“Everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not …
Tag: Commonplace Book
Commonplace Book
Another good quote: Samuel Johnson from Boswell’s Life: “Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen. It is assuming a superiority, and it is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself. There may be parts of his former life he may not wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought …
One More Quote
Tired but can’t resist. From Churchill: “Never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing great or small, large or petty — never give in.”
Commonplace Book
From an essay by Jonathan Rosen (author of the highly recommended The Life of the Skies), in an essay in Richard Barnes’ Animal Logic, which I recently posted on: “All this talk of artificiality mingled with reality might seem like mere aesthetic maundering except for the fact that artificiality isn’t something imposed on human existence, …
Commonplace Book
A not- so- obvious one from the samurai- artist Musashi, one of painter Tom Quinn’s idols: “Do not need too many weapons.” Not.. too many…
From the Commonplace Book
A poem by Gavin Maxwell. He doubtless did others but this one imagining wild Iceland from home is the only one I know. It resonates for this traveler stuck at home at least for the present… Slowly through a Land of Stone So although no ghost was scotchedWe were happy while we watchedRavens from their …
Two from the Commonplace Book
I can’t die yet. There are many men I must kill first!-Yojimbo On the door it says what to do to surviveBut we were not born to surviveOnly to live-W S Merwin, The River of Bees For the record, I think the first at least is hilarious…
Commonplace Book
From the Essays of Montaigne: “The men who serve us do so more cheaply than our falcons, our horses or our hounds, and they are less carefully looked after…what menial tasks will we not bow down to for the convenience of these animals! The most abject slaves, it seems to me, will not willingly do …
Commonplace Book: I don’t want to kill a tiger but…
From a letter Peter Fleming, Ian’s older brother and the better writer (News From Tartary— all the other editions are insanely expensive and this gives you two good books in one volume), wrote to his four- year- old son in England while he was working in intelligence in Burma in WW II: “If you are …
From the Commonplace Book
“…one must never be deterred from doing what one wants for lack of money don’t you agree?” (Nancy Mitford to Robert Byron) On the late President Turkmenbashi of Turkmenistan:“Stories trickling out of the country described a tyrant with the flair of Liberace and the savagery of Stalin”. (Eric Enno Tamm, The Horse that Leaps Though …