I always thought it was "Read at WILL"

“The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives; but duringthe contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim!”
― Randall Jarrell

Quote

"No science without fancy. No art without facts"

(Vladimir Nabokov, via Carlos Martinez del Rio)

Quote

"Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.”

Lewis Thomas in Lives of a Cell (HT Skeeter Leard)

Quote

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. (Philo of Alexandria)

Quote of the day

"You must surrender yourself first to extravagance. Poverty is apt to strike suddenly like influenza, and it is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for bad times."

- Graham Greene

Quote

"I'm just about to junk the whole left/ right taxonomy as useless and indeed an active impediment to thought and action. Why should we be dominated by a political labeling system based on where people sat in the Constituent Assembly in Versailles in 1789...?"

- Alexander Cockburn

Quote

Brad has reminded me of the late great impossible Barry Hannah. An almost random quote (sometimes I think he wrote only quotable phrases):

"Walthall bought an ancient Jaguar sedan for nothing, and when it ran, smelling like Britain on the skids or the glove of a soiled duke..."

Quote

Something sent by Teddy Moritz, who read it in a book called Defending Jacob, though the quote itself is from the 1921 textbook A General Theory of Human Violence. Despite its seriousness and truth there is just a bit of an air of Wodehouse in the language...

"Let us be practical in our expectations of the Criminal Law....(For) we have merely to imagine, by some trick of time travel, meeting our earliest hominid ancestor, Adam, a proto-man, short of stature, luxuriantly furred, newly bipedal, foraging about on the African savannah three million or so years ago. Now, let us agree that we may pronounce whatever  laws we like for this clever little creature, still it would be unwise to pet him."

Quote

"Work that does not lead directly to food should be forbidden in fall."


- Carlos Martinez del Rio

Quote

"What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error."-- Raymond Aron

Motto

It was "Isaak Dinesen's" as well as one that was quoted a bit in many venues in the 70's. Can't fault it:

Navigare necesse est;  vivere non est necesse...

From Plutarch , if a borrowing; even then;  also recently attributed to everyone up to William Burroughs, who did not say it first-- though he used it in favor of exploring Space!...

Quote

Why read, from Dr Johnson a LONG time ago:

"Some read that they may embellish their conversation, or shine in dispute; some that they may not be detected in ignorance, or want the reputation of literary accomplishments: but the most general and prevalent reason of study is the impossibility of finding another amusement equally cheap or constant, equally independent on the hour or the weather.”

Quote

From Samuel Beckett, his code, said well other ways too. But I like this one's Zen stoicism:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail better."

Quote

"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."

(Chesterton, via Arthur Kover and John "Johnny UK" Hill).

Quote

"... he had a serenity that came with the choice of the life he wanted to live. And this serenity and certainty I have seen only among those who have the armour of books close by."

- Michael Ondaatje, sent in by Teddy Moritz

Autumnal Quote

"For now he was awake and knew

No one is ever spared except in dreams"

W. H. Auden

Quote

" You should be polite as long as possible and, when you can't be polite any more, don't run."--Daniel Woodrell, Ozark "noir" novelist.

This one is so good it may make it to the header. I have not been feeling polite lately.

Quote

"I hate vacations."-- travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux in a recent interview.

We are off for  a week to see Deep Springs-- more a mini- adventure than a "vacation"-- besides, I will be working on my proposals. Internet access is at best intermittent there-- it is far more remote than Magdalena -- so do not expect too much blogging or email til next week...

And still another quote

Pancho Villa's dying words, spoken to a journalist after he was shot by assassins in 1923:

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."

Serious quote

From Rob Sheffield in the current Men's Journal:

"When you marry somebody, you are guaranteeing that you will have real problems, a future full of them, the kind that involve death and disease and grief... I know other husbands are afraid of this stuff. I have been afraid of it too, and when bad things really did happen they were even worse than I could have imagined. My nightmares came true, and I can't tell any husband he should be less afraid. Our fears are totally justified."

! This is a subject I have not seen written about, but when two widowed people decide to marry, as Libby and I did almost 20 years ago, you better believe it will be discussed.