Transcending Platonic Platitudes
Coxcomb, charlatan and bore,
Plato paved immoral ways for Byron. He
transcended platitudes that bore,
transforming them with his immortal irony.
Inspired by Byron’s lines in Don Juan, CXVI, cited by Roger Scruton in Sexual Desire: A Phiosophic Investigation, p.237:
Oh, Plato! Plato! You have paved the way,
With your confounded fantasies, to more
Immoral conduct by the fancied way
Your system feigns o’er the controlless core
Of human hearts, than all the long array
Of poets and romancers: –– You’re a bore,
A charlatan, a coxcomb –– and have been,
At best, no better than a go-between.
8/29/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Related quotes
Plato was a bore.
quote by Friedrich Nietzsche
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What Then?
His chosen comrades thought at school
He must grow a famous man;
He thought the same and lived by rule,
All his twenties crammed with toil;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'
Everything he wrote was read,
After certain years he won
Sufficient money for his need,
Friends that have been friends indeed;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'
All his happier dreams came true –
A small old house, wife, daughter, son,
Grounds where plum and cabbage grew,
Poets and Wits about him drew;
'What then?' sang Plato's ghost. 'What then?'
'The work is done,' grown old he thought,
'According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage, I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought;'
But louder sang that ghost, 'What then?'
poem by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
Know the audience
The elaboration will bore the intellectuals.
The technical will bore the common folks.
The romance will bore the kids
Deliveries of speech must suit the recipients
02.01.2008
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Platonic Love
do not mistake
the kind of
love that
plato offers
during
his times
you say
platonic
one that
is pure
and free
from lust
one
that merely
gazes
at the other
without
hormonal
considerations
nothing
chemical
but pure
feelings
of being
intimate
and
sweet
i hear
it once
that plato
also loves
boys
and he
must
have called
it
platonic
baloney
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Crazy Jane And The Bishop
Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that's dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
Nor was he Bishop when his ban
Banished Jack the Journeyman,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor so much as parish priest,
Yet he, an old book in his fist,
Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron's hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
Jack had my virginity,
And bids me to the oak, for he
(all find safety in the tomb.)
Wanders out into the night
And there is shelter under it,
But should that other come, I spit:
The solid man and the coxcomb.
poem by William Butler Yeats
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We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo - men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
quote by Robert McNamara
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
My father's Plato
And that’s not a claim to paternity –
it’s the possessive case; though to what degree
my father possessed Plato, or Plato, him,
remains one of those unsolved mysteries
stored in that little room of sadness in the hearts
of children of that more formal, distanced age…
Like so many self-made men, he’d never read
a novel before he retired; and then
set out to educate himself
as would befit the father of a son
he planned – God unwilling, at first – to have,
whom he would provide with all the advantages
he’d never had… alas; alas for both of us…
He’d read of course, Smiles’ ‘Self-Help’ – they all had;
moved on to Carlyle, Ruskin (briefly) , Emerson; wrote
in warm approval to George Bernard Shaw,
who responded with one of his printed pre-texted postcards…
then worked through those nicely-bound
sets of Hardy, Galsworthy, Dickens, Scott, and H.G.Wells,
offered cheaply by the Daily Mail or by Wills’ Cigarettes…
then – Plato; or at least, his Republic;
a yellow bound, standard Everyman; but this one
- I discovered far too late in life -
fiercely underlined in summary pencil lines…
and that was really, all he needed; busy
with his hens and chicks, his toddler son (at last…) :
later, novels of another sort crept up on him; he lived
a – no, don’t call it fantasy – a parallel life
in volume after volume of those yellow-covered
Wild West Club. (That’s where he would have flourished,
aggressive boss of bosses, if he had not been stone-deaf…)
So what was he to Plato, or Plato said to him?
Are the underlinings an extension of that angry, abrupt man
meaning, that’s my experience; so he’s right…;
or was there stunned admiration; or
was there a humility I never saw
until efficiency turned to eccentricity,
eccentricity to dementia…
a humility, perhaps, that took him to another world
of ancient Greece, and glories, virtues, and ideals,
where Spartans from the wild wild East
rode roughshod over democracy, and
where a good man must be sought,
to run them out of town…?
One day, I’ll have to face the mist of tears,
read those fierce underlinings made
as if by the muzzle of a Colt
guarding civilisation by the gully and the scrub,
the horses tethered, (Indians, always the third estate) :
seek in the underlinings to immortal thought,
the man I loved but never knew.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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A Pig's-Eye View Of Literature
The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron
Byron and Shelley and Keats
Were a trio of Lyrical treats.
The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls,
And Keats never was a descendant of earls,
And Byron walked out with a number of girls,
But it didn't impair the poetical feats
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley,
Of Byron and Shelley and Keats.
poem by Dorothy Parker
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I was just very conscious that I could either bore people by having the music be similar for too long, or I could just wear them out and bore them in a different way by having it changing too much every minute or two minutes. So, there was that kind of balance to get right.
quote by Jonny Greenwood
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Thank For Nothing
I'll never take part in the grown population
Or waste my time with further education (hooha!)
To get what we know, is just a big show
Where they want to control
So chained and frustrated
It's all so complicated
Fashion, no passion surrounds me
All I know is I've heard this all before
Reality's a bore (is a bore)
You ask me to believe it (never believe)
Something they provide
Can't bring myself to, to what
You want me to (want me to)
This is who we are and (who we are)
nothing's gonna change, nothing's gonna change
I can't take part in the business revolution
Or take my chance in the real world confusion
Don't blame us, who do we trust when they're so dis-a-honest
No patience, this nation's obsessed with exploitation
Lying, denying surrounds me
All I know is I've heard this all before
Reality's a bore (is a bore)
You ask me to believe it (never believe)
Something they provide
Can't bring myself to, to what
You want me to (want me to)
This is who we are and (who we are)
Nothing's gonna change
(what!) Don't think you can ignore us (ignore us)
Don't tell me your word is right (word is right)
Don't pick a future for us (for us)
We lack 'cause we're involved!!
All I know is I've heard this all before
Reality's a bore (is a bore)
You ask me to believe it (never believe)
Something they provide
Can't bring myself to, to what
You want me to (want me to)
This is who we are and (who we are)
Nothing's gonna change
Thanks for nothing (I've heard this all before),
Thanks for nothing (reality's a bore),
Thanks for nothing (it'll never be the same),
Thanks for nothing (and nothing's gonna change)
song performed by by Sum 41
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The clown and the fool
The clown and con-man
Hide under the colourful coats;
The fool and charlatan
Ride with the powerful quotes;
The con-man and charlatan
Pride with their awful feats;
The clown and the fool
Glide with their lowly acts.
25.09.2010
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
I'm Bored
I'm bored
I'm the chairman of the bored,
I'm a lengthy monologue
I'm livin' like a dog
I'm bored
I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz
I'm bored
Just another slimey bore
I'm free to bore my well-bought friends
And spend my cash until the end coz
I'm bored
I'm bored
I'm the chairman of the board
I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips
I'm bored
I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz
I'm bored
I'm bored
Just another dirty bore
All right doll-face
Come on and bore me
I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips
I'm sick
I'm sick when I go to sleep at night
I'm still sick in the broad daylight coz
I'm bored
I'm bored
I'm the chairman of the. . .
BORED
song performed by by Iggy Pop
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.