Posts
'All quotations are out of context.'
Enoch Powell
'If it bores you your reader is asleep.'
Jerry B. Jenkins
'There's a Tesco in Ko Samui, that palm-fringed isle in the Gulf of Thailand. In fact, there are over 200 Tescos in Thailand.' Times article from 2007.
'There’s nothing unfathomable about ‘Brexit’. It means economic and political independence. It’s called being a country.'
Lionel Shriver last month
'In this fallen world the ‘friendship’ that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. This ‘friendship’ has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a ‘friendship’ quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by ‘falling in love’. But a young man does not really (as a rule) want ‘friendship’, even if he says he does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and yet irresponsible perhaps. Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne! as Chaucer says.'
J.R.R. Tolkien
'But they [women] are instinctively, when uncorrupt, monogamous. Men are not …. No good pretending. Men just ain’t, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of ‘revealed’ ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.'
Enoch Powell
'If it bores you your reader is asleep.'
Jerry B. Jenkins
'There's a Tesco in Ko Samui, that palm-fringed isle in the Gulf of Thailand. In fact, there are over 200 Tescos in Thailand.' Times article from 2007.
'There’s nothing unfathomable about ‘Brexit’. It means economic and political independence. It’s called being a country.'
Lionel Shriver last month
'In this fallen world the ‘friendship’ that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. This ‘friendship’ has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a ‘friendship’ quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by ‘falling in love’. But a young man does not really (as a rule) want ‘friendship’, even if he says he does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and yet irresponsible perhaps. Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne! as Chaucer says.'
J.R.R. Tolkien
'But they [women] are instinctively, when uncorrupt, monogamous. Men are not …. No good pretending. Men just ain’t, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of ‘revealed’ ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.'
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien was a smart cookie. Always a pleasure to read something new (for me).
ReplyDeleteHe is right about female friendships. I've kept a very strict leash on my relationships with women outside of my 29 year marriage. Just not worth the hassle / angst especially with younger feminist sorts. My mom, sister and nieces I love dearly and lend a great support to me.
Strive not for singularity in dress;
ReplyDeleteFools have the more and men of sense the less.
To look original is not worth while,
But be in mind a little out of style.
O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.
With every gift you do but swell the cloud
Of witnesses against you, swift and loud--
Accomplices who turn and swear you split
Your life: half robber and half hypocrite.
You're least unsafe when most intact you hold
Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.
Artistically set to grace
The wall of a dissecting-place,
A human pericardium
Was fastened with a bit of gum,
While, simply underrunning it,
The one word, "Charity," was writ
To show the student band that hovered
About it what it once had covered.
O lady fine, fear not to lead
To Hymen's shrine a clown:
Love cannot level up, indeed,
But he can level down.
Ambrose Bierce
Epigrams of a Cynic
Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.
ReplyDeleteOur vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of temptation and man's lack of opportunity.
The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection.
Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in marriage.
When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go up-ward.
We are what we laugh at. The stupid person is a poor joke, the clever, a good one.
The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.
The ignorant know not the depth of their ignorance, but the learned know the shallowness of their learning.
Ambrose Bierce » A Cynic Looks at Life » Epigrams of a Cynic
http://www.online-literature.com/bierce/a-cynic/8/