Literary Glimpses

        "Here she comes round the bend, folks. Her tail's streaming, her nostrils are flaring--the air is resounding with the sharp clamor of her pounding hooves. You can hear her panting from a mile away! Down to the wire--no--not down to the wire, but pressing ever onward. Here she is--she's on the final leg of the race! That finish line must look mighty good to that tired horse, folks."

 

And so it does. For that's where I am. . . pounding down the track with only two weeks to go. Two weeks. And weeks and weeks and weeks behind me. I really haven't minded the race that much. . . it's given me something productive to do and I generally enjoy learning. But I must say that finish-line does "look mighty good."

 

As I've finished up various subjects, I've enjoyed going back and scanning some of my notes, particularly American Literature which I studied this year. And since I copied down a bunch of my favorite quotes as I read through various literary greats, I thought it would be fun to put a bunch of those quotes here. Prepare for a blast of random literary nuggets, whether true or ridiculous. Oh, and never fear, these authors aren't the only ones I read or studied about. They're just the ones that I took the time to write down what they said.

 

"To be great is to be misunderstood." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson (I'm not going to post any questions I may have of the complete validity of each statement, I merely wrote these down because I liked them or just thought they were interesting).

 

"Virtue or vice emit a breath every moment." ~Emerson

 

"That which each man can do best, none but his Maker can teach him." ~Emerson

 

"Life is a series of surprises, and would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not." ~Emerson

 

". . . the question ever is, not what you have done or forborne, but at whose command you have done or forborne it." ~Emerson

 

"I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine." ~Emerson (in case you haven't figured it out, I had to read a bunch of Emerson's essays--and he is pretty quotable; I wanted to write down some of the sentences that made real sense to me since there was so much that was rawther dense-ish).

 

"From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." ~Emerson

 

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." ~Emerson *an especially favorite quote* :D

 

Here comes Henry David Thoreau, the poor confused guy (I read Walden to help educate myself on him). He had a singular writing style though and he said some interesting stuff. Here's something he said when he was talking about why we don't need to be lonely (probably in reference to questions he got about whether he was lonely in his cabin): "Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are."

 

"Speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing." ~Thoreau

 

"He was so simply and naturally humble. . . that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive it."

 

Here's a famous one of his: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

 

"The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. . . They are the highest reality." ~Thoreau

 

"He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise." I like this one to defend my slow eating habits.:)

 

"Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open." ~Thoreau. This would be an interesting one to discuss Scripturally.

 

"He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established." hmm. . . ?

 

"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

 

"The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite." I found this one highly amusing.

 

"We loiter in winter while it is already spring. . . While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return."

 

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

 

"No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well as the truth. This alone wears well."

 

"Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights."

 

"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. . . a goose is a goose, dress it as you will."

 

"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."

 

"Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

 

Bored stiff yet? No worries, we're leaving these two deep guys behind and moving on. I wish I had copied more clever phrases down from the fiction I read, but here are some more random bits from a few more of the authors I read this past year.

 

Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

 

"Call me Ishmael."

 

"Queequeg was George Washington cannibalistically developed."

 

"Why it is that all Merchant seamen, and also all Pirates. . . cherish such a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it would be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion, he has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I conclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whale man, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on."

 

". . . stabbing him in the eye with the unflinching poniard of his glance. . . "

 

"He is a grand, ungodly, god-like man."

 

"the before living agent became the living instrument."

 

"The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows."

 

"To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it."

 

"I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward; and I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr. Starbuck, there's no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my throat. And when that's done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a wind-up."

 

Walt Whitman

 

"When I give I give myself."

 

"The grass is the beautiful uncut hair of graves."

 

Emily Dickinson--I loved reading a book of her poems! I think they actually made me enjoy poetry because they were so though-provoking. Here is a series of my favorites, either of lines, or stanzas, or whole poems:

 

"you only understand pleasure by pain"

 

"success is counted sweetest by those who nearest succeed"

 

"parting is all we know of Heaven and all we need of Hell"

 

"If I should die

And you should live

And time should gurgle on. . ."

 

To fight aloud is very brave

But gallanter, I know,

Who charge within the bosom,

The cavalry of woe

Who win, and nations do not see,

Who fall, and none observe,

Whose dying eyes no country

Regards with patriot love.

****

Life is life, and death but death!

Bliss is but bliss, and breath but breath!

And if, indeed, I fail,

At least to know the worst is sweet.

Defeat means nothing but defeat,

No drearier can prevail!

**************

I shall know why, when time is over

And have ceased to wonder why;

Christ will explain each separate anguish

In the fair schoolroom of the sky

 

He will tell me what Peter promised

And I, for wonder at his woe,

I shall forget the drop of anguish

That scald me now, that scalds me now.

**********************

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all. . .

 

. . . And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

**************************

Father, I bring thee not myself,--

That were the little load;

I bring thee the imperial heart

I had not strength to hold

 

The hear I cherished in my own

Till mine too heavy grew,

Yet strangest, heavier since it went,

Is it too large for you?

***********************

"I heard a fly buzz when I died"

 

"Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me"

 

"Death whets victory, they say;

The reefs in old Gethsemane

Endear the shore beyond

'Tis beggars banquet best define;

'Tis thirsting vitalizes wine,--

Faith faints to understand."

*************************

No rack can torture me

My soul's at liberty

Behind this mortal bone

There knits a bolder one

 

You cannot prick with saw,

Nor render with scimitar.

Two bodies therefore be;

Bind one, and one will flee.

 

The eagle of his nest

No easier divest

And gain the sky,

Than mayest though,

Except thyself may be

Thine enemy;

Captivity is consciousness.

So's liberty.

********************

Triumph may be of several kinds,

There's triumph in the room

When that old imperator, Death,

By faith is overcome

 

There's triumph of the finer mind

When truth, affronted long,

Advances calm to her supreme,

Her God her only throng.

 

A triumph when temptation's bribe

Is slowly handed back

One eye upon the heaven renounced

And one upon the rack.

 

Severer triumph, by himself

Experienced, who can pass

Acquitted from that naked bar,

Jehovah's countenance!

***************************

Through the straight pass of suffering

The martyrs even trod

Their feet upon temptation

Their faces upon God

 

. . . Their faith the everlasting troth;

Their expectation fair;

The needle to the north degree

Wades so, through polar air.

**************************

Essential oils are wrung:

The attar from the rose

Is not expressed by suns alone,

It is the gift of screws

 

The general rose decays;

But this, in lady's drawer,

Makes summer when the lady lies

In ceaseless rosemary.

**********************

Sufficient troth that we shall rise--

Deposed, at length, the grave--

To that new marriage, justified

Through Calvaries of Love!

*********************

Love is anterior to life,

Posterior to death,

Initial of creation, and

The exponent of breath.

***********************

If I can stop one heart from breaking

I shall not live in vain

If I can ease one life the aching

Or cool one pain

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain.

**************************

Death is a dialogue between

The spirit and the dust

"Dissolve," says Death. The Spirit, "Sir,

I have another trust."

 

Death doubts it, argues from the ground.

The Spirit turns away,

Just laying off, for evidence,

An overcoat of clay.

***********************

The stimulus, beyond the grave

His countenance to see,

Supports me like imperial drams

Afforded royally.

*******************

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet know I how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

 

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given.

**************************

There, isn't she AMAZING?

 

Okay, here's good ol' Mark Twain. I read three of his novels this year.

 

". . . he edged nearer and nearer towards the pansy; finally his bare foot rested upon it, his pliant toes closed upon it, and he hopped away with his treasure, and disappeared around the corner. But only for a minute--only while he could button the flower inside his jacket, next to his heart, or next to his stomach possibly, for he was not much posted in anatomy and not hypercritical anyway."

 

"It was a gory day. Consequently it was a satisfactory one."

 

"But I reckoned, that with her disposition, she was having a better time in the graveyard."

 

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." -BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR

 

". . . but as for me, give me comfort first, and style afterward."

 

"Take a rest, child; the way you are using up all the domestic air, the kingdom will have to go to importing it by tomorrow, and it's a low enough treasury without that."

 

"one mustn't criticize other people on grounds where he can't stand perpendicular himself."

 

"The law of work does seem utterly unfair--but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also."

 

"when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him."

 

"Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself."

 

Here comes Henry James:

 

"Well, you think us 'quaint'--that's the same thing [as despising us]. I won't be though 'quaint,' to begin with; I'm not so in the least. I protest."

"That protest is one of the quaintest things I've ever heard," Isabel answered with a smile.

 

"Miss Stackpole's ocular surfaces unwinkingly caught the sun."

 

"When people forget I'm a poor creature I'm often incommoded," he said. "But it's worse when they remember it."

 

"be in a better position for appreciating people than they are for appreciating you."

 

T.S. Eliot glides by on our conveyor belt of authors. A few of his words fall on our ears:

 

You say I am repeating

Something I have said before. I shall say it again.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance

In order to possess what you do not possess

You must go by way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

 

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

 

"Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum."

 

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things."

 

"Life is made up of marble and mud." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

James Fenimore Cooper

 

"God, who made us, has put into our nature the craving to keep the skin on the head."

 

"he wore his own hair"

 

"Women are but mirrors which reflect the images before them."  ?

 

And I shall close this lengthy overview with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

 

"When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music."

 

"Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere.

For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway,

Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness."