Breakfast at the Bookstore with Brad and Nick #81

Daily Dose

From Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko, translated by Donald Keene

72

"Things which seem in poor taste: too many personal effects cluttering up the place where one is sitting; too many brushes in an ink-box; too many Buddhas in a family temple; too many stones and plants in a garden; too many children in a house; too many words on meeting someone; too many meritorious deeds recorded in a petition.  Things which are not offensive, no matter how numerous: books in a book cart*, rubbish in a rubbish heap."

(*Fuguruma were small carts with shafts, used for moving books.)

A Caricature

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From Selected Poems, by Delmore Schwartz

NARCISSUS

The mind is a city like London,
Smoky and populous: it is a capital
Like Rome, ruined and eternal,
Marked by the monuments which no one
Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains
Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheaters, palaces,
Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.
The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins
Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration.

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From A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, by Rebecca Solnit

EVERYONE

"Everyone said that the events of that day were both unimaginable and like something out of a movie."

From Nine Hundred and Eleven Questions, The Parade of Cliches

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From On Love: A Novel, by Alain de Botton

DELUSIONS

"Delusions are not harmful in themselves; they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained."

From Skepticism and Faith

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From How to Cook a Wolf, by M. F. K. Fisher

BAKED HAM

"Baked Ham in Cream is a richer dish, but very good indeed, now and then.  There should be a generous, indeed a Hungarian, hand with the paprika..."

From How to Carve a Wolf

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From The Best of Saki, edited by Martin Stephen

THE DOWAGER LADY BEANFORD

"Susan Lady Beanford was a vigorous old woman who had coquetted with imaginary ill-health for the greater part of a lifetime; Clovis Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the Coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again."

From Louise

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From The Poems of Richard Lovelace

TO HIS DEARE BROTHER COLONEL F. L. IMMODERATELY MOURNING MY BROTHER'S UNTIMELY DEATH AT CARMATHEN

I.
If teares could wash the ill away,
A pearle for each wet bead I'd pay;
But as dew'd corne the fuller growes,
So water'd eyes but swell our woes.

II.
One drop another cals, which still
(Griefe adding fuell) doth distill;
Too fruitfull of her selfe is anguish,
We need no cherishing to languish.

III.
Coward fate degen'rate man
Like little children uses, when
He whips us first, untill we weepe,
Then, 'cause we still a weeping keepe.

IV.
Then from thy firme selfe never swerve;
Teares fat the griefe that they should sterve;
Iron decrees of destinie
Are ner'e wipe't out with a wet eye.

V.
But this way you may gaine the field,
Oppose but sorrow, and 'twill yield;
One gallant thorough-made resolve
Doth starry influence dissolve.

Breakfast at the Bookstore #80

Daily Dose

From The Vendetta, by Honore de Balzac, translated by Howard Curtis

THE STORY

"They lived comfortably for another year.  The story of their life can be summed up in three words: They were happy.  In other  words, nothing deserving of comment befell them."

From page 72, this edition.

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From Poems and Songs, by Leonard Cohen

HEY, THAT’S NO WAY TO SAY GOODBYE

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

(For Brexit)

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From The Man of Fifty, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Andrew Piper

NEVERTHELESS

"Nevertheless, he managed to collect himself, and as his memory was never wanting in inherited goods, another classical passage leapt to mind."

From page 29, this edition.

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From The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New, by Annie Dillard

AND

"And death takes us by storm.  What was that, that life?"

From This Is the Life

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From Love and Other Ways of Dying, by Michael Paterniti

WAS HE

"Was he a fraud or a victim, a man of the world or one who had been irrevocably injured by it?  Was it possible to be all at once?"

From Mr. Nobody

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From The Mayor of Casterbridge, by Thomas Hardy

NOW

"He now gazed more at the pavements and less at the housefronts when he walked about; more at the feet and leggings of men, and less into the pupils of their eyes with the blazing regard which formerly had made them blink."

From Chapter 31

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From White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World, by Geoff Dyer

MRI

"as the fractal geometries and strobes of colour gathered pace it became impossible to tell whether these glowing patterns and acid flashes were emanations of an external world or if they were in your head.  Deep space or inner space?  Either way it was like a glimpse of infinity.  Infinity not eternity.  The experience lasted ten minutes; it was possible to lose track of oneself but not of time.  I would have liked to spend hours in there, a whole day even."

From Beginning

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From Civil War Stories, by Ambrose Bierce

HOPE

"The creatures went away; they would return later, attack his face, gnaw away his nose, cut his throat -- he knew that but hoped by that time to be dead."

From One of the Missing

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From Consequences, by Penelope Lively

ONE OR TWO

"One or two commentators fly off at a tangent in pursuit of the idea of the artist as having a special status, a concept which evidently does not find much support."

From Part 5

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From Fear and Trembling, by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by Alistair Hannay

LEARNED

"No person who has learned that to exist as the individual is the most terrifying thing of all will be afraid of saying it is the greatest."

From Problema II, Is there an absolute duty to God?

Turban Selfie

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From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, edited by Daniel Jones

 NO!

"Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion."

From And Death Shall Have No Dominion

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From Peer Gynt, by Henrik Ibsen, translated by William Archer

NO NEED

"No need now for bars against hobgoblin-thoughts."

From Act III, Scene Second, Peer

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From No Exit and Three Other Plays, by Jean-Paul Sartre, translation by Stuart Gilbert

ONCE

"ZEUS: 'Once freedom lights its beacon in a man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.'"

From The Flies, Act One, Scene 2

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From The Mikado, by W. S. Gilbert

DEAR, DEAR, DEAR!

Mikado: "My poor fellow, in your nxiety to carry out my wishes you have beheaded the heir to the throne of Japan!"

Ko Ko: "I beg to offer my unqualified apology."

From Act II

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From H. M. S. Pinafore, by W. S. Gilbert

POOR IN THE ESSENCE OF HAPPINESS

"In me there meet a combination of antithetical elements which are at eternal war with one another. Driven hither by objective influences — thither by subjective emotions — wafted one moment into blazing day, by mocking hope — plunged the next into the Cimmerian darkness of tangible despair, I am but a living ganglion of irreconcilable antagonisms.  I hope I make myself clear, lady?"

From Act One, Ralph Rackstraw (Able Seaman)

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From Four Comedies, by Plautus, translated by Erich Segal

SPEAK UP

"Come, speak up, you whip-resisters, iron glad-men, raise your hands."

From The Haunted House, Tranio, line 358

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From Complete Poems, by Marianne Moore

WHAT ARE YEARS

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage: the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt, —
dumbly calling, deafly listening—that
in misfortune, even death,
encourage others
and in its defeat, stirs
the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
So he who strongly feels,
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
This is mortality,
this is eternity. 

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From Memoirs of the Life of Monsieur de Voltaire, by Voltaire, translated by Andrew Brown

SERVETUS

"Wonder, if you please, at the contradictions of this world.  Her are people who are almost all openly followers of Servetus, and yet insult me for having demurred at Calvin's having him slowly burned over bundles of fresh green firewood."

From At Les Delices, 6th November 1759

Bad Dogs!

Daily Dose

From Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

TWO THINGS

"There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world and among cold, proud people; but Mr. Henderland had their very speech upon his tongue."

From Chapter XVI