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(1871). Æsop's fables.
"A wolf, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea, which should justify to the lamb himself, his right to eat him. He then addressed him: 'Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.' 'Indeed,' bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice: 'I was not then born.' Then said the wolf: 'You feed in my pasture.' 'No, good sir,' replied the lamb: 'I have not yet tasted grass.' Again said the wolf: 'You drink of my well.' 'No, exclaimed the lamb: I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me.' Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying: 'Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.'
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny." (p. 2)
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny." (p. 2)
(1906). The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Cape Cod and Miscellanies.
"If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for — business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business." (p. 457)
(2005). Vanity Fair.
(1996). Unholy Hungers : Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves and Others.
"We, too, try to emulate the gods, but unlike the Greeks, we seem dangerously ignorant of the peril of hubris. Not that we blindly aspire to godhood from stupidity or arrogance; rather, we aspire to godhood because the modern demigods we revere are themselves mortal, so we quite reasonably feel their enviable fate might just as well be our own. What's more, celebrity in our culture is supposed to be available to all who have the guts to seek it, which implies that those who do not attain it are somehow deficient in the skills of self-reinvention"
(1992). Two Lives.
(1954). Tragic Sense of Life.
"To have recourse to those ambiguous words, 'optimism' and 'pessimism', does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very contrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a doctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and the so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe, on the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatest of all, have been men of despair and that by despair they have accomplished their mighty works." (p. 130)
(1993). Snow Crash.
Stephenson's dark social satire illustrates what an anti-ROWE future might look like:
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
(1959). Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson.
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
(1978). The Scarlet Letter: An Authoritative Text, Essays in Criticism and Scholars.
"A third group—'those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body'—see the letter as a psychic cancer that gradually manifested itself physically." —Roy R. Male (p. 334)
(1977). The Portable Thoreau.
(1952). Player Piano.
"Strange business", said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon." (p. 93)
(1998). Othello (Signet Classic Shakespeare).
"Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something; nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed." (III, iii)
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something; nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed." (III, iii)
(1985). The New Jerusalem Bible.
The poor is detestable even to a friend, but many are they who love someone rich. One who despises the needy is at fault, one who takes pity on the poor is blessed.
(2002). New International Bible.
"A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold." (Proverbs 22:1)
(2005). Monsters, Gods, and Heroes: The Epic in Literature.
"So it's a strife here, in a way, between position—between the CEO and the top salesman; between the principal and the best teacher; between Miller Huggins, the manager, and Babe Ruth, the best baseball player who ever lived; between the person who can really do it, and the person who is in charge. Those are incommensurable excellences, and then and now they often come into conflict. So here—that is the rage within the rage, the conflict within the conflict, that Homer is interested in chronicling."1
(1995). The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories.
"If I had first called the man before me and interrogated him, things would have got into a confused tangle. He would have told lies, and had I exposed these lies he would have backed them up with more lies, and so on and so forth. As it is, I've got him and I won't let him go.—Is that quite clear now?" (The Penal Colony, p. 199)
(1962). Letters and papers from prison.
(, Ed.).
"We have been the silent witnesses of evil deeds. Many storms have gone over our heads. We have learned the art of deception and of equivocal speech. Experience has made us suspicious of others, and prevented us from being open and frank. Bitter conflicts have made us weary and even cynical. Are we still serviceable? It is not the genius that we shall need, not the misanthropist, not the adroit tactician, but honest, straightforward men. Will our spiritual reserves prove adequate and our candor with ourselves remorseless enough to enable us to find our way back again to simplicity and straightforwardness?" (p. 34)
(1993). The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro/The Apology/Crito/Phaedo.
"Present circumstances are quite enough to show that the capacity of ordinary people for doing harm is not confined to petty annoyances, but has hardly any limits once you get a bad name with them." (p. 78)
(1990). The Iliad.
712. Abstract
"Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles."
(2005). The Idiot.
(Submitted). Herman Melville / David Kirby.
(2007). The Gulag Archipelago Abridged: An Experiment in Literary Investigation (P.S.).
"So, what is the answer? How can you stand your ground when you are sensitive to pain, when people you love are still alive, when you are unprepared?
What do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: 'My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die—now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.'
Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogation will tremble.
Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory."
Not to make light of Solzhenitsyn's very real and horrifying account, this passage reminded me of the following quote from Pritchett1: "Visionaries have to come to work willing to be fired. That's the price you must pay. You've got to be willing to take chances, to speak up, to rattle cages, to challenge the basic premises, to suggest a better way of doing things."
What do you need to make you stronger than the interrogator and the whole trap?
From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: 'My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there's nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die—now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.'
Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogation will tremble.
Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory."
Not to make light of Solzhenitsyn's very real and horrifying account, this passage reminded me of the following quote from Pritchett1: "Visionaries have to come to work willing to be fired. That's the price you must pay. You've got to be willing to take chances, to speak up, to rattle cages, to challenge the basic premises, to suggest a better way of doing things."
(1991). Frankenstein.
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