sour grapes is built in

If little children and primates show pretty much the same pattern you see in adults, it calls into question just how deliberate these rationalization processes are.
-Matthew D. Lieberman, psychologist at the University of California
nytimes.com

the saddest thing

In the past the whales had been able to sing to each other across whole oceans, even from one ocean to another because sound travels such huge distances underwater. But now, again because of the way in which sound travels, there is no part of the ocean that is not constantly jangling with the hubbub of ships' motors, through which it is now virtually impossible for the whales to hear each other's songs or messages.
-Dirk Gently in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, Douglas Adams

is there anybody out there

Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.
-Gertrude Stein, Four in America

easier than doing it in a cup

Wastewater facilities are wonderful places to understand what humans consume and excrete.
-Jennifer Field, environmental toxicology professor, Oregon State
Wired News - AP News

Apparently, using just a teaspoon of water from the sewage plant, community urinalysis can be used to see what drugs people are taking, track the spread of drugs across the country, and judge potential harm to rivers and lakes from legal pharmaceuticals. And darn it, it's just fun.

idiots

from In a Crisis, Subway Riders Get Little Guidance -NYT

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the PATH system, has since January been sending e-mail alerts to nearly 9,000 riders. They are notified of any delays of more than 15 minutes, and they can customize the alerts so they receive information only about the lines they use.

It will be a while before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority can do that for subway riders. “Usually when stuff happens, it happens quickly and we’d have to send out 100,000 e-mails very quickly,” said Wael Hibri, the authority’s chief information officer. “We’re still thinking it through.”

Here, then, is how word of major disruptions goes out for many riders: Employees stationed near train dispatchers make a telephone recording of the disruptions. The recording goes out to station agents, who are supposed to write down the information on white dry-erase boards in each booth using ink markers.

“We keep an ample supply on hand,” Termain Garden, a transit official, said of the markers.



I can't even be bothered to make a joke here, it's just too easy.

another joke from daddy, with which I concur

I recently turned 65 and had to choose a new primary care physician for my Medicare program.
After two visits and exhaustive lab tests, he said I was doing "fairly well" for my age.
A little concerned about that comment, I couldn't resist asking him, "Do you think I will live to be 80?"
He asked: "Do you smoke tobacco or drink alcoholic beverages?"
"Oh no," I replied. "I don't do drugs, either."
"Do you have many friends and entertain frequently?"
"I said, "No, I usually stay home and keep to myself".
"Do you eat rib-eye steaks and barbecued ribs?"
I said, "No, my other doctor said that all red meat is unhealthy!"
"Do you spend a lot of time in the sun, like playing golf, sailing, hiking, or bicycling?"
"No, I don't," I said.
"Do you gamble, drive fast cars, or have a lot of sex?"
"No," I said. "I don't do any of those things."
He looked at me and said, "Then why do you give a shit?"

the truth is bald and cold

The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden.
-"The White Room," Charles Simic, new Poet Laureate of the U.S.
as announced in NYT article

what I've been saying all along

With democracy comes television.
-Saad Mohseni, Tolo TV, Afghanistan; quoted in NYT

Why fight, when we can just install cable? Is there an Iraqi Big Brother house yet?

p.t. barnum would agree

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
-Groucho Marx

they gave away all the sticky

"People can be abstinent, and it’s not weird."
-Jami Waite, a teenager in Hallsville, Texas
Abstinence Education Faces an Uncertain Future, NYT

Yuh-huh.

acting and scientology

"The purpose of the acting art is not to bring about therapy... One taps their own experience of love or violence and tries to pull from it whatever is possible in terms of an association or understanding, but there is also the imagination and the character and the writing. The personal thing is always very strong and can be created, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you go into the traumas of your life in order to get it."
-Milton Katselas, quoted in "The Actualizer," Mark Oppenheimer, NYT

Sounds pretty sensible to me; this style of acting has nothing of "be the bacon." Mr. Katselas is associated with the Church of Scientology; apparently the religion has tenets based on observation and clarity, which can be helpful to acting technique. Some performers that I especially admire (including John Travolta, Jason Lee, and Beck) are also believers in this religion that has infiltrated Hollywood. When discussing these performers my friends tend to say "oh, too bad he's a scientologist, I don't like him so much anymore." Which bothers me -- judging someone by what religion they espouse, as opposed to how they behave, is prejudice. Though I am non-religious myself (and in fact I believe that L. Ron Hubbard was one of the worst sci-fi writers I ever read), I don't see why the religion of performers should affect my enjoyment of their work. If a friend tried to proselytize me, it would bother me and affect the relationship; that would be true no matter what the religion was. But I don't know these people; I can only judge them by what they do in the public eye. And if scientology makes them better actors and happier people, I say go to.

marie

My step-grandmother Marie's funeral is this morning in Elizabeth City, NC. She passed away last Sunday after a battle with colon cancer. She was a kind and wonderful lady and was always so sweet to me and to anybody I brought home with me, especially David. Her grown kids are also great people and my thoughts are with them today; I wish I could be there.

http://www.funeralplan.com/twifordfh/obits?id=101992

Marie was my grandfather Roy's second wife; they had been sweethearts as teenagers before he met my grandmother, and after Grandmama died, Roy and Marie met again and married. Their happiness late in life was an inspiration to me -- maybe you have to wait until you're in your sixties or seventies, but you can still find true love.

well-done b-movie

Last night while doing homemaker chores I watched 1994's Reform School Girl on late-night cable. It was a fine example of the genre, containing all the necessary elements (if a little more clean than the usual, due to its made-for-tv nature--no broom rape): bad boy leading good girl astray, lecherous adults in authority, shower scenes, schoolgirl uniforms, food fight, dancing with a mop, slow-motion running, the isolation cell, young lesbian love, rivalry between prep school girls and convicts. And it had the added value of an uplifting ending, cool 50s cars, and Matt LeBlanc playing bad boy Vince (so badly it seemed that Joey was playing the part). Loved it!!

and if you're really bored

here are the photos from my road trip to Graceland, with my husband for our 5th anniversary:
Anniversary Americana Tour 2007

taut i taw a putty tat

There's no point chasing after answers to life's important questions. They all have fickle, highly whimsical minds of their own. Nevertheless. If you're patient, if you don't rush them, when they're ready, they'll smash into you. And don't be surprised if afterward you're speechless and there are cartoon tweety birds chirping around your head.
-Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl

unhappy accidents

Revolution is slow burning, occuring only after decades of oppression and poverty, but the exact hour of its unleashing is often a moment of fateful mishap.
-Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl

permanently pursed lips

The enduring pursed lip, a trait associated exclusively with the female educator, is a sign of erratic academic anger.
-Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl

according to the kentucky creation museum

Logic, reason and science are Bad; blind faith is Good.
-BlueGrassRoots blog tour of the museum

too much life

There's just too much going on in my head lately to keep up with this thing... as I suspected would happen.

If you love me enough to keep checking for new material here, here's something to keep you occupied; my del.icio.us tags:
http://del.icio.us/lizgold

They're work-related, but of course I think they're interesting.

actors can't be trusted

...they take your women and rewire your lighting.

The group that rehearses at night in our office space plugged the spotlights into the regular office light circuit so we have to climb up and move them... but they left yellow post-it notes in everyone's chairs that said "We may have altered your chair arrangement last night. Sorry, we won't do it again. -the resident artists." I think it might be performance art.

tara reid is a slut

Blonde: So, where is she from?
Friend: Croatia.
Blonde: Where's that?
Friend: It's, like, by Italy.
Blonde: Ohhh, like Czechoslovakia.
Friend: No, Croatia. Near Bosnia and Serbia.
Blonde: Oh, so it's like Russia.
Thug: Croatia, bitch! Former Yugoslavia! Remember, they had a civil war and broke up into five countries?
Blonde: [Stares blankly.]
Thug: Jesus Christ, study a fuckin' map. Even Tara Reid knows where it is.
--6 train, Overheard in New York

grammar pet peeve

"It's" driving me nuts. I see it wrong in writing from everyone, from the lowly public school student to the creative director to the star tech bloggers. I'm talking about the difference between "it's" and "its".

it's: a contraction of "it is"
its: the possessive form (things belonging to it)

It's very simple, just follow this single rule for its proper use:
When writing "it's", mentally insert the word "is" in place of the apostrophe. If that doesn't express your meaning, TAKE OUT THE APOSTROPHE.

Examples:

It's driving me nuts: It is driving me nuts.
Correct meaning, keep the apostrophe.

The pan lid lost it's handle: The pan lid lost it is handle.
Incorrect meaning, TAKE OUT THE APOSTROPHE, use "its handle".

That's it. Nothing else to remember. Learn it. Love it. Live it.

what is happening to the bees?

NYTimes: "More than a quarter of the country’s 2.4 million bee colonies have been lost — tens of billions of bees, according to an estimate from the Apiary Inspectors of America, a national group that tracks beekeeping. So far, no one can say what is causing the bees to become disoriented and fail to return to their hives."


Maybe they're finally escaping their horrible lives of slavery, being carted around in boxes inside trucks to pollinate the plants of anyone who can pay their master. Maybe it's a brave and heartbreaking story of freedom, racial identity, and the search for the bee homeland. I'm seeing an animated film here...

paths to happiness

There are four doctrines found in all happiness theory from wisdom literature, philosophy, psychology, and self-help. They are:
Know yourself.
Control your desires.
Take what's yours.
Remember death.

-The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong,
Jennifer Michael Hecht

[I just started reading, I'll fill you in on why these are wrong later]

the hobgoblin of little minds

And don't think I don't notice a certain inconsistency between my last two posts... I'm a complicated girl.

the lies we tell ourselves

Veal to Love, Without the Guilt - New York Times: "In 2003 people were horrified at the idea I would sell veal," Mr. White said. "It took several years with customers seeing calves running free with moms to come around to the idea it’s O.K. to eat them, that they have actually had a life. By 2004 they were encouraging me to sell them."

Isn't it actually crueller to snatch a living creature from a happy life, kill it, and eat it? BTW, I do eat veal and other animals, and if it were necessary for me to kill them myself I would do it. And I'm all for letting the animals run free and be normal as long as they can. I just don't like the mental contortions people go through to make it ok to eat what we eat. Humans are omnivores. Deal with it.

humans are disgusting

Russia Tries to Save Polar Bears With Legal Hunt - New York Times: "For the first time since the Soviet Union banned the practice more than five decades ago, the government is preparing to allow hunters here to kill the bears. The animals are descending with greater regularity on coastal villages in this part of Russia’s far north as a result of shrinking sea ice generally attributed to a warming planet."

Of course; we're destroying the ice they walk on, it only makes sense that we would shoot them when they come ashore to keep from drowning or starving.

bless you Mr. Vonnegut

from Kurt Vonnegut's last book, 2005 (times article)

Requiem

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
“It is done.”
People did not like it here.



If I ever had any such thing as a role model, he was it, and my life will be poorer knowing there are no more words coming from him. Goodbye Mr. Vonnegut; say hello to Douglas Adams for us, will you?

manhole explosion, east village

Inquisitive teen: What happened?
Firefighter: The blob. Came out of the sewer. Went up some girl's cooch.
-also from Overheard in New York

tourist season

"Welcome to New York. Slow walking idiots prone to stopping for no reason stay to the fucking right of busy sidewalks, and don't get in the way of the non-mentally impaired locals. Now fuck off."
-from Overheard in New York

wishes and the dark

A summer night does not talk to you, but it exists. The dark of a moonless night does not think, but it is still alive with a thousand eyes, a thousand sounds.

Humans always want something.

You can only get your wish when you truly know what it is you want.

-Danse Macabre, Laurell K. Hamilton

global warming jumps the shark

From the Wired blog:

Global Warming to Shrink Brains?

In news that is sure to set the mind of climate change denialist Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) a spinnin', two head shrinkers at the University at Albany will soon publish research that suggests the human brain grew dramatically as our ancestors adapted to colder temperatures.

[maybe it's the smaller brains that make everybody take their clothes off when it's hot]

what's the female counterpart of misogyny?

Two anti-male jokes from my dad (o my husband, please forgive me):

A couple is lying in bed. The man says, "I am going to make you the happiest woman in the world."
The woman replies, "I'll miss you..."

Q: What does it mean when a man is in your bed gasping for breath and calling your name?
A: You did not hold the pillow down long enough.

neighbors and nature

It is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool.

Epitaphs are not altogether to be trusted.

Walls have ears, but no tongue. Houses, trees, the dead — they tell no tales.

A relationship that has become artificial, and connected, on one side, with a sense of duty rather than with spontaneous affection, is always an uncomfortable one.

Though we can't always pick and choose our neighbors, neighbourliness is a virtue all the same.

If folks know they're not wanted, it just makes them all the more anxious to come.

Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth.

There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars.

Tunes, like fruit, have their seasons, and are, besides, ever forming new species.

Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive.

-Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees, Cold Spring Press, Cold Spring Harbor: 2005 (orig. publication 1926)

life and death

When a man tries to realize himself through the gifts with which nature has endowed him, he does the best and only meaningful thing he can do.

There is no beyond. The dried-up tree is dead forever; the frozen bird does not come back to life, nor does a man after he has died.

-Narcissus and Goldmund, Herman Hesse, Bantam, New York: 1971 [p278&306].

we defy augury

If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

-Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2

(Saw the Wooster Group version last night in Dumbo, most excellently fine. A re- and further de-construction of a 1964 Richard Burton live film of the play. Directing, acting, technical effects, soundscape, all magnificent. Why, it hardly seemed like two and a half hours at all)

knowing and learning

Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him.

One can be extremely intelligent without learning.

-Narcissus and Goldmund, Herman Hesse, Bantam, New York: 1971.

good times.

I wear the cheese, it does not wear me.

-the Cheese Man, "Restless," Buffy the Vampire Slayer

sometimes there's good advice in there

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

-New American Standard Bible, Mark 9:50

greek misogyny

Indulge a woman never, and never tell her all you know.

-Agamemnon, The Odyssey, Homer, Book 11, line 486

pessimism

It is not possible to survive...on the conviction that everything comes to him who waits, because the only thing that will come, automatically and without fail, is dismal wretchedness.

-The History of Danish Dreams, Peter Høeg, p164

Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don’t

by DENNIS OVERBYE, nytimes.com, January 2, 2007

A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind
is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions
in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

technosexual

This isn't an aphorism, just a new market-speak word coinage. Wacky.

How to Bottle a Generation
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times:

“We have envisioned this as the first fragrance for the technosexual generation,” said Mr. Murry, using a term the company made up to describe its intended audience of thumb-texting young people whose romantic lives are defined in part by the casual hookup.

Last year, the company went so far as to trademark “technosexual,” anticipating it could become a buzzword for marketing to millennials, the roughly 80 million Americans born from 1982 to 1995. A typical line from the press materials for CK in2u goes like this: “She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.”

Which may turn off its intended audience by the tens of thousands.

optimism

And yet things will be all right... if they don't get any worse.

-"The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal," The Sagas of Icelanders, Penguin Books, New York: 2000

pragmatism

All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.

-American Gods, Neil Gaiman, HarperTorch, New York: 2001

Aphorisms from THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE

by Nathaniel Hawthorne
originally published 1852


The greatest obstacle to being heroic, is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt--and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.

If the vision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure.

The kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life--the life of degenerated mortals--from the life of Paradise.

We seldom meet with women, now-a-days, and in this country, who impress us as being women at all; their sex fades away and goes for nothing, in ordinary intercourse.

Every son of woman both perpetrates and suffers his share of the common evil, whether he chooses it or no.

The rarer and higher is the nature that can magnanimously persist in error.

The poor, proud man should look at both sides of sympathy.

A brilliant woman is often an object of the devoted admiration of some young girl, who has as little hope of personal intercourse as of climbing among the stars of heaven.

A fine and rare development of character might reasonably be looked for, from the youth who should prove himself capable of self-forgetful affection.

Women judge one another by tokens that escape the obtuseness of masculine perceptions.

There is no pleasure in tormenting a person of one's own sex.

It is so rare to meet with a man of prayerful habits that such an one is decidedly marked out by a light of transfiguration, shed upon him in the divine interview from which he passes into his daily life.

Most men have a natural indifference, if not an absolutely hostile feeling, towards those whom disease, or weakness, or calamity of any kind, causes to falter and faint among the rude jostle of our selfish existence.

Except in love, or the attachments of kindred, or other very long and habitual affection, men really have no tenderness.

Happy the man that has such a friend beside him, when he comes to die!

A female reformer, in her attacks upon society, has an instinctive sense of where the life lies, and is inclined to aim directly at that spot.

There is a species of intuition--either a spiritual lie, or the subtle recognition of a fact--which comes to us in a reduced state of the corporeal system.

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows, or suspects, that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away.

It is quite ridiculous, and provokes one's malice, to see a creature so happy--especially a feminine creature.

A woman, by constant repetition of her one event, may compensate for the lack of variety.

Intellectual activity is incompatible with any large amount of bodily exercise. The yeoman and the scholar are two distinct individuals, and can never be melted or welded into one substance.

There is at least this good in a life of toil, that it takes the nonsense and fancy-work out of a man, and leaves nothing but what truly belongs to him.

If a farmer can make poetry at the plough-tail, it must be because his nature insists on it.

It is not a healthy kind of mental occupation, to devote ourselves too exclusively to the study of individual men and women.

This is always true of those men who have surrendered themselves to an over-ruling purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, nor even operate as a motive power within, but grows incorporate with all that they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle.

When a young girl comes within the sphere of such a man, she is as perilously situated as the maiden whom, in the old classical myths, the people used to expose to a dragon.

There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty, as that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely touch the ground.

Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a harmonious propriety through all.

Young or old, in play or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute.

Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race.

We sometimes hold mirth to a stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily.

What is the use or sense of being so very gay?

People never do get just the good they seek.

Love blesses inexperienced hearts, before they begin to suspect what is going on within them.

It is strange how expressive of moods a whisper may often be.

Custom has in no one point a greater sway than over our modes of wreaking our wild passions.

A man--poet, prophet, or whatever he may be--readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.

Human destinies look ominous, without some perceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray.

Unless there be real affection in his heart, a man cannot more effectually show his contempt for a brother-mortal, nor more galling assume a position of superiority, than by addressing him as 'friend'.

Destiny--the most skilful of stage-managers--seldom chooses to arrange its scenes, and carry forward its drama, without securing the presence of at least one calm observer.

Mankind is but another yoke of oxen, as stupid, and sluggish, as our old Brown and Bright.

There are some spheres, the contact with which inevitably degrades the high, debases the pure, deforms the beautiful.

Nature thrusts some of us into the world miserably incomplete, on the emotional side, with hardly any sensibilities except what pertain to us as animals.

Real life never arranges itself exactly like a romance.

By long brooding over our recollections, we subtilize them into something akin to imaginary stuff, and hardly capable of being distinguished from it.

Young men boggle at nothing, over their wine.

The pen is not for woman. Her power is too natural and immediate. It is with the living voice, alone, that she can compel the world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of her heart!

Women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie in idleness, or to be ill at ease.

In the better order of things, Heaven grant that the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women!

Man is never content, unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he loves.

Woman is the most admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and character.

All the separate action of woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain, destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of every good effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs!

Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster without man, as her acknowledged principal!

Any man might love so magnificent a woman.

Generosity is a very fine thing, at a proper time, and within due limits.

The profoundest wisdom must be mingled with nine-tenths of nonsense; else it is not worth the breath that utters it.

The besetting sin of a philanthropist is apt to be a moral obliquity.

No sagacious man will long retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without periodically returning in the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old stand-point.

Women possess no rights, or, at all events, only little girls and grandmothers would have the force to exercise them.

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!

It needs a wild steersman when we voyage through Chaos!

No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike.

Times change, and people change, and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us!

There is far more of the picturesque, more truth to native and characteristic tendencies, and vastly greater suggestiveness, in the back view of a residence, whether in town or country, than in its front.

Natural movement is the result and expression of the whole being, and cannot be well and nobly performed, unless responsive to something in the character.

It is really impossible to hide anything, in this world, to say nothing of the next.

Blind enthusiasm, absorption in one idea, is generally ridiculous, and must be fatal to the respectability of an ordinary man; it requires a very high and powerful character, to make it otherwise.

A great man attains his normal condition only through the inspiration of one great idea.

There can be no truer test of the noble and heroic, in any individual, than the degree in which he possesses the faculty of distinguishing heroism from absurdity.

In society, a genuine American never dreams of stepping across the inappreciable air-line which separates one class from another.

Human nature has a naughty instinct that approves of wine, at least, if not of stronger liquor.

The custom of tippling has its defensible side, as well as any other question.

A man, however stern, however wise, can never sway and guide a female child.

It takes down the solitary pride of man, beyond most other things, to find the impracticability of flinging aside affections that have grown irksome. The bands, that were silken once, are apt to become iron fetters, when we desire to shake them off.

A state of physical well-being can create a kind of joy, in spite of the profoundest anxiety of mind.

One always feels the fact, in an instant, when he has intruded on those who love, or those who hate, at some acme of their passion that puts them into a sphere of their own, where no other spirit can pretend to stand on equal ground with them.

Our virtues, when we have any, are merely impulsive and intuitive.

In the battlefield of life, the downright stroke, that would fall only on a man's steel head-piece, is sure to light on a woman's heart, over which she wears no breastplate, and whose wisdom it is, therefore, to keep out of the conflict.

Has not the world come to an awfully sophisticated pass, when, after a certain degree of acquaintance with it, we cannot even put ourselves to death in whole-hearted simplicity?

It is nonsense, and a miserable wrong--the result, like so many others, of masculine egotism--that the success or failure of woman's existence should be made to depend wholly on the affections, and on one species of affection; while man has such a multitude of other chances, that this seems but an incident.

Admitting what is called Philanthropy, when adopted as a profession, to be often useful by its energetic impulse to society at large, it is perilous to the individual, whose ruling passion, in one exclusive channel, it thus becomes.

From the very gate of Heaven, there is a by-way to the pit!

How much nature seems to love us! And how readily, nevertheless, without a sigh or a complaint, she converts us to a meaner purpose, when her highest one--that of conscious, intellectual life, and sensibility--has been untimely baulked!

It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued.

Where once we toiled with our whole hopeful hearts, the town-paupers, aged, nerveless, and disconsolate, creep sluggishly afield.

As regards human progress, let them believe in it who can, and aid in it who choose!

Aphorisms from THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

by Nathaniel Hawthorne
originally published 1851


The wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief.

The act of the passing generation is the germ which must produce good or evil fruit, in a far distant time.

Stories of this kind sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that indicate where the fallen and buried trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into the earth.

Tradition is responsible for all contrary averments.

The ghost of a dead progenitor is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of his family.

There is no one thing which men so rarely do, as to bequeath patrimonial property away from their own blood.

There is something so massive, stable, and almost irresistibly imposing, in the exterior presentment of established rank and great possessions, that their very existence seems to give them a right to exist.

In this republican country,, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Everything appears to lose its substance, the instant one actually grapples with it.

So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know of.

Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement, which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.

Individuals, whose affairs have reached an utterly desperate crisis, almost invariably keep themselves alive with hopes, so much the more airily magnificent, as they have the less of solid matter within their grasp, whereof to mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good.

There is sad confusion, indeed, when the spirit thus flits away into the past.

It is a kind of natural magic, that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home.

People are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies, than of their available gifts.

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons, too shy, or too awkward, to take a due part in the bustling world, regard the real actors in life's stirring scenes;--so genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they choose to deem higher and more important.

It should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gild them all--the very homeliest, were it even the scouring of pots and kettles--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.

There is a wonderful insight in heaven's broad and simple sunshine. While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he detect it.

Life within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.

An individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious, than through his heart.

It is often instructive to take the woman's, the private and domestic view, of a public man.

Ancient superstitions become imbued with an effect of homely truth.

In both sexes, occasionally, this life-long croak, accompanying each word of joy or sorrow, is one of the symptoms of a settled melancholy; and wherever it occurs, the whole history of misfortune is conveyed in its slightest accent.

Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman, as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit?

The sick in mind, and perhaps in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so, by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters, in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition.

Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making a pastime of mock-sorrows?

Affection and sympathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman's trait. Men, if endowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it, in their contact with coarser things than flowers.

Infinity is big enough for us all--and Eternity long enough!

Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay, than loss of the power to deal with unaccustomed things and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment.

As a mere object of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than a procession, seen in its passage through narrow streets.

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and therefore the more terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a strong-willed relative, in the circle of his own connection.

This is such an odd and incomprehensible world!

Man's own youth is the world's youth.

We are not doomed to creep on forever in the old, bad way.

Man's best-directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the sole worker of realities.

The effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagination, endow young men with a false brilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other people.

Transparent natures are often deceptive in their depth.

We must be dead ourselves, before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world.

We shall live to see the day when no man shall build his house for posterity.

To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do.

Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone.

It is pleasant to live where one is much desired, and very useful.

What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!

Such calmness is a mightier effort than the violence of weaker men.

Next to the lightest heart, the heaviest is apt to be most playful.

Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.

Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage-window, so comes a love-beam of God's care and pity, for every separate need.

Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot?

There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunct forefathers and relatives!

Real estate is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep with one eye open. That may be wisdom. But not with both; for this were heedlessness!

Women are apt to make many words where a few would do much better.

Ambition is a talisman more powerful than witchcraft.

Persons of large sensual endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time.

The world owes all its onward impulse to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

At such a crisis, there is no Death; for Immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere.

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one to which the world so easily reconciles itself, as to his death.

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood.

No great mistake, whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is every really set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it impossible.

Aphorisms from THE SCARLET LETTER

by Nathaniel Hawthorne
first published 1850


The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

Is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows?

In our nature there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.

There are few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery.

Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.

Save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly worthy to be loved.

Youthful men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily!

Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly.

A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician.

When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.

It must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, than to cover it all up in his heart.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false.

Crime is for the iron-nerved.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.

The public is despotic in its temper.

If she be all tenderness, she will die.

She who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration.

Persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.

A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad.

A woman must needs follow her own fancy, touching the adornment of her person.

Let man tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!

A lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side!

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world.

An evil deed invests itself with the character of doom.

The higher the state, the more delicately adapted to it the man.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

A good man's prayers are golden recompense!

Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them.

Men of uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as many more.

We must not always talk in the market place of what happens to us in the forest.

Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

opening remarks

Until now my blogging has consisted of tag lines for my emails and a collection of quotes on post-it notes on my desk (I call it my dlog). Just like with a diary, I knew I would start a blog and never post, or post only self-involved whinings and sex chronicles. Which still may happen. But my main reason for starting is to have a place to put the pithy quotes I am always coming across.

aph-o-rism noun
1 : a concise statement of a principle
2 : a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment : ADAGE, SAYING

My fascination with aphorisms began while working on a trilogy of deconstructed musical versions of three Nathaniel Hawthorne novels. Several writers were involved in these projects; my task was to distill the novel text into a usable format. I began by pulling out all the pronouncements, or aphorisms, that Mr. Hawthorne likes to include. Taken together, the aphorisms act as a distillation of the stories, even though they're often completely contradictory.

Since then, I notice them in almost everything I read, and I am driven to collect them, though I have no idea what I'll eventually do with them. I'll soon post the Hawthorne collection here, then follow with a few more I have lying around. Then we'll just see what happens!