Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

[Wakefield]

It certainly wasn't appropriate after the fall of Roman empire for quite a while, though.

Well, we Catholics have changed a lot.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." - Mark Twain

Twain is one of those authors whose quotes outside of his books are IMO much funnier than quotes from the books themselves.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"You see the irony is what they need to do is get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's all over." - George W. Bush

[Florestan]

The danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence, and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we should surrender our right to share in political power too easily. The holders of authority are only too anxious to encourage us to do so. They are so ready to spare us all sort of troubles, except those of obeying and paying! They will say to us: what, in the end, is the aim of your efforts, the motive of your labours, the object of all your hopes? Is it not happiness? Well, leave this happiness to us and we shall give it to you. No, Sirs, we must not leave it to them. No matter how touching such a tender commitment may be, let us ask the authorities to keep within their limits. Let them confine themselves to being just. We shall assume the responsibility of being happy for ourselves. - Benjamin Constant

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"Later, Wagner ran off with Cosima, had two more children with her and married her. In that order. While we're on the subject, you might be interested to know that Isolde's brother was born right in the middle of Wagner's Siegfried. The opera, that is. Naturally, Wagner had enough to worry about without having to think up names, so he simply called the baby Siegfried. The way I look at it, the kid was pretty lucky. Another couple of years, and he would have been called Götterdämmerung." - Victor Borge with Robert Sherman.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility." - Ash, from Alien

I freaking love that quote. Easily makes Ash my favorite character in Alien. And the following ones from him are not bad either:

"I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."

"I can't lie to you about your chances, but... you have my sympathies."

[Wakefield]

Nice!

The character of Matthew McConaughey in True Detective, talking about his technique as a successful interrogator:

"Look — everybody knows there's something wrong with them. They just don't know what it is. Everybody wants confession, everybody wants some cathartic narrative for it. The guilty especially. And everybody's guilty."

[Jaakko Keskinen]

Good one.

"Many unlikely people play golf, including people who are blind, who have only one arm, or even no legs, and people often wear bizarre clothes to the game. Other golfers don't think them odd, for there are no rules of appearance or dress at golf. That is one of its minor pleasures. But Goldfinger had made an attempt to look smart at golf and that is the only way of dressing that is incongruous on a links." - Ian Fleming

[Sef]

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett

[Ken B]

"Most people believe what they hear. I never do." -- Miss Marple

[NikF]

Never to make a line I have not heard in my own heart; yet, with all modesty to say:
"My soul, be satisfied with flowers,
With fruit, with weeds even; but gather them
In the one garden you may call your own."

- Edmond Rostand

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"The habit, too, of seeking some sort of recompense in the discontented boast of being disappointed, is a habit fraught with degeneracy. A certain idle carelessness and recklessness of consistency soon comes of it. To bring deserving things down by setting undeserving things up is one of its perverted delights; and there is no playing fast and loose with the truth, in any game, without growing the worse for it." Charles Dickens

[Ken B]

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchett

I love it.
TP, RIP

[Ten thumbs]

Round are the woods of the ancient oak,
And pines that scorn at the woodman's stroke ;
And yet the axe is on its way,
Those stately trees in the dust to lay.

They have open'd the quarries of lime and stone ;
There is nothing that man will leave alone :
He buildeth the house—he tilleth the soil ;
No place is free from care and toil.

Ye old and ye stately solitudes,
Where the white snow lies, and the eagle broods,
Where every sound but the wind was still ;
Or the voice of the torrent adown the hill.

Wo on our wretched and busy race.
That will not leave Nature a resting-place.
We roam over earth, we sail o'er the wave,
Till there is not a quiet spot but the grave.

Letitia Landon, 1837

This still seems apt and now we invade places that weren't even thought of then.

[Ken B]

Round are the woods of the ancient oak,
And pines that scorn at the woodman's stroke ;
And yet the axe is on its way,
Those stately trees in the dust to lay.

They have open'd the quarries of lime and stone ;
There is nothing that man will leave alone :
He buildeth the house—he tilleth the soil ;
No place is free from care and toil.

Ye old and ye stately solitudes,
Where the white snow lies, and the eagle broods,
Where every sound but the wind was still ;
Or the voice of the torrent adown the hill.

Wo on our wretched and busy race.
That will not leave Nature a resting-place.
We roam over earth, we sail o'er the wave,
Till there is not a quiet spot but the grave.

Letitia Landon, 1837

This still seems apt and now we invade places that weren't even thought of then.

This poem, when you think about it, is really a paean to hatred. It expresses the exaltation of things over other people, a disdain for the wishes and striving of others, the mindless worship of "Nature" as an abstraction. It expresses contempt, loathing, disgust. It expresses the impulse for Lebensraum. In rhyming couplets.

[Jaakko Keskinen]

"And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?"
"Humph! Some brothers are not loved over much." Charles Dickens

"I am heavy company for myself, sometimes." Charles Dickens

"I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me!" Max Reger

"[Javert] was a compound of two sentiments, simple and good in themselves, but he made them almost evil by his exaggeration of them: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion." Victor Hugo

"Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good." Victor Hugo

[Ten thumbs]

This poem, when you think about it, is really a paean to hatred. It expresses the exaltation of things over other people, a disdain for the wishes and striving of others, the mindless worship of "Nature" as an abstraction. It expresses contempt, loathing, disgust. It expresses the impulse for Lebensraum. In rhyming couplets.

You are mistaken. Landon was a city girl and very far from being a worshipper of Nature. She found much more fascination in Art. In the extract quoted, she reflects upon the inevitability of decay. There is no hatred nor disgust, only an acceptance that we all (including Nature) one day face the grave.

Here is another fragment (probably representing a statue or painting):

The thick curls cluster round thy graceful head,
And over thy pale forehead, where the mind
Her visible temple hath; upon thy lip
Is throned a rich yet melancholy smile —
So sad, it seems prophetic of the doom
That hangs on thy young life ; and thine eye wears
An inward look, where outward things but pass
Unnoticed — thou dost hold communion with
Thoughts dark and terrible. A blight hangs o'er
The spring flowers of thy morn, the seeds of death
Are sown within thy bosom, and there is
Upon thee consciousness of fate.

[Ten thumbs]

We talk of the beauties of nature, I must own I am more pleased with those of art. I know no spectacle more impressive than a great street in a great city,—take Piccadilly, for instance; the immense variety of faces that hurry past, each without interest in the other, for how rare it is to remark the greeting even of acquaintance ; indeed, you may often walk for days, and not meet a creature you know. The houses, with all their daily life—associations of comfort, force you to think how man's ingenuity has been exerted for man's pleasure. The shops, where every article is a triumph of ingenuity—some curious, some beautiful. The sweep of the Green Park: grass close beside the worn pavement,—the beautiful garden of Lord Coventry,—the royal gift destined for the solace of the blind and of the aged friend. Westminster Abbey rising in dim and dusky grandeur,—Westminster Abbey, where history becomes poetry, and whose illustrious dead are familiar to every memory. The many carriages, each like a grade in the complicated grades of society ; the wealth few pause to envy, the poverty still fewer pause to pity. The gradual closing in of night, whose empire is here disputed by the lamps linked in one long line of light,—each holding its imprisoned flame, and, last, the triumphal arch at Hyde Park, while the open space behind is shrouded in unbroken darkness.

Letitia Landon

[Ken B]

You are mistaken. Landon was a city girl and very far from being a worshipper of Nature. She found much more fascination in Art. In the extract quoted, she reflects upon the inevitability of decay. There is no hatred nor disgust, only an acceptance that we all (including Nature) one day face the grave.

Here is another fragment (probably representing a statue or painting):

The thick curls cluster round thy graceful head,
And over thy pale forehead, where the mind
Her visible temple hath; upon thy lip
Is throned a rich yet melancholy smile —
So sad, it seems prophetic of the doom
That hangs on thy young life ; and thine eye wears
An inward look, where outward things but pass
Unnoticed — thou dost hold communion with
Thoughts dark and terrible. A blight hangs o'er
The spring flowers of thy morn, the seeds of death
Are sown within thy bosom, and there is
Upon thee consciousness of fate.

Well actually I was mocking those who find hidden horrors and outrageous crimes in every piece of writing from the past. Here I conjured the Holocaust from a little nostalgia over quiet woods ...

[Ten thumbs]

Well actually I was mocking those who find hidden horrors and outrageous crimes in every piece of writing from the past. Here I conjured the Holocaust from a little nostalgia over quiet woods ...

Your warning is certainly justified. There are many who like to find hidden meanings in every word, especially in Shakespeare. Knowing how widely Landon read, one could surmise that the trees in the forest represent people of genius, or even more specifically, women of genius. This is not impossible but is unverifiable. In any case, were this so, surely they would have been cedars rather than oaks and pines, although these two might conceivably allude to the two sexes. As you point out, these are but vain musings. Similarly, you make the mistake of finding nostalgia, which is foreign to Landon. One thing we do know, is that her philosophy includes a belief that decay and death are innate to all bodies. The axing of the trees are an inevitability, just as our own deaths are.