Tag Archives: quotes

Friday’s Stuff

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Snap the Whip   ~ Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer is a wonderful go-to artist for Fine Art Friday.

It is better to keep quiet and be real,
than to chatter and be unreal.
It is a good thing to teach if, that is,
the teacher practices what he preaches.
~  Ignatius of Antioch
(ouch!)

Magistra’s Dictionary:

i • ro • ny:  deer (pl) frolicking in our front yard
while men pack for hunting trip this weekend.

con • viv • i • al • i • ty: a girlfriend weekend with Mel

I’m headed to Boise to collect her from the airport. 
And shop. And talk.  But our chatter will be *real*. <grin>
Y’all have a great weekend. 
(In heaven I’m going to be a southern girl.)

Looking Over the Edge

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You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. 

And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honourable to you to be doing something else.   You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that – if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it.  No matter what a man is – I wouldn’t give twopence for him – here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers – whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.    

~ George Eliot in Middlemarch

This last week before school begins, this week before we celebrate those who labor by goofing off, I’m thinking about work, praying and preparing for long, hard days ahead.  I confess that I do look over the edge of my work.  Just this morning I was yearning for the opportunity to read something “just for fun” aka  self-indulgent stuff.   The summer has come and will soon be over.  I have two years left of home schooling and I would surely like to “learn to do it well” without excuses (“there’s this and there’s that”) or whining.

Gearing Up to Labor

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It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work.  Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty.  To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but to take food in thankfulness and temperance gives him glory too.   To lift up hands in prayer gives God gory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail gives him glory too.  His is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.  So then, my brethren, live.
                          ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Principle or Foundation

The Imagination of Men, Young and Old

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The Young Cavalry Man
Augustus Edward Mulready
Bridgeman Art Library

~     ~     ~     ~ 

Funny Quote from Vanity Fair

Lord Tapeworm inherited no little portion of the family gallantry, and it was his happy belief that almost every woman upon whom he himself cast friendly eyes was in love with him.  He left Emmy under the persuasion that she was slain by his wit and attractions and went home to his lodgings to write a pretty little note to her.

She was not fascinated, only puzzled by his grinning, his simpering, his scented cambric handkerchief, and his high-heeled lacquered boots.  She did not understand one half the compliments which he paid. She had never in her small experience with mankind met a professional ladies’ man, as yet, and looked upon my lord as something curious, rather than pleasant.  And if she did not admire, certainly wondered at him.

as transcribed from Librivox recording, chapter 63
~ William Makepeace Thackery

Transitory Roast Beef

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When I work in the kitchen alone, I listen to Vanity Fair through Librivox, free audiobooks from the public domain.  If you love a deep, delicious English accent, take a moment, click on the link, and scroll down to chapter 8 to listen to Graham Williams read.  There are many different volunteer readers, but he is hands-down the best.  If I could afford it, I would hire Graham Williams to read every book in my library. 

Today, as I prepare for some serious feasting tomorrow, I thought I’d share this thought from Thackeray:

It is all vanity, to be sure.  But, who will not own to liking a little of it?  I should like to know what well-constituted mind, merely because it is transitory, dislikes roast beef.  That is a vanity. But, may every man who reads this have a wholesome portion of it through life, I beg.  Aye, though my readers were 500,000!  Sit down, gentlemen, and fall to with a good, hearty appetite: the fat, the lean, the gravy, the horseradish, as you like it.  Don’t spare it.  Another glass of wine, Jones, my boy, a little bit of the Sunday side!

Yes, let us eat our fill of the vain thing, and be thankful therefore.

Fishing, Octaves and Chesterton

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An Afternoon Fishing, 1917
Nikolai Bogdanoff-Bjelski
Art Renewal Center

Ah, the joys of boyhood!  I had been thinking of donning a docent’s cap and explaining some stuff I’ve learned about late medieval art; but when I saw this print it shouted “Summer!” “June!” “Boys!” and medieval art faded away.

☼     ☼     ☼

Words are simply delicious.  Yesterday I was reviewing intervals with one of my piano students.  When we came to eighths I said, “You rarely hear the term eighths; normally we say octaves.”  She sucked in her breath, eyes as big as stop signs, and repeated, “Eighths – octaves!  Like octagon!  I. never. knew. that. before.”   Cha-ching!!

☼     ☼     ☼

More from Thomas Cahill, a hat tip to GK Chesterton: 

The introduction of Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse
will no doubt strike some readers as irrelevant, since it is
an early twentieth-century, not a medieval work;
and the incident Chesterton gives us–
Alfred’s vision of the Virgin–
has no historical basis.
But for me, as in my earlier recommendation
of Kristin Lavransdatter,
there is here a genuine evocation of the feeling and fabric
of the High Middle Ages that is worthy of our attention.

☼     ☼     ☼

Off to clean my house today.  Those gooky corners of my windows.  The dusty bookshelves.   The scuzzy underneaths.  Nothing says “I love you” louder to my husband than walking into a fresh, clean house; that is, walking into his own house and finding it fresh and clean. 

O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart.
Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling
and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.

~   Augustine

Unload

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   God will not guide us
   into an intolerable scramble
   of panting feverishness.

   ~    Thomas Kelly

   Some people can’t say no.
   They enroll in too many courses,
   volunteer for too many tasks,
   make too many appointments,
   serve on too many committees,
   have too many friends.
   They are trying to be all things
   to all people all at once
   all by themselves.

   ~   Dr. J. Grant Howard

   as quoted in Overload
   by Richard A. Swenson

Somebody Loves Me

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Two somebodies went together and replenished my favorite tea.
Thank you JAB and KGB!!
Did you see how many bags?  240! 
You know what that means, don’t you?
I’m prepared to offer you a proper spot of tea. 
My teapot and cozy are on standby status.
Party, anyone?

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~  

The kitchen project is humming, about 1/3 done. 
If I had known I would get such a lift from clean cupboards,
I would have started finished them earlier.

~     ~     ~     ~     ~     ~

Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) is a favorite carol.  It was the first carol we learned in Latin.  A few years later I discovered Athanasius, who fought valiantly for the deity of Christ.  Every time we sing “Ver—–ry God, Begotten, not created” I get choked up and say a prayer of thanks for Athanasius, God’s gift to the early church. 
 

In addition to Athanasius, I will think of translations when we sing that verse.  This, from Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill:

This early exaltation of Mother and Child already demonstrates
the innovative Christian sense of grace, no longer something
reserved for the fortunate few–the emperors and their
retinues–but broadcast everywhere, bestowed on everyone,
“heaped up, pressed down, and overflowing,” even on
one as lowly and negligible as a nursing mother.
In the words of a famous Latin hymn,

“God…is born from the guts of a girl.”

The hymn is “Adeste Fideles,” composed in the eighteenth
centry (in a very medieval spirit) by John F. Wade.
The full text of the cited quotation is
“Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine
Gestant puellae viscera”
The second line was unfortunately translated
in the nineteenth century by Frederick Oakley as
“Lo! he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.”
p. 103

What Summer Is Here For

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Exquisite Afternoon   Sally Rosenbaum


Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the
two most beautiful words in the English language.     ~Henry James


A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.     ~Chinese Proverb


Books – the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity.  ~George Steiner


No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.    ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning



My brother and SIL are going to an event in Maine tonight – they will hear David McCullough and his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson speak.  In my mind, this ranks right up there with hearing Yo-Yo Ma play the cello in person.  I get many vicarious thrills through my siblings. 

What event have you been thrilled about attending?  Or which would you love to go to?