Commonplace Book

Amis

2015-07-17T16:40:46Z

If what you write doesn't annoy somebody, what's the point of writing?

Kingsley Amis

Winthrop

2015-06-16T19:42:22Z

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John Winthrop, The Mayflower Compact, 1630

2015-05-05T17:21:45Z

"Did you torture him?"
Captain Segura laughed: "No. He doesn't belong to the torturable class." ...
"Who does?"
"The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable. In Cuba the police can deal as harshly as they like with émigres from Latin America and the Baltic States, but not with visitors from your country or Scandinavia. It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal."

Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana

Thoreau

2015-05-01T19:36:15Z

Surface meets surface. When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. ... In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You many depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while.

Thoreau

Naipaul

2015-04-23T19:49:17Z

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Naipaul, The Mimic Men

Nancy Mitford

2015-04-23T19:45:21Z

"And left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly."

Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

Erasmus

2015-04-23T19:38:35Z

You see that hitherto nothing has been achieved by treaties, nothing advanced by alliances, nothing by violence or revenge. Now try instead what conciliation and kindness can do. War springs from war, revenge brings further revenge. Now let generosity breed generosity, kind actions invite further kindness, and true royalty be measured by willingness to concede sovereignty.

Erasmus, A Complaint of Peace Spurned and Rejected by the Whole World (1577)

Thoreau

2013-01-17T17:13:29Z

I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky, our understanding more complrehensive and broader, like our plains, our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests, and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. ... Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

Thoreau, "Walking"

Nietzsche

2013-01-06T18:56:42Z

No one is such a liar as an indignant man.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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Claudel

2012-04-28T04:55:45Z

La crainte de l'adjectif est le commencement du style.

Paul Claudel

2012-04-15T04:05:01Z

Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French, and it's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, and it's all organized by the Italians.

Anonymous

Rene Char

2012-01-18T18:12:23Z

There will come a time when nations in this hopscotch ring of a world will

be as strictly dependent on one another as organs of the same body, all

bound to its economy.

Will the brain, bursting with machines, still be able to furnish its slender

rivulet of dream and escape? Man, like a sleepwalker, is marching toward

deadly mine fields, led on by the singing of inventors . . .

Rene Char

Thackeray

2012-01-08T02:30:16Z

Oh, me! what a confession it is, in the very outset of life and blushing brightness of youth's morning, to own that the aim with which a young girl sets out, and the object of her existence, is to marry a rich man; that she was endowed with beauty so that she might buy wealth, and a title with it; that as sure as she has a soul to be saved, her business here on earth is to try and get a rich husband. That is the career for which many a woman is bred and trained. A young man begins the world with some aspirations at least; he will try to be good and follow the truth; he will strive to win honours for himself, and never do a base action; he will pass nights over his books, and forego ease and pleasure so that he may achieve a name. Many a poor wretch who is worn out now and old, and bankrupt of fame and money too, has commenced life at any rate with noble views and generous schemes, from which weakness, idleness, passion, or overpowering hostile fortune have turned him away. But a girl of the world, bon Dieu! the doctrine with which she begins is that she is to have a wealthy husband: the article of Faith in her catechism is, "I believe in elder sons, and a house in town, and a house in the country!" They are mercenary as they step fresh and blooming into the world out of the nursery. They have been schooled there to keep their bright eyes to look only on the Prince and the Duke, Croesus and Dives. By long cramping and careful process, their little natural hearts have been squeezed up, like the feet of their fashionable little sisters in China. As you see a pauper's child, with an awful premature knowledge of the pawn-shop, able to haggle at market with her wretched halfpence and battle bargains at hucksters' stalls, you shall find a young beauty, who was a child in the school-room a year since, as wise and knowing as the old practitioners on that exchange; as economical of her smiles, as dexterous in keeping back or producing her beautiful wares, as skilful in setting one bidder against another, as keen as the smartest merchant in Vanity Fair.

Thackeray, The Newcomes, II, 7.

Trollope

2011-12-04T05:37:01Z

"I always think that worldliness and sentimentality are like brandy-and-water. I don't like either of them separately, but taken together they make a very nice drink."

Trollope, Can You Forgive Her?, ch. 78

Trollope

2011-12-04T05:31:23Z

People often say that marriage is an important thing, and should be much thought of in advance, and marrying people are cautioned that there are many who marry in haste and repent at leisure. I am not sure, however, that marriage may not be pondered over too much; nor do I feel certain that the leisurely repentance does not as often follow the leisurely marriages as it does the rapid ones. That some repent no one can doubt; but I am inclined to believe that most men and women take their lots as they find them, marrying as the birds do by force of nature, and going on with their mates with a general, though perhaps not an undisturbed satisfaction, feeling inwardly assured that Providence, if it have not done the very best for them, has done for them as well as they could do for themselves with all the thought in the world.

Trollope, Can You Forgive Her?, ch. 11