Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Daily Dose
From The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948 - 1985, by James Baldwin
TIME
"Well. Time passes and passes. It passes backward and it passes forward and it carries you along, and no one in the whole wide world knows more about time than this: it is carrying you through an element you do not understand into an elem. you will not remember."
From No Name in the Street
Monday, June 29, 2015
Daily Dose
From Victory, by Joseph ConradWITH WHAT
"With what strange serenity, mingled with terrors, had that man considered the universal nothingness! He had plunged into it headlong, perhaps to render death, the answer that faced one at every inquiry, more supportable."
From Chapter 5
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Daily Dose
ANY
"One no longer has reason, when one no longer hopes to find some in others."
From Withdrawn Maxims
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Daily Dose
From Swift: the Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume II: Dr. Swift, by Irvin Ehrenpreis
JUNTO
"What they wanted was an unambiguous assertion that they were right and their enemies all wrong. What they got was a statement of general laws according to which they might be on the right side in this case but would very likely be wrong in the next."
From Chapter 6, the Contests and Dissensions
Friday, June 26, 2015
Today
I'll be fifty-two come July, and in my lifetime who I am has been a secret, a shame, and a crime. It has also been a joy and a blessing. Better than thirty years ago, I fell in love with a dark, handsome man. We've been together ever since and in that time we have, together, been a secret, a shame, a crime, a joy and a blessing. Together, we have witnessed the world change, and we have done our small part to change it. We have changed and have been changed by being together. No secret now, no shame. We ceased to be criminals just in 2003. Just today we were acknowledged to be equal before the law by a majority decision of the United States Supreme Court and the President of the United States.
It is a GOOD day.
To all who came up with us, to all who came before and to all who fell along the way, thank you. To all those still working, still marching, still fighting and dying, take heart and thank you too. To any who may feel otherwise than glad today, you may take your own time, but not mine. Today is a GOOD day, and I have no time for anything but joy, and pride, and the renewal of hope. Today, it is good to be a citizen of the United States of America.
May there be many more for us all.
Granted
“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,“ wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion. "The Constitution grants them that right.”
-- Justice Anthony Kennedy, for the majority
Daily Dose
From The Poetical Works of Jonathan Swift
FONTINELLA TO FLORINDA
When on my bosom thy bright eyes,
Florinda, dart their heavenly beams,
I feel not the least love surprise,
Yet endless tears flow down in streams;
There's nought so beautiful in thee,
But you may find the same in me.
The lilies of thy skin compare;
In me you see them full as white:
The roses of your cheeks, I dare
Affirm, can't glow to more delight.
Then, since I show as fine a face,
Can you refuse a soft embrace?
Ah! lovely nymph, thou'rt in thy prime!
And so am I, while thou art here;
But soon will come the fatal time,
When all we see shall disappear.
'Tis mine to make a just reflection,
And yours to follow my direction.
Then catch admirers while you may;
Treat not your lovers with disdain;
For time with beauty flies away,
And there is no return again.
To you the sad account I bring,
Life's autumn has no second spring.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Daily Dose
From The Poetical Works of Jonathan Swift
A DESCRIPTION OF THE MORNING
Now hardly here and there a hackney-coach
Appearing, show'd the ruddy morn's approach.
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
The slip-shod 'prentice from his master's door
Had par'd the dirt, and sprinkled round the floor.
Now Moll had whirl'd her mop with dext'rous airs,
Prepar'd to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel-edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep;
Till drown'd in shriller notes of "chimney-sweep."
Duns at his lordship's gate began to meet;
And brickdust Moll had scream'd through half a street.
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Duly let out a-nights to steal for fees.
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And schoolboys lag with satchels in their hands.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Daily Dose
From Satires and Personal Writings, by Jonathan Swift
NEVER
"Never wear socks when you wait at meals, on account of your own health as well as them who sit at table; because as most ladies like the smell of young men's toes, so it is a sovereign remedy against the vapours."
From Directions to Servants in General
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Daily Dose
From Satires and Personal Writings, by Jonathan Swift
JUST
"We have just enough Religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."
From Thoughts on Various Subjects
Monday, June 22, 2015
Daily Dose
From Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume 1, Mr Swift and his Contemporaries, by Irvin Ehrenpreis
OLD PRIEST
"He was a decayed octogenarian, senilely absent-minded, very hard of hearing, and nearly blind -- an appropriate emblem of the Anglican establishment in Ireland."
From Chapter Six, Killroot
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Daily Dose
From Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume 1, Mr Swift and his Contemporaries, by Irvin Ehrenpreis
OLD SHOE
"Swift half-boasted to his cousin, 'I cannot write anything easy to be understood though it were but in praise of an old shoes.'"
From Chapter Four Early Poems (II)
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Daily Dose
From Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin
THERE IS
"There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now."
From Faulkner and Desegregation
Friday, June 19, 2015
Daily Dose
AM. WANT.
"I was a sentimentalist. I wanted people to be kinder, more generous, than they were."
From Chapter 10
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Daily Dose
From Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, Volume 1: Mr. Swift and his Contemporaries, by Irvin Ehrenpreis
EARLY
"Swift's knowing how to read at an early age need not imply that he was unduly precocious. The achievement was apparently a goal not infrequently set by eager parents or guardians. Aubrey reports that Katherine Phillips 'had read the Bible thorough before she was full four years old'."
From Chapter Five, Kilkenny
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Daily Dose
From An Anthology of Light Verse, edited by Louis Kronenberger
ON AN UPRIGHT JUDGE
In church your grandsire cut his throat;
To do the job he too long tarried:
He should have had my hearty vote
To cut his throat before he married.
-- Jonathan Swift
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Daily Dose
ODYSSEY
"'The odyssey of the African-American throughout the twentieth century has been one of loss and reclamation,' Wilson told me. 'It's about reclaiming those things which were lost during slavery.'"
From August Wilson
Monday, June 15, 2015
Daily Dose
ENTHUSIASM
"I didn't like to damp his enthusiasm, though it occurred to me that his life must be incredibly dull, since he was so anxious to play the detective."
From Chapter 10, The Parson's Dram
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Daily Dose
NATURALLY
"I was naturally aggrieved. I have never been considered brutal, having if anything a mild and affable temperament."
From The Case of the Late Pig, Chapter 3, 'that's where he Died"