Friday, March 7, 2008

Quotes: California. Capital Punishment. Career. Carnival. Catholicism .

The bold-face print is an interpretation of the quote that follows.

California
California 59 "In California, everyone goes to a therapist [or] is a therapist…." Truman Capote. Portable Curmudgeon.

California 59 "It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point off your IQ every year." Truman Capote. Portable Curmudgeon.

Capital Punishment
Capital punishment 60 "There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it." George Bernard Shaw. Portable Curmudgeon.

Career
Career 91 A man with a career can't waste time on a wife, family and friends; he has to devote his time to his enemies. "A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies." John Oliver Hobbes. 1867-1906. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Career 91 A career involves breaking friendships. "The path to social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships." H. G. Wells. 1905. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Carnival
Carnival 654 Carnival is followed by Lent. "In modern times the indulgence of the Carnival is followed immediately by the abstinence of Lent…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Catholicism
Catholicism 282 Catholicism emphasizes not life, but death. "Fernanda was scandalized that she did not understand the relationship of Catholicism with life but only its relationship with death, as if it were not a religion, but a compendium of funeral conventions." Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Catholicism and primitive belief 356 The Easter celebration of the risen Christ is based on the Pagan celebration of the risen Adonis. "When we reflect how often the Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and arisen Adonis, which, as we have seen reason to believe, was celebrated in Syria at the same season." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Catholicism and primitive belief 356 The Greek dying lover in the arms of his sorrowful goddess is the model for the Pieta. "The type, created by Greek artists, of the sorrowful goddess with her dying lover in her arms, resembles and may have been the model of the Pietá of Christian art, the Virgin with the dead body of her divine Son in her lap, of which the most celebrated example is the one by Michael Angelo in St. Peter’s." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Catholicism and primitive belief 378 A model for the execution of Christ? "The human victims dedicated to Odin were regularly put to death by hanging or by a combination of hanging and stabbing, the man being strung up to a tree or a gallows and then wounded with a spear." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Catholicism and primitive belief 404 A model for Christianity? "The corn-god produced the corn from himself; he gave his own body to feed the people: he died that they might live." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Catholicism and primitive belief 535 An ancient model for the Christian practice of fasting before taking Holy Communion? "Of all modes of purification adopted on these occasions none perhaps brings out the sacramental virtue of the rite so clearly as the practice of taking a purgative before swallowing the new corn…intention is thereby to prevent the sacred food from being polluted by contact with common food in the stomach of the eater…same reason Catholics partake of the Eucharist fasting…." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

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