"I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme." -- Henry James
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky
SOME SUCH
"In some such words he might have set forth his feelings, if he had been able to reason."
From Book VIII: Mitya, Chapter 6, Here I Come!
Friday, August 30, 2019
Daily Dose
From Opium: The Diary of His Cure, by Jean Cocteau, translated by Margaret Crosland
DIFFICULT
"It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously."
From page 93, this edition
DIFFICULT
"It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously."
From page 93, this edition
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Lager Queen of Minnesota, by J. Ryan Stradal
SHE THOUGHT
"She felt the dry flour between her fingers, and thought about being a great-grandmother. She thought about it like how a tree in winter thinks about its leaves. She rolled this thought over the dough, and pressed it into the edges. The sun fell outside, and she didn't reach for the lights. The pie baked in the dark, and she sat in the quiet kitchen and waited."
From $18.95, Edith, 2016
SHE THOUGHT
"She felt the dry flour between her fingers, and thought about being a great-grandmother. She thought about it like how a tree in winter thinks about its leaves. She rolled this thought over the dough, and pressed it into the edges. The sun fell outside, and she didn't reach for the lights. The pie baked in the dark, and she sat in the quiet kitchen and waited."
From $18.95, Edith, 2016
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Lost Love, by Mrs. Oliphant
AND
"And my emotion was so violent that it we;;-nigh mastered me; the only resource I had, I took. Passing by her hastily, I hurried out at the door, and down the long, dark, echoing stairs; and in the open air at last, suffered one great, tearless, convulsive sob to relieve my overladen heart."
From Chapter XLII
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Crooked Timber of Humanity, by Isaiah Berlin
MIDDLE AGES
"One was obliged, of course, to lay down one's life for the truth, but there was nothing noble in dying for a falsehood, even if one mistook it for the truth. The notion that the truth is not necessarily one, that values are many, that they may conflict, that there is something sublime in dying for one's own vision of the truth even though it may be condemned by the rest of the world -- that, I think, would before the eighteenth century have seemed to be a very eccentric position."
From European Unity and It's Vicissitudes, III
Monday, August 26, 2019
Daily Dose
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Daily Dose
From A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee
BRAVE
"'You're brave,' she said.
I braced myself for bad news."
From Chapter 23
BRAVE
"'You're brave,' she said.
I braced myself for bad news."
From Chapter 23