A garland of quotations 185

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If fleas were to develop a rite, then it would refer to the dog.
•Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough (1931).

All things have significance for all: if birds had wisdom, they would have constructed an art for knowing the future based on observing humans, as we do by observing them.
•Synesius, On Dreams (404).

I realised that everything is, in reality, gifted with the capacity to communicate, either through the senses or by means of the intellect; more than that, I came to realise that the language of silence is more eloquent than speech, more true to essence than words can ever be. ¶ When someone has spoken, one can concur with the correctness of his observations or else refute his words; whereas the language of emblems is the language of certainty and truth. But then, he who uses the figurative mode speaks only to those who have higher perceptions: while he who expresses himself through conventional means communicates with the ordinary state, common to us all.
•Al-Muqaddasi, Revelation of the Secrets of the Birds and Flowers (ca. 1270).

Every morning the writer should go to the window, look out and remind himself of this fact: aside from his own species, not one thing he sees—not one bird, tree or stone—has in its possession the name he gives it.
•Don Paterson, Best Thought, Worst Thought (2008).

Something unconnected, oblique as if, after the motion
of history, every object we named was not the correct noun.
•Derek Walcott, “The bamboo stands ready” (1997).

Instead of reading the menu, they tried to eat it.
•Shea & Wilson, Illuminatus! (1975).

The Pagans worshipping the Sunne are said to hold their hands to the Gloworme in stead of a coale for heat.
•Nevves from any whence. Or, old trvth vnder a svpposall of Noueltie. Occasioned by diuers Essayes, and priuate passages of Wit, betweene sundrie Gentlemen vpon that subiect (1616).

The butterfly is a success, but man is a mistake.
•Hugo, Les Misérables (1862).

behold the bone cancer sokobauno sokobauno
behold the placenta as it screams in the butterfly nets of the high-school boys
sokobauno sokobauno
•Huelsenbeck, “Plane” (1916).

                                 “Ha!” I said,
“King of the butterflies”…
•Keats, Endymion (1818).

Sources: Wittgenstein: quoted in S.J. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge UP, 1991); Synesius: in Donald A. Russell and Heinz-Günther Nesselrathn, eds., On Prophecy, Dreams and Human Imagination (Mohr Siebeck, 2014); Muqaddasi: trans. Irene Hoare & Darya Galy. (Octagon, 1980); Walcott: The Bounty (FSG, 1997); Hugo: trans. Lascelles Wraxall (Heritage1938); Huelsenbeck: trans. Malcolm Green in Blago Bung Blago Bung Bosso Fataka! (Atlas, 1995); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.