Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[WT Sharpe]

.....The puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
..........— Thomas Babington MacAulay (1800-1859), English historian, essayist, statesman. History of England (1849-1861), Vol. I, Ch. 2; from the section of that chapter entitled, "Unpopularity of the Pilgrims" (page 126).

[GeoffC]

deleted .... wrong reference ....

[WT Sharpe]

.....I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. It is righteousness that exalteth a nation while sin is a reproach to any people.
..........— Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895), American author, abolitionist. Speech, "Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country", Syracuse, New York, September 9, 1847.

[WT Sharpe]

.....For that matter, our culture and our textbooks underplay or omit Jamestown and the sixteenth-century Spanish settlements in favor of Plymouth rock as the archetypal birthplace of the United States. Virginia, according to T. H. Breen, "ill-served later historians in search of the mythic origins of American culture." Historians could hardly tout Virginia as moral in intent; in the words of the first history of Virginia written by a Virginian: "The chief Design of all Parties concern'd was to fetch away the Treasure from thence, aiming more at sudden Gain, than to form any regular Colony." The Virginians' relations with the Indians were particularly unsavory: in contrast to Squanto, a volunteer, the British in Virginia took Indian prisoners and forced them to teach colonists how to farm. In 1623 the British indulged in the first use of chemical warfare in the colonies when negotiating a treaty with tribes near the Potomac River, headed by Chiskiack. The British offered a toast "symbolizing eternal friendship," whereupon the chief, his family, advisors, and two hundred followers dropped dead of poison. Besides, the early Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth, even cannibalism. They spent their early days digging random holes in the ground, haplessly looking for gold instead of planting crops. Soon they were starving and digging up putrid Indian corpses to eat or renting themselves out to Indian families as servants—hardly the heroic founders that a great nation requires.
..........— James W. Loewen. Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995). Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States of America, was founded in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

[WT Sharpe]

.....No black man or woman can read this book and be sorry that this particular wind has gone. The Ku Klux Klan plays the same romanticized role it had in Birth of a Nation and appears to be a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society.
..........— Pat Conroy (1945 - ), American author. Preface to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1900 – 1949). Gone with the Wind was first published in 1936, the Scribner eBook edition from which this quote was taken was published in 2007.

[CW Johnson]

Why would a guy spend five years writing a novel when he can buy one for ten bucks?
...Richard Johnson...

[Falcao]

From The Life and Death of Julius Agricola by Cornelius Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876)

Whatever we loved, whatever we admired in Agricola, survives, and will survive in the hearts of men, in the succession of the ages, in the fame that waits on noble deeds. Over many indeed, of those who have gone before, as over the inglorious and ignoble, the waves of oblivion will roll; Agricola, made known to posterity by history and tradition, will live for ever.

[Falcao]

From Relato con un fondo de agua [Story with a water background] by Julio Cortázar (translated by me).

One speaks with you and at the same time is like being alone, and maybe this is why one speaks with you like I'm doing now.


http://www.literatura.us/cortazar/fondo.html

[Falcao]

From Historia de los heterodoxos españoles [History of the Spanish Heterodox] by Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (translated by me)

Spain, evangelist of half of the orb; Spain: hammer of heretics, light of Trent, sword of Rome, cradle of St Ignatius ...; that is our greatness and our unit; we do not have another one. The day in which it finishes of getting lost, Spain will return to the regionalism of the arévacos and of the kings of taifas.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by CW Johnson

Why would a guy spend five years writing a novel when he can buy one for ten bucks?
...Richard Johnson...

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Falcao

From The Life and Death of Julius Agricola by Cornelius Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876)

Whatever we loved, whatever we admired in Agricola, survives, and will survive in the hearts of men, in the succession of the ages, in the fame that waits on noble deeds. Over many indeed, of those who have gone before, as over the inglorious and ignoble, the waves of oblivion will roll; Agricola, made known to posterity by history and tradition, will live for ever.

Interesting quote.

Originally Posted by Falcao

From Relato con un fondo de agua [Story with a water background] by Julio Cortázar (translated by me).

One speaks with you and at the same time is like being alone, and maybe this is why one speaks with you like I'm doing now.


http://www.literatura.us/cortazar/fondo.html

Originally Posted by Falcao

From Historia de los heterodoxos españoles [History of the Spanish Heterodox] by Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (translated by me)

Spain, evangelist of half of the orb; Spain: hammer of heretics, light of Trent, sword of Rome, cradle of St Ignatius ...; that is our greatness and our unit; we do not have another one. The day in which it finishes of getting lost, Spain will return to the regionalism of the arévacos and of the kings of taifas.

Thanks for those two as well, and for the personal translation.

[WT Sharpe]

.....There is an elemental tension between the existential necessity of black self-development and the moral requirements of a humanism which transcends race. One draws on ties of blood, shared history and common faith. The other endeavors to achieve an integration of the most wretched, despised, and feared of our fellows along with the rest of us into a single political community of mutual concern. One takes the social fact of race as a given, even celebrating it. The other aims to move beyond race altogether.
..........— Glenn Cartman Loury (1948 - ), American academic, author, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. Quoted by William Raspberry, columnist for The Washington Post. "Who’s naive? Debate over racial pride draws lines," The Virginian-Pilot (Monday, May 5, 1997).

[WT Sharpe]

.....The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle skeptic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion. He is an atheist with devoutness and unction. According to Renan, "The day after that on which the world should no longer believe in God, atheists would be the wretchedest of all men."
..........— Eric Hoffer (1902 – 1983), American writer, philosopher, and longshoreman. The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements (1951). Hoffer's quotation of Renan comes from History of the people of Israel, Volume 5 (1895) By Ernest Renan.

[dreams]

The set up for the quote:

"The padre, that Father Gomez, he will be very happy that you have come back to those nuns," the man behind the counter said.
"Why should he be happy?"
"He will say that it proves a religious thing."
"What religious thing?"

the quote:
"Faith. It is a word for what is unreasonable. If a man believes in an unreasonable thing that is faith. It is not reasonable that you should come back to this place and work for nothing. Nobody believed it. You have come back."

The Lilies of the Field by William E. Barrett

**from a well-loved old pbook published in 1962 and only cost 40 cents. **

[WT Sharpe]

.....Somewhat incidentally, another monarch, George III, may have carried a different mutation. The gene responsible for porphyria can lead to mental illness and might have been responsible for his well-known madness. The retrospective diagnosis was made from the notes of the King's physician, who noticed that the royal urine had the purple 'port-wine' colour characteristic of the disease. A distant descendant also showed signs of the illness. One of the King's less successful appointments was that of his Prime Minister, Lord North, who was largely responsible for the loss of the American Colonies. It is odd to reflect that both the Russian and the American Revolutions may in part have resulted from accidents to royal DNA.
..........— Steve Jones (1944 - ), Welsh geneticist, lecturer, author. The Language of the Genes (1993).


What that means for those of us who are U.S. citizens is that had it not been for a simple genetic error, we'd probably all be speaking English today!