http://civilwarbummer.com/general-thomas-unsung-union-hero-or-just-too-slow/thomas-2/ There is an essay about this topic, and Dostoevsky its prophet: “For we are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.”
Category Archives: Felicitous Phrasing
The God of Happiness.
07-Jan-13The Titan Leeds Hoax.
30-Aug-12I have been reading up on the life of Benjamin Franklin, in the perceptive biography by Walter Isaacson; though I was saddened at how he abbreviated things which I knew to be true treasures – it makes me wonder how much other good material he leaves out of his work. One such example is the […]
Newman, and Burton.
08-Jul-12I found this in Burton’s commentary to his Kasidah. The exclamation point I am sure is Burton’s. From Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua: To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history and the many races of men, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts, and then their ways, habits, […]
“The Lord’s pot must be kept boiling, even if it takes the devil’s kindling.” – the Reverend Endicott Peabody, of Tombstone, on accepting gambling money.
Thomas Browne.
30-Mar-12“It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressionall, and otherwise made in vaine; without this accomplishment the naturall expectation and desire of such a state, were […]
On Writers Not Finishing Things.
27-Dec-11“But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from […]
A very nice poem, part of the play Belshazzar’s Feast, where it gets a beautiful setting from Sibelius. An improvement on the psalm. Original text follows the translation. I sat by the rivers of Babylon And wept with my brothers, day and night. And my sisters were moved by my tears, By my brothers’ deep […]
Not Light Reading.
15-Sep-11Someone has objected to my description of Bertrand Russell as “light reading.” I stand by the characterization. As an example of something which is not light reading, I offer Montaigne. He runs through an entire plot in one sentence: enough for five New York Post articles. In one sentence! No filler whatsoever. This was when […]
Ah, the language, the language.
05-Sep-11From As You Like It: “Like an ill roasted Egge, all on one side.” Its actual application was not exciting in context, but it can be used most judiciously in life, for all forms of partiality and ill-development. I have a facsimile edition at the cabin of the First Folio, the spellings of which are […]
Pros ton theon.
10-Sep-12http://taltybaptistchurch.org/events/list/?tribe-bar-date=2021-04-01 “Shams and reality are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and […]