Friday, January 29, 2010

Quotes: Satire

Satire 578 "Everybody who has known Mr. Fessenden, must have wondered how the kindest-hearted man in all the world could have likewise been the most noted satirist of his day." Hawthorne: “Thomas Green Fessenden


Satire 578 "On careful examination of his works, I do not find, in any of them, the ferocity of the true blood-hound of literature—such as Swift…." Hawthorne: “Thomas Green Fessenden


Satire 246 "Satire is a sort of glass [mirror], wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own." Jonathan Swift.


Satire 246 " Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art." Philip Roth.


Satire 31 "A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests." John Dryden. “Chaucer.” 1700. Gross, ed. Essays.


Satire 437 "Satire…essentially an art of over-simplification since it concentrates on a few if not only a single characteristic, is inevitably in danger of overlooking the complexity of human nature." Mark Schorer, Afterword. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Quote: Sanity

Sanity 221 " …sanity, the human organism’s ability to distinguish illusion from reality." Toffler, Future Shock.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Quotes: Saint and Sainthood.

Saint 501 "…reminds one that inside the saint, or near-saint, there was a very shrewd, able person who could, if he had chosen, have been a brilliant success as a lawyer, an administrator or perhaps even a businessman." George Orwell. “Reflections on Gandhi.” 1949. Gross, ed. Essays.


Sainthood and humanity 505 "No doubt alcohol, tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid." George Orwell. “Reflections on Gandhi.” 1949. Gross, ed. Essays.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Quotes: Rural Life

Rural life 470 "…the country that has always existed in our imagination, so clean, trim, lavishly colored [vs.]…agriculture as a pursuit for real farms, with their actual lumbering beasts, their mud and manure…their mortgages and loans and market prices, their long days of wet fields and dirty straw." J.B. Priestley. “The Toy Farm.” 1927. Gross, ed. Essays.


Rural life 470 "…that [idealized] countryside where there are no ugly downpours, no sodden fields and lanes choked with mud, where only the gentlest shower of rain breaks through the sunshine, where everything is as clean as a new pin and fresh from the paint-box, where men and women are innocent and gay and the very beasts are old friends, where sin and suffering and death are not even a distant rumor." J.B. Priestley. “The Toy Farm.” 1927. Gross, ed. Essays.


Rural life 471 " …vision of townsmen, longing for the fields in their wilderness of bricks and mortar, a revolt against the ugly mechanical things of today, but a dream that would appear to be as old as civilized man himself, touching men’s imagination when towns were little more than specks in the green countryside…this other country where there was nothing ugly nor any pain or sorrow…haunts the mind of man everywhere and in every age." J.B. Priestley. “The Toy Farm.” 1927. Gross, ed. Essays.


Rural life 339 "The boys escorted us to the front of the house, which I hadn’t yet seen; in farm-houses, somehow, life comes and goes by the back door." Cather, My Ántonia


Rural life 38 "In front of saloons, farm wives sitting on the seats of wagons, waiting for their husbands to become drunk and ready to start home." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Quote: Routine

Routine 356 Bertram M. Gross: "Routine is essential…[because it] frees creative energies for dealing with the more baffling array of new problems…choosing the same seat spares us the need to survey and evaluate other possibilities." Toffler, Future Shock.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Quote: Romance.

. Romance 178 "But she would not listen to his theory that all this romance stuff is simply moonshine—elegant when you’re courting, but no use busting yourself keeping it up all your life.' ” Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Quote: Ritual.

Ritual 496 “ 'Let’s go eat,' or whatever people say when a thing begins to be over." DeLillo, Underworld.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Quotes: Rhetoric

Examples of rhetorical techniques:


Rhetoric 411 "But the point is…what’s the point…?" DeLillo, Underworld.


Rhetorical technique 108 "To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois." Jules Renard. 1889. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Quotes: Revenge.

Revenge 110 "The gods of vengeance act in silence." Schiller. German. Dictionary of Foreign Terms. Don't telegraph your revenge?


Revenge 3 "Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior...." F. Bacon, “Of Revenge.” 1625. Gross, ed. Essays. Logical. But with revenge, you are dealing with emotion.


Revenge 4 "This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." F. Bacon, “Of Revenge.” 1625. Gross, ed. Essays.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Quotes: Reunion

Reunion 157 College reunion. "The men whom they could not recall they addressed, 'Well, well, great to see you again, old man; what are you—still doing the same thing?” Lewis, Babbitt.


Reunion 688 "It feels strange coming back…everybody is so ugly." DeLillo, Underworld.


Hawthorne on his reunion at Bowdoin: "Everyone is so funny looking." The contrast between youth and old age.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Quotes: Returns.

The theme of returning after a long separation:


Return 601 "...because the village did not remember him as he remembered the village." Hawthorne: “The Threefold Destiny: A Fairy Legend”


Return 602 "...they found him, a tall, dark, stately man, of foreign aspect, courteous in demeanor and mild of speech, yet with an abstracted eye, which seemed often to snatch a glance at the invisible.:" Hawthorne: “The Threefold Destiny: A Fairy Legend”


Return 605 "...singular contrast in their two figures; he dark and picturesque--one who had battled with the world--whom all suns had shown upon, and whom all winds had blown on a varied course; she neat, comely, and quiet--quiet even in her agitation--as if all her emotions had been subdued to the peaceful tenor of her life." Hawthorne: “The Threefold Destiny: A Fairy Legend”

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Quote: Results vs. Consequences.

I have heard it said about the difference between results and consequences that results are what we expect, consequences are wheat we get. McNamara’s In Retrospect. "Consequences" sound a little like side effects. RayS.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Quote: Restraints.

Restraints 118 "The chains which men bear they have imposed upon themselves; strike them off, and they will weep for their lost security." John Passmore. 1970. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Quotes: Resolutions.

Resolution 343 Marianne: "I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading…have formed my plan and am determined to enter on a course of serious study…by reading only six hours a day I shall gain in the course of a twelvemonth a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want." Austen, Sense and Sensibility.


Resolution 347 Marianne: "As for Willoughby—to say that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him, would be idle; his remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or opinions but it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment." Austen, Sense and Sensibility.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Quotes: Research.

Research 774 "But, to Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband’s own world, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career, with its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which either event was attributable." Hawthorne:


Research 229 "The true scientific investigator completely loses sight of the utility of what he is about." C. S. Peirce. Late 19th – early 20th century. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Quote: Rereading.

Rereading 64 "We never return to the same book or even the same page, because…we change…and our memories grow bright and dim and bright again, and we never know exactly what it is we learn and forget, and what it is we remember." Manguel, A History of Reading [i.e., the book does not change, but we do. RayS.]

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Quotes: Religion (8)

Religion 159 Dolly ": …you must bring her up like christened folks’s children, and take her to church, and let her learn her catechise, as my little Aaron can say off-—he 'I believe’ and everything, and ‘hurt nobody by word or deed’…." George Eliot, Silas Marner.


Religion 197 Nancy: "To adopt a child, because children of your own had been denied you, was to try and choose your lot in spite of Providence; the adopted child, she was convinced, would never turn out well, and would be a curse to those who had willfully and rebelliously sought what it was clear that, for some reason, they were better without." George Eliot, Silas Marner.


Religion 108 Utopia. "But by far the largest section of the population, and the wisest too…thinks that there is a certain single divinity, unknown, eternal, boundless, inexplicable, beyond the understanding of the human mind, diffused through the whole of this universe in virtue, not bulk." Sir Thomas More, Utopia.


Religion 119 Utopia. "For it is an offense to be present [at religious services] with a troubled mind…people do not go to the rites if they are aware of harboring anger or hatred against anyone…." Sir Thomas More, Utopia.


Religious mania 300 "Many races, like many individuals, have indulged in practices which must in the end destroy them…such customs as collective suicide and the prohibition of marriage, both of which may be set down to religious mania." Frazer, The New Golden Bough.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Quotes: Religion (7)

Religion 167 "The Pastor…the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. …for the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocate…wrote editorials on 'The Manly Man’s Religion' and 'The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity.' " Lewis, Babbitt.


Religion 169 "If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered in sonorous Boosters’-Club rhetoric, 'My religion is to serve my fellow men, to honor my brother as myself and to do my bit to make life happier for one and all…I’m a member of the Presbyterian Church, and naturally, I accept its doctrines…There’s no use discussing and arguing about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling.' ” Lewis, Babbitt.


Religion 163 "He [Goldstein] was not religious, and yet he believed in a God, a personal God with whom he could quarrel, and whom he could certainly upbraid." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.


Religion 8 "He had inherited from his mother some acquaintance with medical herbs and their preparation ...but of late years he had had doubts about the lawfulness of applying this knowledge, believing that herbs could have no efficacy without prayer, and that prayer might suffice without herbs...." George Eliot, Silas Marner.


Religion 101 "The inhabitants of Raveloe were not severely regular in their church-going and perhaps there was hardly a person in the parish who would not have held that to go to church every Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with Heaven, and get an undue advantage over their neighbors...." George Eliot, Silas Marner.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Quotes: Religion (6).

Impressions of Religion


Religion 99 I saw a side of [Ambrosch] I had not seen before; he was deeply, slavishly, devout; he did not say a word all morning, but sat with his rosary in his hands, praying, now silently, now aloud...never looked away from his beads, nor lifted his hands except to cross himself; several times the poor boy fell asleep where he sat, wakened with a start, and began to pray again. Cather, My Ántonia


Religion 391 …the firm conviction that life is good because the Lord Himself has ordained it all. Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth.


Religion 316 The doctor [Kennicott] asserted, “Sure religion is a fine influence—got to have it to keep the lower classes in order—fact, it’s the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes ‘em respect the rights of property.” Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.


Religion 317 Men [in church] with highly plastered hair, so painfully shaved that their faces looked sore…. Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.


Religion 83 [Mike Monday] has converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at an average cost of less than ten dollars a head. Lewis, Babbitt.