This is just a funny little quote from That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis which I read a couple months ago... (of course, it is also a gross generalization)
"The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in where?' they say, 'in there, of course.' There is consequently a phatic hiatus."
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Sunday, May 29, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
For Whom the Bell Tolls- Quotes
There were a couple of my favorite quotes from Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls...
"Why do you speak in English?" Pablo asked.
"I don't know," Robert Jordan said. "When I get very tired sometimes I speak english. Or when I get very disgusted. Or baffled, say. when I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear the sound of it. It's a reassuring noise. You ought to try it sometime."
"What do you say, Ingles?" Pilar said. "It sounds very interesting but I do not undersand."
"Nothing," Robert Jordan said. "I said 'nothing' in English."
"Well then, talk Spanish, " Pilar said, "It's shorter and simpler in Spanish."
"Let me finish, you mule," Pilar said to him. "He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans."
"Can they not speak Spanish?" Fernando asked. "South Americans can." (16.171-2
"Why do you speak in English?" Pablo asked.
"I don't know," Robert Jordan said. "When I get very tired sometimes I speak english. Or when I get very disgusted. Or baffled, say. when I get highly baffled I just talk English to hear the sound of it. It's a reassuring noise. You ought to try it sometime."
"What do you say, Ingles?" Pilar said. "It sounds very interesting but I do not undersand."
"Nothing," Robert Jordan said. "I said 'nothing' in English."
"Well then, talk Spanish, " Pilar said, "It's shorter and simpler in Spanish."
"Let me finish, you mule," Pilar said to him. "He teaches Spanish to Americans. North Americans."
"Can they not speak Spanish?" Fernando asked. "South Americans can." (16.171-2
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners
Quotes on Writing and Art from Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners.
The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands.
And if the student finds that this is not to his taste?
Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.
A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibilty. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose real uses will probably always be hidden from us. Usually the artist has to suffer certain deprivations in order to use his gift with integrity. Art is a virtue of the practical intellect, and the practice of any virtue demands a certain asceticism and a very definite leaving-behind of the niggardly part of the ego. The writer has to judge himself with a stranger's eye and a stranger's severity. The prophet in him has to see the freak. No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.
I think it is usually some form of self-inflation that destroys the free use of a gift. This may be the pride of the reformer or the theorist, or it may only be that simple-minded self-appreciation which uses its own sincerity as a standard of truth. If you have read the very vocal writers from San Fran, you may have got the impression that the first thing you must do in order to be an artist is to loose yourself from the bonds of reason, and thereafter, anything that rolls off the topic of your head will be of great value. Anyone's unrestrained feelings are considered worth listening ot because they are unrestrained and because they are feelings.
St. Thomas called art "reason in making." This is a very cold and very beautiful definition, and if it is unpopular today, this is because reason has lost ground among us. As grace and nature have been separated, so imagination and reason have been separated, and this always means an end to art. The artistst uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth.
If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever be to his reader.
The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands.
And if the student finds that this is not to his taste?
Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.
A gift of any kind is a considerable responsibilty. It is a mystery in itself, something gratuitous and wholly undeserved, something whose real uses will probably always be hidden from us. Usually the artist has to suffer certain deprivations in order to use his gift with integrity. Art is a virtue of the practical intellect, and the practice of any virtue demands a certain asceticism and a very definite leaving-behind of the niggardly part of the ego. The writer has to judge himself with a stranger's eye and a stranger's severity. The prophet in him has to see the freak. No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.
I think it is usually some form of self-inflation that destroys the free use of a gift. This may be the pride of the reformer or the theorist, or it may only be that simple-minded self-appreciation which uses its own sincerity as a standard of truth. If you have read the very vocal writers from San Fran, you may have got the impression that the first thing you must do in order to be an artist is to loose yourself from the bonds of reason, and thereafter, anything that rolls off the topic of your head will be of great value. Anyone's unrestrained feelings are considered worth listening ot because they are unrestrained and because they are feelings.
St. Thomas called art "reason in making." This is a very cold and very beautiful definition, and if it is unpopular today, this is because reason has lost ground among us. As grace and nature have been separated, so imagination and reason have been separated, and this always means an end to art. The artistst uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees. For him, to be reasonable is to find, in the object, in the situation, in the sequence, the spirit which makes it itself. This is not an easy or simple thing to do. It is to intrude upon the timeless, and that is only done by the violence of a single-minded respect for the truth.
If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever be to his reader.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Willa Cather Quotes
These were some of my favorite parts from her book, Death Comes for the Archbishop.
pg 289 Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.
On Death pg 267 "...You should not be discouraged; one does not die of a cold." The old man smiled. "I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."
On Farming and Wilderness pg 273 He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost the lightness, that dry aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert.
On the Death Bed pg 288 He observed also that there was no longer any perspective in his memories. He remembered his winters with his cousins on the Mediterranean when he was a little boy, his student days in the Holy City, as clearly as he remembered the arrival of M. Molny and the building of his Cathedral. He was soon to have done with the calendared time, and it had already ceased to count for him. He sat in the middle of his own consciousness; none of his former states of mind were lost or outgrown. They were all within reach of his hand, and all comprehensible. Sometimes, when M or B came in and asked him a question, it took him several seconds to bring himself back to the present. He could see they thought his mind was failing; but it was only extraordinarily active in some other part of the great picture of his life- some part of which they knew nothing. When the occasion warranted he could return to the present. But there was not much present left; ....only the minor characters of his life remained in present time.
pg 289 Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.
On Death pg 267 "...You should not be discouraged; one does not die of a cold." The old man smiled. "I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived."
On Farming and Wilderness pg 273 He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost the lightness, that dry aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert.
On the Death Bed pg 288 He observed also that there was no longer any perspective in his memories. He remembered his winters with his cousins on the Mediterranean when he was a little boy, his student days in the Holy City, as clearly as he remembered the arrival of M. Molny and the building of his Cathedral. He was soon to have done with the calendared time, and it had already ceased to count for him. He sat in the middle of his own consciousness; none of his former states of mind were lost or outgrown. They were all within reach of his hand, and all comprehensible. Sometimes, when M or B came in and asked him a question, it took him several seconds to bring himself back to the present. He could see they thought his mind was failing; but it was only extraordinarily active in some other part of the great picture of his life- some part of which they knew nothing. When the occasion warranted he could return to the present. But there was not much present left; ....only the minor characters of his life remained in present time.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Alone?
Monday of the First Week in Lent
It remains true that loneliness often leads to hostile behavior and that solitude is the climate of hospitality. When we feel lonely we have such a need to be liked and loved that we are hypersensitive to the many signals in our environment and easily become hostile toward anyone whom we perceive as rejecting us. But once we have found the center of our life in our own heart and have accepted our aloneness, not as a fate but as a vocation, we are able to offer freedom to others…We can only perceive the stranger as an enemy as long as we have something to defend. But when we say, “please enter- my house is your house, my joy is your joy, my sadness is your sadness, and my life is your life,” we have nothing to defend, since we have nothing to lose but all to give….Who will be our robber when everything he wants to steal from us becomes our gift to him?...Who wants to sneak into our back door, when our front door is wide open?”
Show Me the Way, Henri Nouwen
It remains true that loneliness often leads to hostile behavior and that solitude is the climate of hospitality. When we feel lonely we have such a need to be liked and loved that we are hypersensitive to the many signals in our environment and easily become hostile toward anyone whom we perceive as rejecting us. But once we have found the center of our life in our own heart and have accepted our aloneness, not as a fate but as a vocation, we are able to offer freedom to others…We can only perceive the stranger as an enemy as long as we have something to defend. But when we say, “please enter- my house is your house, my joy is your joy, my sadness is your sadness, and my life is your life,” we have nothing to defend, since we have nothing to lose but all to give….Who will be our robber when everything he wants to steal from us becomes our gift to him?...Who wants to sneak into our back door, when our front door is wide open?”
Show Me the Way, Henri Nouwen
Saturday, March 19, 2011
God vs. Neighbor
First Sunday in Lent
“Perhaps we must continually remind ourselves that the first commandment requiring us to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind is indeed the first. I wonder if we really believe this. It seems that in fact we live as if we should give as much of our heart, soul, and mind as possible to our fellow human beings, while trying hard not to forget God. At least we feel that our attention should be divided evenly between God and our neighbor…It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love for God who reveals himself to us as the God of all people. It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them. We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible.”
-Show Me the Way Henri Nouwen
“Perhaps we must continually remind ourselves that the first commandment requiring us to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind is indeed the first. I wonder if we really believe this. It seems that in fact we live as if we should give as much of our heart, soul, and mind as possible to our fellow human beings, while trying hard not to forget God. At least we feel that our attention should be divided evenly between God and our neighbor…It is this unconditional and unreserved love for God that leads to the care for our neighbor, not as an activity which distracts us from God or competes with our attention to God, but as an expression of our love for God who reveals himself to us as the God of all people. It is in God that we find our neighbors and discover our responsibility to them. We might even say that only in God does our neighbor become a neighbor rather than an infringement upon our autonomy, and that only in and through God does service become possible.”
-Show Me the Way Henri Nouwen
Friday, March 18, 2011
Lent Readings...
I'm reading through Show Me the Way, an anthology of Henri Nouwen for Lent. There have been quite a few things that I've wanted to think about harder, and that I believe are worthwhile to share with others. So here is the first installment.
Saturday after Ash Wednesday
“[When our lives are transformed]…What is new is that we no longer experience the many things, people, and events as endless causes for worry, but begin to experience them as the rich variety of ways in which God makes his presence known to us.”
Saturday after Ash Wednesday
“[When our lives are transformed]…What is new is that we no longer experience the many things, people, and events as endless causes for worry, but begin to experience them as the rich variety of ways in which God makes his presence known to us.”
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