An interim congeries
“There is a certain fertile sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly seek. . . . It saves my life from being trivial.” —Thoreau in his journal, 17 August 1851
I took a volume of Thoreau’s journal off the shelf not long ago, thinking, Well, now that I’ve started birding, maybe I’ll know what he was talking about. Only to discover that the names have changed. Thoreau says “chewink” when he means towhee, and says “cow troopial” for cowbird. He calls cedar waxwings “cherry birds,” and field sparrows “huckleberry birds.” Then there’s something he refers to as a “gum-C bird,” which no one seems able to decipher. He also talks about “partridges,” which the annotators don’t annotate but I can’t figure out.
“I living, and enjoying the light shot through this flowery sphere . . .” —Odysseus, making a promise conditional, in Chapman’s translation of the Iliad
“What sweet contentments doth the soul enjoy by the senses? They are the gates and windows of its knowledge, the organs of its delight. If it be tedious to an excellent player on the lute to abide but a few months the want of one, how much more must the being without such noble tools and engines be plaintful to the soul?” —William Drummond of Hawthornden, A Cypresse Grove
“If I had known at the time how happy I was, she decided now, it would only have spoiled it. I took it for granted. That was much better. I don’t regret that.” —Elizabeth Taylor, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
“In Paris I had a blue blazer and flannels. . . . There was an old French nobleman who fancied me who used to come to the entrance of the art college in a carriage with four horses. I enjoyed it all immensely and so did the other students, but I didn’t like him in that way and wanted to call it off. The students said, ‘You can’t give him up. The horses and carriage coming and all the rest of it—it’s too romantic.’ So I continued to see him just to please them. One day we were driving through a secluded part of the Bois de Boulogne and the old nobleman ran his hand up my leg and got hold of my cock. ‘Ça, c’est du très bon flannel anglais.’ I finally gave this nobleman up, not because of his advances, which I always rejected, but because he invited me up to his flat and then served me champagne which hadn’t been chilled. When I explained this to the art students, they said, ‘We understand. That is too much. You cannot be expected to make love on warm champagne.’ ” —Christopher Robbins, The Empress of Ireland
“What moon doth change so oft as man? . . . Young he scorns his childish conceits, and wading deeper in years (for years are a sea into which he wadeth until he drown) he esteemeth his youth unconstancy, rashness, folly; old, he begins to pity himself, plaining, because he is changed the world is changed, like those in a ship, which when they launch from the shore, are brought to think the shore doth fly from them.” — Drummond of Hawthornden
“People often say that a set of books looks ugly if all volumes are not in the same format, but I was impressed to hear the Abbot Kōyū say, ‘It is typical of the unintelligent man to insist on assembling complete sets of everything. Imperfect sets are better.’ ¶ In everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.” —Yoshida Kenkō, Essays in Idleness
“I have always suspected that prophets are not possessed of any magical ability to see into the future. Rather that they have a good memory, and enough courage to be pessimistic.” —Antonín Liehm, Closely Watched Films
“Though every body loved his company very well, yett he loved very much to be alone, beinge in his constitution inclined somewhat to melancholique, and to retyrement amongst his bookes, and was so farr from being active, that he was contented to be reproched by his frendes with lazynesse, and was of so nice and tender a composition, that a little rayne or winde would disorder him, and diverte him from any shorte journy he had most willingly proposed to himselfe: insomuch as when he ridd abroade with those in whose company he most delighted, if the winde chanced to be in his face, he would (after a little pleasant murmuringe) suddaynely turne his horse, and goe home.” —Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, quoted in Gigantic Cinema, edited by Alice Oswald and Paul Keegan
“The man who has never hesitated under a cloudy moon on a night fragrant with plum blossoms, or has no memories of the dawn moon in the sky as he started to walk through the dewy gardens inside the palace gate had better have nothing to do with love.” —Kenkō