"Every one of us is losing something precious to us... Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive."
Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore
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"Every one of us is losing something precious to us... Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That's part of what it means to be alive."
Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore
Yeats and the Divine
Although Yeats is often characterised as a mystical or even spiritual writer he is little concerned with God or with spiritual experience of the divine. It would be wrong to say that he is an atheist, since he certainly believes in the divine ‘uncreated spirit’, however, he does not see himself as concerned with the divine. He puts God onto one side of his System, the primary, and distances Him from creation to such an extent that He is no longer relevant, at least to those of antithetical disposition. When God appears in the poetry, He is often addressed through a character such as Crazy Jane or Ribh, or in a mythifying phrase, such as the ‘Primum Mobile that fashioned us’ in ‘Meditations in Time of Civil War’ or ‘the Great Questioner’ in ‘At Algeciras—A Meditation upon Death’. Considering the mystical Christian philosopher Friedrich von Hügel, Yeats admits much similarity of character, since he too accepts ‘the miracles of the saints’, but he cannot embrace the religion in which they lived and died:
I—though heart might find relief
Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief
What seems most welcome in the tomb—play a predestined part.
Homer is my example and his unchristened heart.
‘Vacillation’ VIII (VP 503)
Note: the above is part of a discussion of the book "A Vision" by Wm B Yeats.
Whoa! You're reading it too?Quote:
Originally Posted by caffeinecups
"I know. You've never killed anyone, and don't want to. But listen to me - there are tmes in life when those kinds of excuses don't cut it anymore."
Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore
Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections.
A hundred years is youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man's lodging partook of his ephemeral character, and God's house of his eternity.
Hugo Victor - Les Miserables
"Who is John Galt?"
(from Atlas Shrugged... by Ayn Rand... I'm on page 40... and this is what making me go on with it.. right now...)
Yep, actually finished. It's a good read. I wanna try his other works.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jamesian
"... Once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about."
Kafka on the Shore, still. :D
"Good luck to the farmer! Good luck to the man who owns this place, the man who works it, the faithful, the virtuous! I can love him, I can revere him, I can envy him. But I have wasted half my life trying to live his life. I wanted to be something that I was not. I even wanted to be a poet and a middle-class person at the same time. I wanted to be an artist and a man of fantasy, but I also wanted to be a good man, a man at home. It all went on for a long time, till I knew that a man cannot be both and have both, that I am a nomad and not a farmer, a man who searches and not a man who keeps. A long time I castigated myself before gods and laws which were only idols for me. That was what I did wrong, my anguish, my complicity in the world's pain. I increased the world's guilt and anguish, by doing violence to myself, by not daring to walk toward my own salvation. The way to salvation leads neither to the left nor the right: it leads into your own heart, and there alone is God, and there alone is peace..."
Wandering, Notes and Sketches,
by Herman Hesse
...He dug in a box and produced a board and a wooden box of men. Morris had never seen the chess-set befor but Honey stroked them as if greeting old friends. He set out the pieces tenderly.
'First the castles, one at each corner, like the legs of a cow. Then the knights - I love the knights; such proud horseheads, such flaring nostrils and, besides, they move obliwuely. Now the reverend gentlemen, next to the caballeros. And the Queen, the travelling lady; she's my favourite piece, she can go anywhere on the board - zip, zip. And a femme fatale, she is, whose kiss is death. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, here is the King. Vulnerable your King - in the last resort he has to hop off one by one, stage by stage, like Luis XIV escaping from Versailles. Morris shall be black and I white. There are our infantry, our pawns, all ready to go over the top.
Let's begin'
From Shadow Dance - Angela Carter
"Nothing in life is so beautiful as the night before what is yet to be, the night and it's dew."
From Independent People by Halldór Laxness.
Man, I love this book! :thumbs_up
"Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!"
~Vladimir Nabokov, p. 34 Lolita
"The Fascist guns were of the same make and calibre as our own, and the unexploded shells were often reconditioned and fired back. There was said to be one old shell with a nickname of its own which travelled daily to and fro, never exploding."
(Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell)
Seriously...this is like the prototype for Catch-22 :D
"I must be happy, he said, it is less pleasant than I should have thought."
Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bakiryu
~I just found this whole paragraph so beautiful I copied it all. It's the first page of Weaveworld by Clive Barker.
"...For me a projection involves the two perceptions of sound and sight. I draw upon picture and sonic images in my memory circuits. Since I have read and summarized every book in print during my time, seen and summarized and cross-filed lectures, conversations between individuals, and been separately programmed to evaluate all formal human philosophies ... Dr. Pierce's request evokes a process of options, each of which I produce for myself in the form of images on a screen. It's as if I'm actually looking at a different future each time. And, since I have no bias, no preconception, the decision as to which is the most likely to happen is something I observe in a mechanically detached way."
-from Computerworld by A.E. Van Vogt
..............."I will have such difficulty in becoming English again: here I am Arab in habits, and slip in talking from English to French and Arab unnoticing, yesterday I was 3 hours with an Orleannais, talking French, and he thought at the end I was a compatriot. You may be happy, now all my rough work is finished successfully, and my thesis is I THINK ASSURED. 'Irade' invaluable' ." (Last expression footnote...Lawrence carried {irades} or letters of protection from the Sultan obtained for him by Lord Curzon, then Chancellor of Oxford University.) quote from [Letters of T.E.Lawrence...Archaeology chapter] p77
The Letters of T.E. Lawrence -To His Brother, Will Lawrence-June 8, 1911
(from Carchemish)..................."I left my special subject (the Crusades) till the last two weeks
of the last term. It was mosotly done while the examination was actually in progress in
three all-night sittings: special subjects, if you know all but the facts are a matter of
simple cram. I should certainly not recommend doing it (except to know your ground, if it is
territorial) before the last term: or the term before the last, leaving the last for revision.
If it is a matter like the Crusades two or three weeks are more than enough. Other subjects
have more to read: but always read something that throws a side-light on the set
authorities. ...You are going to too many lectures." [Archaeology]
I have just finished Do With Me What You Will by Joyce Carol Oates. it made me think on very different levels.
Here is a quote:
Quote:
Will we always be alone? Always live alone?
Alone in our heads? - absolutely not.
But there were so many years before I met you... I lived alone... I was always alone...
I was alone too, honey, but look: now we relive it all, together. That's my theory about marriage... a long conversation where you relive your life, remembering things, maybe inventing a few things.
Are we married, then?
In our heads, why not?... you don't really live alone, because after you fall in love you retell it all, it's like a book two people create together, a novel... There's the need to talk, like making love. First you do one and then you do the other.
From Melville's White-Jacket
I did not fancy this station at all; for it is well known on
shipboard that, in time of action, the quarter-deck is one of the
most dangerous posts of a man-of-war. The reason is, that the
officers of the highest rank are there stationed; and the enemy
have an ungentlemanly way of target-shooting at their buttons. If
we should chance to engage a ship, then, who could tell but some
bungling small-arm marks-man in the enemy's tops might put a
bullet through me instead of the Commodore? If they hit him,
no doubt he would not feel it much, for he was used to that sort
of thing, and, indeed, had a bullet in him already. Whereas, I
was altogether unaccustomed to having blue pills playing round my
head in such an indiscriminate way. Besides, ours was a flag-
ship; and every one knows what a peculiarly dangerous predicament
the quarter-deck of Nelson's flag-ship was in at the battle of
Trafalgar; how the lofty tops of the enemy were full of soldiers,
peppering away at the English Admiral and his officers. Many a
poor sailor, at the guns of that quarter-deck, must have received
a bullet intended for some wearer of an epaulet.
Letter 65: To V.W. Richards, Dec. 10, 1913.........written at Carchemish "Dear Richard, It's quaint, isn't it, to begin again a correspondence which has lapsed for about a twelve-month? but, you know, I'm about as sick of myself and my affairs as one can well be, and it would be a consolation, if not exactly a comfort, to hear something of the sort from you. The fault was in ever coming out to this place, I think, because really ever since knowing it I have felt that (at least for the near future) to talk of settling down to live in a small way anywhere else was beating the air: and so gradually I slipped down, until a few months ago when I found myself an ordinary archaeologist. I fought very hard, at Oxford and after going down, to avoid being labelled: but the insurance people have nailed me down, now." from the letters of T.E. Lawrence (Archaeology chapter) ...author also known as Lawrence of Arabia (page 160)
"We live in a time when no none wants to remember. We pretend we are where it starts. Look at the way we live - we build houses on cliffs, on fault lines, in the path of things, and when something happens, we don't learn history, we build it again, right on the same spot, bigger and better......Fallout accumulates. What we've got now is a blend of fact and fiction that we're agreeing to call reality."
Letters of T.E.Lawrence, #114, To Mr. LLoyd George, Thursday, Sept. 19, 1919 Chapter: Dog Fight in Downing Street "Dear Mr. Lloyd George, I must confess to you that in my heart I always believed that in the end you would let the Arabs down: -so that now I find it quite difficult to know how to thank you. It concerns me personally, because I assured them during the campaigns that our promises held their face value, and backed them with my word, for what it was worth. Now in your agreement over Syria you have kept all our promises to them, and given them more than perhaps they ever deserved, and my relief at getting out of the affair with clean hands is very great." T.E. Lawrence p. 287
February 16, 1920....letter 120, To Colonel S. F. Newcombe (chapter.........Dog Fight in Downing Street) Dear S.F., I owe you five letters! At first it wasn't worth while for you were reported to me in one week as at Aleppo, Azraak, Bagdad & Cairo: and then it became a habit. However the arrival of a smaller (I hope not cheaper) edition* is an occasion for a bookworm like myself. The "editio princeps" always has a special value: but in some cases (Shakespeare folios e.g.) new matter is embodied in the reprints, which give them a market reputation little, if any, less than original. At the same time collectors, and especially collectors of sentiment, always prefer the genuine article. However Mrs. Newcombe will regard the graft as the first. These things, as Solomon quoted from Adam's table-talk, depend on the point of view. Please give her my heartiest congratulations. *footnote, Colonel Newcombe's son, Stewart Lawrence Newcombe, had just been born. .....from The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett, with a forward by Captain B.H. Liddell Hart. copyright 1938
Letter 131, Mesopotamia, by Ex-Lieut-Colonel. T.E.Lawrence (Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford) (Mr. Lawrence, whose organization and direction of the Hedjaz against the Turks was one of the outstanding romances of the war, has written this article at our request in order that the public may be fully informed of our Mesopotamian commitments.) "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Bagdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster." {This first paragraph might indicate how history repeats itself; the parallels to present day geo-politics are uncanny.} written in August of 1920
Possession - A S Byatt
The next I laughed out loud to this morning.Quote:
And I listened to the increasing Quiet - and my horse went softly on the beech-mast - which was wet after rain - not crackling, a little sodden, not wet enough to plash. And I had the sensation, common enough, at least to me, that I was moving out of time, that the way, narrow and dark-dappled, stretched away indifferently before and behind, and that I was who I had been and what I would become - all at once, all wound in one - and I moved on indifferently, since it was all one, whether I came or went, or remainded still. Now to me such moments are poetry.
Quote:
'Just at the moment, I'm trying celibacy, I like it. Its only hazard is people who will proselytise for their own way of doing things. You should try it.'
'Oh, I did, for a month, back in the Fall. It was great at first. I got to be quite in love with myself, and then I thought I was unhealthily attached to me, and I should give myself up.'
To Xcape: Your quote is a revelation; it sounds a little like Samuel Beckett. quasi
Letter 161: To Bernard Shaw, written August 17, 1922 from 14 Barton Street, Westminster........."Dear Mr. Shaw, You will be puzzled at my writing to you: but Cockerell some months ago took me round to you and introduced me, and you did not talk too formidably. I want to ask you two questions: the first one, 'Do you still read books?', doesn't require an answer. If you still go on reading I'm going to put the second question: if you don't, then please skip the two inside pages of this note and carry over to my signature at the end, and burn it all without replying. I hate letter-writing as much as I can, and so, probably, do you. My real wish is to ask if you will read, or try to read, a book which I have written. It's about the war, which will put you off, to start with, and there are technical unpleasantnesses about it. For instance it is very long: about 300,000 words I suspect, though I have not counted them. I have very little money and do not wish to publish it: however it had to be printed, so I got it done on a lino. press, in a newspaper office. That means it's beastly to look at, two columns on a quarto page, small newspaper type which hurts your eyes, and dozens of misprints, corrected roughly in ink: for only five copies exist, and I could not afford a proof. The punctuation is entirely the compositor's fancy: and he had an odd fancy, especially on Mondays." {This letter refers to T.E. Lawrence's book, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom".}
I spoke of a memoir. Is this what this chronicle will prove to be? At this moment, a page old, it feels more like a diary than a memoir. Well, let it be a diary then. How I regret that I did not keep one earlier...But now the main events of my life are over and there is to be nothing but 'recollection in tranquility'. To repent of a life of egoism? Not exactly, yet something of the sort. I never said this to the ladies and gentlemen of the theatre. They would never have stopped laughing.
The theatre is certainly a place for learning about the brevity of human glory: oh all those wonderful glittering absolutely vanished pantomimes! Now I shall abjure magic and become a hermit: put myself in a situation where I can honestly say that I have nothing else to do but to learn to be good. The end of life is rightly thought of as a period of meditation. Will I be sorry that I did not begin sooner?
Letter 350: To H.S. Ede (sent April 16, 1928) mailed from Karachi, Pakistan. From Chapter "The Years of Hide and Seek"............"I hope that the Gallery has now re-opened, and restored itself, as the best art entertainment in London. You may feel that it's hopelessly slow and cloggy: but I confess that Frys and Ivor Churchills and Courtaulds* do not sum up more than the yesterday of expression, in my backward regard. It makes me smile, sometimes, to think that all the varying pictures produced in 1928 will all date themselves, by some subtlety of likeness to 1928, in the eyes of 2028. Yet today we are hardly on speaking terms. Of pictures and sculpture I'm not talking, now, but of the writing gangs: the Joyces and the Kiplings, the Steins and Wells, the Forsters and the D.H. Lawrences: they will all date within 20 years, by some yet-imperceptible solidarity. There WILL be a common thread between T.S.Eliot and Alfred Noyes."..............{comment: T.E. Lawrence is now writing in a somewhat jaded fashion of these great writers, not dismissively but with respect and yet percieving their work as books that will be quickly dated. The writing of this day had such high standards without being aware of it, that Lawrence (after years of internal ambivalence concerning his own book "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom") was maybe too close to these writers to see the genious in their work. He seems to exclude from this general opinion, the writing of T.S. Eliot and Alfred Noyes.} *footnote: Roger Fry, the critic, Lord Ivor Churchill and Samuel Courtauld have made famous collections of works of art.
A LOOM OF YEARS
In the light of the silent stars that shine on the struggling sea,
In the weary cry of the wind and the whisper of flower and tree,
Under the breath of laughter, deep in the tide of tears,
I hear the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The leaves of the winter wither and sink in the forest mould
To colour the flowers of April with purple and white and gold:
Light and scent and music die and are born again
In the heart of a grey-haired woman who wakes in a world of pain.
The hound, the fawn, and the hawk, and the doves that croon and coo,
We are all one woof of the weaving and the one warp threads us through,
One flying cloud on the shuttle that carries our hopes and fears
As it goes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
The green uncrumpling fern and the rustling dewdrenched rose
Pass with our hearts to the Silence where the wings of music close,
Pass and pass to the Timeless that never a moment mars,
Pass and pass to the Darkness that made the suns and stars.
Has the soul gone out in the Darkness? Is the dust sealed from sight?
Ah, hush, for the woof of the ages returns thro’ the warp of the night!
Never that shuttle loses one thread of our hopes and fears,
As it comes thro’ the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
O, woven in one wide Loom thro’ the throbbing weft of the whole,
One in spirit and flesh, one in body and soul,
Tho’ the leaf were alone in its falling, the bird in its hour to die,
The heart in its muffled anguish, the sea in its mournful cry,
One with the flower of a day, one with the withered moon
One with the granite mountains that melt into the noon
One with the dream that triumphs beyond the light of the spheres,
We come from the Loom of the Weaver that weaves the Web of Years.
Alfred Noyes
{This poet/writer mentioned with T.S.Eliot in previous post}
Hey, quasimodo. Really enjoyed the Alfred Noyes poem. It reminded me of one a poet friend of mine sent me some time ago. Here it is:
My Law-Tieme Ranapiri
The sun may be clouded, yet ever the sun
will sweep on its course till the cycle is run
and when into chaos the system is hurled.
Again shall the builder reshape a new world
Your path maybe clouded, uncertain your goal,
Move on- for your orbit is fixed to your soul.
And though it may lead into darkness of night
the torch of the builder shall give it new light.
You were - you will be - know this while you are
Your spirit has travelled both long and afar
It came from the source to the source it returns
The spark which was lighted eternally burns.
It slept in a jewel, it lept in a wave
It roamed in the forest, it rose from the grave,
It took on strange garbs for long aeons of years
And now in the soul of yourself it appears.
From body to body your spirit speeds on,
it seeks a new form when the old one has gone
and the form that it finds is the fabric you wrought
on the loom of the mind from the fibre of thought
As dew is drawn upwards, in rain to descend
your thoughts drift away and in destiny blend.
You cannot escape them, for petty or great,
or evil or noble they fashion your fate.
Somewhere on some planet sometime and somehow
your life will reflect your thoughts of your now.
My law is unerring, no blood can atone,
the structure you built you will live in alone
From cycle to cycle through time and through space
your lives with your longings will ever keep pace
And all that you ask for and all you desire
must come at your bidding as flame out of fire.
Once list' to that voice and all tumult is done-
your life is the life of the infinite one
In the hurrying race you are concious of pause
with love for the purpose and love for the cause.
You are your own devil you are your own god
You fashioned the paths your footsteps have trod.
And no one can save you from error or sin
untill you have harkened to the spirit within.
Attributed to a Maori
To karo: "My Law" is a fabulous piece and it's similarity to the Alfred Noyes poem jumps right out. The attribution is unknown to me, unless "a Maori" or "Maori" is a pen name (the proper name is identical to a tribe somewhere in the New Zealand part of the world.) Don't suppose you know any more about the writer? Looking here for more information... http://www.path-ways.com/forums/arch....php/f-6.html: [Tieme Ranapiri... (enhance the mind)]
Letter 352: To E.M. Forster, April 16, 1928 ...from Karachi, Pakistan..... " Dear E.M.F., Forgive the pencil. I am inkless this afternoon. Don't cut me off from anything you may write in future, because you've sent me one supremely good thing.* I've liked everything you've written: some of it very much, some of it less: but I liked it all. I've tried to write, myself, and know that a man doesn't ever succeed in mating sound and sense and expectation. We land, always, other than we meant to land. That's presumably the fun as well as the vexation of writing. Your less-good work is very helpful to me, as an amateur of writing: for our minds are parallel enough for me to see your intention behind the expression, (or to flatter myself that I do partly and in some senses see it...oh shades of Henry James in this style of letter!) and just because it may not completely come off, so I may be able to see the works inside it more clearly. " {*footnote, an unpublished story}
From The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal:
Quote:
"On May 15, 1796, a whole people became aware that all it had hitherto respected was supremely ridiculous, and, occasionally hateful to boot."
From Finnegans Wake
"O tell me all about Anna Livia! I want to hear all about Anna Livia. Well, you know Anna Livia? Yes, of course, we all know Anna Livia. Tell me all. Tell me now."
Quasimodo, unfortunately I know nothing about the author of 'My Law', but I believe it was inspired by a New Zealand Maori.
Quoting from letter from Lizzie to Charles:
If I came to see you like you want, just coming because you feel in the mood to see me, to sort of try my company again, I would fall straight back into the old madness....you didn't love me enough, and now - I don't believe in miracles....Charles, I've been in hell and I've come out of it and I don't want to go there again..... My love for you is quiet at last. I don't want it to become a roaring furnace.
From Don Quixote (Ormsby translation)... just finished it, very enjoyable.
Some of may fav quotes, mostly Sancho's proverbs. (Sorry for the quantity...collected them as I read.)
------------------------
"To be grateful for benefits received is the part of persons of good birth,
and one of the sins most offensive to God is ingratitude;
------------------------
And still more surprised were they when they perceived that what they heard
sung were the verses not of rustic shepherds, but of the polished wits of
the city; and so it proved, for the verses they heard were these:
What makes my quest of happiness seem vain? Disdain.
What bids me to abandon hope of ease? Jealousies.
What holds my heart in anguish of suspense? Absence.
If that be so, then for my grief Where shall I turn to seek relief,
When hope on every side lies slain By Absence, Jealousies, Disdain?
What the prime cause of all my woe doth prove? Love.
What at my glory ever looks askance? Chance.
Whence is permission to afflict me given? Heaven.
If that be so, I but await The stroke of a resistless fate,
Since, working for my woe, these three, Love, Chance and Heaven, in league I see.
What must I do to find a remedy? Die.
What is the lure for love when coy and strange? Change.
What, if all fail, will cure the heart of sadness? Madness.
If that be so, it is but folly To seek a cure for melancholy:
Ask where it lies; the answer saith In Change, in Madness, or in Death.
------------------------
for virtue is more persecuted by the wicked than loved by the good.
------------------------
for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it, and not by spending as he pleases, but by knowing how to spend it well. The poor gentleman has no way of showing that he is a gentleman but by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered, and kindly, not haughty, arrogant, or censorious, but above all by being charitable;
------------------------
"Teresa says," replied Sancho, "that I should make sure with your
worship, and 'let papers speak and beards be still,' for 'he who binds
does not wrangle,' since one 'take' is better than two 'I'll give
thee's;' and I say a woman's advice is no great thing, and he who won't take it is a fool."
------------------------
for learning without virtue is a pearl on a dunghill.
------------------------
"God will guide it better," said Sancho, "for God who gives the wound gives the salve;
------------------------
No, faith; and between a woman's 'yes' and 'no' I wouldn't venture to put the point of a pin, for there would not be room for it;
------------------------
As a grandmother of mine used to say, there are only two families in the world, the Haves and the Haven'ts; and she stuck to the Haves; and to this day, Senor Don Quixote, people would sooner feel the pulse of 'Have,' than of 'Know;' an *** covered with gold looks better than a
horse with a pack-saddle.
------------------------
"He preaches well who lives well," said Sancho, "and I know no more theology than that."
"Nor needst thou," said Don Quixote, "but I cannot conceive or make out how it is that, the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom, thou, who art more afraid of a lizard than of him, knowest so much."
------------------------
that love has no greater enemy than hunger and constant want; for love is all gaiety, enjoyment, and happiness, especially when the lover is in the possession of the object of his love, and poverty and want are the declared enemies of all these;
------------------------
"Remember, O prudent Basilio," added Don Quixote, "it was the opinion of a certain sage, I know not whom, that there was not more than one good woman in the whole world; and his advice was that each one should think and believe that this one good woman was his own wife, and in this way he would live happy.
------------------------
a good woman does not win a good name merely by being good, but by letting it be seen that she is so, and open looseness and freedom do much more damage to a woman's honour than secret depravity.
------------------------
“…at the worst the hypocrite who pretends to be good does less harm than the open sinner."
------------------------
…My lady the duchess kisses thy hands a thousand times; do thou make a return with two thousand, for as my master says, nothing costs less or is cheaper than civility.
------------------------
"Secondly, thou must keep in view what thou art, striving to know
thyself, the most difficult thing to know that the mind can imagine…
------------------------
…pride thyself rather upon being one of lowly virtue than a lofty sinner.
"Remember, Sancho, if thou make virtue thy aim, and take a pride in doing
virtuous actions, thou wilt have no cause to envy those who have princely
and lordly ones, for blood is an inheritance, but virtue an acquisition,
and virtue has in itself alone a worth that blood does not possess.
------------------------
it is not well for those that administer governments to be long without their wives
[but choose wisely, for] all that may be gained by a wise governor may be lost and wasted by a boorish stupid wife.
------------------------
"Abuse not by word him whom thou hast to punish in deed, for the pain of punishment is enough for the unfortunate without the addition of thine objurgations.
------------------------
diligence is the mother of good fortune, and indolence, its opposite, never yet attained the object of an honest ambition.
------------------------
never engage in a dispute about families, at least in the way of comparing them one with another; for necessarily one of those compared will be better than the other, and thou wilt be hated by the one thou hast disparaged, and get nothing in any shape from the one thou hast exalted.
------------------------
'they'll come for wool and go back shorn;'
------------------------
'whether the pitcher hits the stove, or the stove the pitcher, it's a bad business for the pitcher;'
------------------------
'the fool knows more in his own house than the wise man in another's.'"
------------------------
and if there's any reason to think that because of my being a governor the devil will get hold of me, I'd rather go Sancho to heaven than governor to hell."
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for I place a barrier between my inclinations and my virtue, and I do not wish to break this rule through the generosity your highness is disposed to display towards me;
------------------------
…show thyself grateful to them, for ingratitude is the daughter of pride, and one of the greatest sins we know of; and he who is grateful to those who have been good to him shows that he will be so to God also who has bestowed and still bestows so many blessings upon him.
------------------------
keep a safe conscience and let them say what they like; for trying to stop slanderers' tongues is like trying to put gates to the open plain.
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"for what thou hast to give to the mouse, give to the cat, and it will save thee all trouble."
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For the sense of being under an obligation to return benefits and favours received is a restraint that checks the independence of the spirit. Happy he, to whom heaven has given a piece of bread for which he is not bound to give thanks to any but heaven itself!"
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'For giving and keeping there's need of brains.'
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for pledges don't trouble a good payer."
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for jests that give pain are no jests, and no sport is worth anything if it hurts another.
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Her companion then came up and said, "I should like to know, Head,
whether my husband loves me or not;" the answer given to her was, "Think
how he uses thee, and thou mayest guess;" and the married lady went off
saying, "That answer did not need a question; for of course the treatment
one receives shows the disposition of him from whom it is received."
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'a good hope is better than a bad holding’
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They did not embrace each other [publicly], for where there is deep love there will never be overmuch boldness.
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for, as sensible people hold, 'the fault of the *** must not be laid on the pack-saddle;'
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'better a clear escape than good men's prayers.'
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"it is the part of brave hearts to be patient in adversity just as much as to be glad in prosperity”
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"No, no, senor," replied Sancho; "it shall never be said of me, 'The money paid, the arms broken;'
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From The Rat by Günter Grass:
Quote:
And I saw the She-rat on top of the garbage mountain, proclaiming that man is no more. This, she cried out, is your heritage.
Quote:
Then one arose in the host of Olwe, which was ever the hindmost on the road; Lenwe he was called. He forsook the westward march, and led away a numerous people, southwards down the great river, and they passed out of the knowledge of their kin until long years were past. Those were the Nandor; and they became a people apart, unlike their kin, save that they loved water, and dwelt most beside falls and running streams. Greater knowledge they had of living things, tree and herb, bird and beast, than all other Elves. In after years Denethor, son of Lenwe, turned again west at last, and led a part of that people over the mountains into Beleriand ere the rising of the Moon.
J.R.R Tolkien The Silmarillion
The Rat's lookin' pretty good right 'bout now. :p ;)
Okay, right there, Olwe really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things, nor are the Nandor all that important so feel free to wipe all that from your memory. That's the kind of stuff you can just skim over. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Riesa