orleans may well have been the most liberal Deep South city in 1954 because of its large Creole ... CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and ... JOHAN HUIZINGA There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of ... ANNE RICE New Orleans was always America's netherworld, a sexual playground, like the Baths of Caracalla at th... JAMES LEE BURKE It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the... GEORGE STEINER When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud ... HERMANN HESSE Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in ... DIANE ACKERMAN In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste... J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste... J. W. FULBRIGHT In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste,... J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with i... STEPHEN HARPER Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached ... FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Talent finds its models, methods, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul o... RALPH WALDO EMERSON The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended betwe... RICHARD HOFSTADTER How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine." The Q... LEWIS CARROLL The process of evolution may be described as differentiation of structure and integration of functio... ARTHUR KOESTLER No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its... FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its... FRIEDRICH SCHILLER The TUC's new slogan 'a future that works' sets a profound challenge. Austerity and rapi... FRANCES O'GRADY At time when there is so much concern about the distance between EU institutions and its citizens, i... CHRIS DAVIES If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT America is a living idea. It isn't only the tenets of its founding, but also the terms of its fu... CHARLES M. BLOW Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo. BILLY CORGAN The distinction between liberty and licentiousness is a repetition of the Protean doctrine of implic... JAMES MADISON Every one must understand that, whatever be the evil of slavery, it is not increased by its diffusio... JEFFERSON DAVIS The new Germany has the unquestionable right to hold its tongue between its teeth. KARL LIEBKNECHT The human will be the only mammal in history to fully understand that its own self inflicted extinct... STEVEN MAGEE Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from ot... HANNAH ARENDT Whether or not an utterance can be called law depends on how it is heard, not on how it is meant. La... WILLIAM MCDAVID Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ... E.J. PATTEN Poetry criticism at its worst today is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent, as if determined to in... DAVID LEHMAN The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then ... JOHN BURROUGHS All...religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries ... THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to dete... EDMUND MORGAN But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, compl... OSCAR WILDE Only when a system behaves in a sufficiently random way may the difference between past and future, ... ILYA PRIGOGINE We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as th... PIERRE-SIMON LAPLACE My wife and I don't consider ourselves just the owners of the railroad. We consider ourselves guardi... AL HARPER If only we were not that seedling of Creation, Of Earth and its generations, If only we ha... ADONIS Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so o... STEVEN ERIKSON For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequen... ELIE WIESEL I see no difference between Islam and Islamism. Islam is defined as submission to the will of Allah,... AYAAN HIRSI ALI Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fu... HELEN KELLER Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weap... SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
More Tom Robbins
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TOM ROBBINS Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yours... TOM ROBBINS Meet me in Cognito, baby. In Cognito, we'll have nothing to hide. TOM ROBBINS Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretiv... TOM ROBBINS There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person... TOM ROBBINS Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from t... TOM ROBBINS Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but mat... TOM ROBBINS The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ... TOM ROBBINS It is better to be small, colorful, sexy, careless, and peaceful, like the flowers, than large, cons... TOM ROBBINS Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. 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TOM ROBBINS Those who possess wisdom cannot just ladle it out to every wantwit and jackanapes who comes along an... TOM ROBBINS Perhaps that is why desire causes men calamity. By identifying with our desires and taking them too ... TOM ROBBINS After the monkeys came down from the trees and learned to hurl sharp objects, they had had to move i... TOM ROBBINS I mean that gods do not limit men. Men limit men. TOM ROBBINS The Divine was beyond description, beyond knowing, beyond comprehension. To say that the Divine was ... TOM ROBBINS The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a k... TOM ROBBINS It is more important to be free than to be happy. TOM ROBBINS We're making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality. TOM ROBBINS Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensua... TOM ROBBINS Religion is nothing but institutionalized mysticism. 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TOM ROBBINS They accepted my donation, so they're aware they'd better serve my interests or I'll buy some leader... TOM ROBBINS Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. TOM ROBBINS The international situation is desperate, as usual. TOM ROBBINS Beware the man who considers kissing as nothing more than duty, a sop to the "weaker" sex, an annoyi... TOM ROBBINS The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplacable being. TOM ROBBINS Whining's unattractive, even when your whine sounds like Kenneth Branagh eating frozen strawberries ... TOM ROBBINS Human beings were not well served by permanence or stasis. Obviously, if individuals were progressin... TOM ROBBINS Now tequila may be the favoured beverage of outlaws but that doesn't mean it gives them preferential... TOM ROBBINS Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign... TOM ROBBINS I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. 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People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up. TOM ROBBINS Their desperate craving for simplicity sure can create complications. And their pitiful longing for ... TOM ROBBINS Who knows how to make love stay?Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in B... TOM ROBBINS Logic only gives man what he needs...Magic gives him what he wants. TOM ROBBINS The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only ... TOM ROBBINS When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results... TOM ROBBINS To achieve the impossible; it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought. TOM ROBBINS The afternoon passed more slowly than a walnut-sized kidney stone. TOM ROBBINS Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef TOM ROBBINS Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide. TOM ROBBINS I've decided to take advantage of outsourcing. My next novel will be written by a couple of guys... TOM ROBBINS To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being. TOM ROBBINS On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth w... TOM ROBBINS The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook th... TOM ROBBINS Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective. TOM ROBBINS Alas, Gulietta, this was an American frog of the last quarter of the twentieth century, a time when ... TOM ROBBINS There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this... TOM ROBBINS Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bai... TOM ROBBINS There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky ... TOM ROBBINS If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe eve... TOM ROBBINS Now tequila may be the favored beverage of outlaws but that doesn't mean it gives them preferential ... TOM ROBBINS But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for... TOM ROBBINS But do we know how to make love stay?' I can't even think about it. The best I can do is play i... TOM ROBBINS Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with... TOM ROBBINS I am cheerful. I don't know if I'm happy. There is a difference, you know. TOM ROBBINS At the typewriter you find out who you are. TOM ROBBINS