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Sources of Obscure Fortean(-ish) Quotes

MercuryCrest

The Severed Head of a Great Old One.
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I think it's worth it to post a thread for peoples (like me) to have a resource for discussing Fortean-ish quotes that they've heard that they haven't been able to track down yet.
(Mods, I really did a search, but got weird results having nothing to do with what I'm asking, please feel free to move this if'n you find a better thread)

Two quotes stand out to me that my Google-fu couldn't track down....

1. "I haven't yet developed the folly to deny the evidence of my own senses"

2. I seem to recall a quote from one of Jacque Costeau's kids that has to do with diving in a lake in North America (I thought it was Crater Lake) where he says something like, "There are things we're not meant to know about" and wouldn't elaborate further.

I could be totally off on the second thing, but I read something similar, somewhere, and have yet to find it. It's haunting me.
 
1. "I haven't yet developed the folly to deny the evidence of my own senses" ...

Unless you're 100% certain about the exact phrasing, I think it comes from The Eye of the Pyramid (Part I of The Illuminatus! Trilogy) ...

folly-senses.jpg
https://books.google.com/books?id=g... the evidence of my own senses" folly&f=false
 
2. I seem to recall a quote from one of Jacque Costeau's kids that has to do with diving in a lake in North America (I thought it was Crater Lake) where he says something like, "There are things we're not meant to know about" and wouldn't elaborate further. ...

This one may be something of an urban legend. It's usually encountered in reference to Lake Tahoe.

Other stories about oddities beneath Lake Tahoe have been debunked by experts. Some in the region insist that famed diver and naturalist Jacques Cousteau explored the lake in a mini-submarine in the mid-1970s and emerged pale and shaken.

Asked what he’d seen and filmed on the lake bottom, Cousteau reportedly replied, “The world isn’t ready for what’s down there.”

Depending on who is telling the story, Cousteau either encountered a Loch Ness-type monster that locals have dubbed “Tahoe Tessie” or came upon a bunch of dead people. ...

But Cousteau never explored the lake.

SOURCE: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-aug-09-la-me-missing-diver-20110809-story.html
 
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Thank you, Enola, those are exactly what I've been looking for!

Anyone else have any others they're trying to track down?
 
Some miscellaneous notes on the alleged Cousteau quote ...

I couldn't locate anything connecting Cousteau and any other North American lake. Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe are similar in terms of regional location and notable depth.

Lake Tahoe has two Fortean or semi-Fortean connections:

- the alleged monster / cryptid known as "Tessie" or "Tahoe Tessie."
- its alleged utility as a dumping ground for bodies from mob hits (especially from Reno, but sometimes from Las Vegas).

If Cousteau had ever visited, much less dived into, Lake Tahoe it's more likely he'd have been shocked by all the purported mob-related corpses than running into Tessie.

I thought the alleged quote might actually refer to Cousteau's Djibouti mystery (a shark cage mangled by what had to be a monstrous beast), but I found nothing to support this notion.
 
I've long thought the most quintessentially Fortean quote of all comes from J. B. S. Haldane:

[M]y own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
(Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927), p. 286)

I mention this because this line from Haldane is often encountered in misquoted, punned-upon or unattributed form, and on at least two occasions I've heard folks suggest it came from Fort himself.

It's ubiquitous enough to make me predict someone would inevitably ask about its source sooner or later ...
 
I've been hunting for the sources for a quote attributed to Sir William Crookes, about D. D. Home, the exact wording varies, but is along the lines of "I didn't say it was possible. I said it happened." Variants of this are blindly regurgitated across the internet, does anyone have an original source?
 
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