Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[covingtoncat73]

"The greatest example of gluttony that has come to us from classical antiquity is that of Saturn, who devoured his children for fear they would dethrone him, and did not even notice it was a paving stone he swallowed instead when it came to Jupiter’s turn. He is forgiven, for in doing so he furnished Vergniaud with a fine simile: 'The Revolution is like Saturn. It devours its own children.'"

~Alexandre Dumas

[covingtoncat73]

“Inventory:

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

[WT Sharpe]

The following is an excerpt from The Book Of Gud (1919) by "Dan Spain" (Milo Milton Hastings, 1884–1957) & Harold Brainerd Hersey (1893–1964). Background: Gud is a god who doesn't exist because no one believes in him. Fidu is his dog. Enjoy.

Chapter XXI

....."Who was that fellow," asked Fidu, "who passed me just now with such a wild, wild look in his eye?"
....."That fellow," replied Gud, "was an author who just spent a week-end with me."
....."And what did you do to him?" asked Fidu. "He was as crazy as the nebular hypothesis."
....."Upon his request I criticized his book, which he insisted on reading to me."
....."But what did you say about it?" demanded Fidu, "he looked as locoed as a lop-eared logarithm."
....."I made several criticisms. I told him that his plot was choppy, and that most of it was stale; that the work lacked sadly in originality and there was considerable repetition. I said it was very melodramatic in spots and that it had entirely too many murders, and that many of the biggest murderers seemed to escape without punishment. I also told him that it was full of sordid realism and most unhappy endings, that it was overloaded with action, and worst of all, it utterly lacked any evidence of a distinct moral purpose."
....."Well no wonder," said Fidu, "that the poor fellow was raving; you made, if I may say so, quite a severe criticism."
....."I grant that, but his book deserved it—everything I said about it was absolutely true."
....."What did he call his book?" asked Fidu.
....."He called it," replied Gud, "'An Outline of History.'"

[bfisher]

Today is the anniversary of the death of one of history's worst monsters, Adolf Hitler (April 30,1945). This week is also the Days of Rememberance, to memorialize the Holocaust.

I've often been struck, which viewing interviews of Hitler's minions, how many of them seem to have lived well to ripe old age, and how rarely they expressed any person responsibility remorse.

"Of course the horrors, of which I heard in connection of the Nuremberg trials, the fate of the 6 million Jews, their killing and those of many others who represented different races and creeds, shocked me greatly, but at that time I could not see any connection between these things and my own past. I was only happy that I had not personally been guilty of these things and that I had not been aware of the scale of these things. However, one day I walked past a plaque that on the Franz-Joseph Straße (in Munich), on the wall in memory of Sophie Scholl. I could see that she had been born the same year as I, and that she had been executed the same year when I entered into Hitler’s service. And at that moment I really realised, that it was no excuse that I had been so young. I could perhaps have tried to find out about things."
- Gertraud (Traudl) Junge, Hitler's secretary

At least Frau Junge seems to have had some sense of remorse at the end.

On the other hand:

'He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.'
- Rosa Mitterer, maid at the Berghof, reported in "Daily Mail", Dec 4,2008

It reminds me of Franz Liebkind in "The Producers"

[covingtoncat73]

"The Greeks believe the Fates are three sisters: one is Order, who spins out the linear thread of a life from the beginning; another is Irony, who gently cocks up the thread, marking it with some peculiar sense of balance, like justice, only blind drunk with a scale that’s been bunged into the street so it never quite settles; and the third, Inevitability, simply sits in the corner taking notes and criticizing the other two for being shameless slags until she cuts life’s thread, leaving everyone miffed at the timing."

Moore, Christopher (2014-04-22). The Serpent of Venice: A Novel (Kindle Locations 1288-1292). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

[bfisher]

"He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming." - Arthur Balfour

[covingtoncat73]

"And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life— whatever else it is— is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch."

Tartt, Donna (2013-10-22). The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) (p. 771). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

[covingtoncat73]

“But I confess that "my mind to me a kingdom is"--not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America ...”
― Lafcadio Hearn, Gleanings in Buddha-Fields

[BenG]

“Pleasure died forty years ago in America, perhaps further back, in a wave of carbon monoxide, gasoline, cigarettes for dames, the belief in everything and everybody, tolerance for the intolerable, the hatred of being alone in silence for more than twenty seconds, the assurance that immortality was Americans eating all-cow franks, with speeded-up peristalsis while talking to a crowd of fifteen trillion other same-bodies eating sandwiches, gassing cokes, peristalsing, and talking, while baseball-sound-movie-TV tomorrow's trots off track betting howled roared farted choked gagged exploded reentered atmo honked bawled deafened pawed puked croaked shouted repeated repeated REPEATED, especially SAY IT AGAIN LOUDER SAY IT AGAIN, stick that product in every God-damned American's mouth and make him say I BOUGHT IT, GOD I BOUGHT IT AND IT'S GREAT IT'S HOLLYWOOD IT'S MY ARSE GOING UP AND DOWN AGAIN, IT'S USA, GOD, and if you can't get it in his mouth and make him SWEAR IT SWEAR IT USA, stick it in his anal sphincter (look it up in the dictionary, college graduates, on account of you didn't have time to learn it in the College of Your Choice).”
― James Purdy, Cabot Wright Begins (1964)

[bfisher]

"I found in books my friends and my fantasy lands, and never looked to fiction for social realism, or expected books to tell me about the life I led in suburban Liverpool with immigrant parents who muttered in an obscure tongue and in the kitchen found a use for every part of the chicken."
- Linda Grant, "I have killed my books", "The Guardian",2014/05/17

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by bfisher

"I found in books my friends and my fantasy lands, and never looked to fiction for social realism, or expected books to tell me about the life I led in suburban Liverpool with immigrant parents who muttered in an obscure tongue and in the kitchen found a use for every part of the chicken."
- Linda Grant, "I have killed my books", "The Guardian",2014/05/17

I so agree with this. It is why I resisted reading Gone Girl but it ended up being metafictiony and psychologically twisted enough to hold me. It is also probably why I don't rush to read James Lee Burke's books, though he is an excellent writer and his most famous series is set in my state. Anyway, here is any excellent quote from him...

"Our wetlands were cut by over eight thousand miles of channels that allowed a constant infusion of saline into freshwater marsh: our poorest communities were dumping grounds for chemical sludge trucked in from other states; and the Gulf Stream waters of Woody Gutherie's famous song were strung with columns of oil that were several miles long... I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known..."
~James Lee Burke, Creole Belle

[bfisher]

Thanks for the reference; I've added Creole Belle to my TBR.

[AlexBell]

Hecuba is preparing the body of her grandson Astyanax for burial at the end of the Trojan War

O vain is man,
who glorieth in his joy and hath no fears:
While to and fro the chances of the years
Dance like an idiot in the wind! And none
By any strength hath his own fortune won.

The Trojan Women by Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray

[bfisher]

Geoff Dyer ("The Missing of the Somme") on old photograph albums of the Great War era:

"The dead queuing up to enlist. Marching through the dark town, disappearing beyond the edge of the frame. ... Always close to hand, the countryside seems empty in these later pictures, a register of absence. Dry stone walls and rivers."

[WT Sharpe]

.....[M]anners are but minor morals.
..........— John Dewey (1859-1952), philosopher and educator. Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education (1916), chapter 2.