p. 3 The most forceful lines of a serious moral statement are usually less powerful than those of satire; and nothing will reform most men better than the depiction of their faults. It is a vigorous blow to vices to expose them to public laughter. Criticism is taken lightly, but men will not tolerate satire. They are quite willing to be mean, but they never like to be ridiculed.
p. 5 I admit that there have been times when comedy became corrupt. And what do men not corrupt every day? There is nothing so innocent that men cannot turn it to crime; nothing so good in itself that it cannot be put to bad uses.
p. 24 There are pretenders to devotion as well as to courage; and as those who are truly brave in battle are not they who make the most noise, so those who are truly devout, who ought to be imitated, are not those who make the most outward show.
p. 24 How strangely are most men made! They are never at one with nature. Reason's bounds are too small for them. They exceed its limits in every way, and often ruin the noblest of things in trying to go too far.
p. 71 DAMIS: I'll knock his brains out. CLEANTE: You talk just like a young man. If you please, moderate these outbursts of passion. We live under a reign and in an age in which violence does only harm to one's cause.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, r. Nov. 2018
p. 16 "I hardly suspected that I was boring you. After all, that bus ride was one of the more formative experiences of my life. As a mother, you should be more interested in the traumas that have created my worldview."
p. 106 Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless.
p. 110 I am going to pray to St. Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mullatoes, for our cause in the factory. Because he is also invoked against rats, he will perhaps aid us in the office, too.
p. 110 As a lecturer Dr. Talk was renowned for the facile and sarcastic wit and easily digested generalizations that made him popular among the girl students and helped to conceal his lack of knowledge about almost everything in general and British history in particular.
p. 127 After having fought with his father for almost thirty-five years, Mr. Levy had decided that he would spend the rest of his life trying not to be bothered. But he was bothered every day that he was at Levy's Lodge by his wife simply because she resented his not wanting to be bothered by Levy Pants. And in staying away from Levy Pants, he was bothered even more by the company because something was always going wrong there. It would all be simpler and less bothersome if he would have really operated Levy Pants and put in an eight hour day as manager. But just the name "Levy Pants" gave him heartburn.
p. 159 Mrs. Levy was a woman of interests and ideals. Over the years she had given herself freely to bridge, African violets, Susan and Sandra, golf, Miami, Fanny Hurst and Hemingway, correspondence courses, hairdressers, the sun, gourmet foods, ballroom dancing, and, in recent years, Miss Trixie.
p. 185 Ignatius, a very bad crack-up is on the way. You must do something. Even volunteer work at a hospital would snap you out of your apathy, and it would probably be non-taxing on your valve and other things. Get out of that womb-house for at least an hour a day. Take a walk, Ignatius. Look at the trees and birds. Realize that life is surging all around you. The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart, Ignatius, and you will open your valve.
p. 331 Fortuna wished to make amends. Somehow she had summoned and flushed Myrna mink from a subway tube, from some picket line, from the pungent bed of some Eurasian existentialist, from the hands of some epileptic Negro Buddhist, from the verbose midst of a group therapy session.
p. 106 Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. My mother herself, a worn old Negress, would be too broken by years of underpaid labor as a domestic to go out bowling at night. She and I could live most pleasantly in some moldy shack in the slums in a state of ambitionless peace, realizing contentedly that we were unwanted, that striving was meaningless.
p. 110 I am going to pray to St. Martin de Porres, the patron saint of mullatoes, for our cause in the factory. Because he is also invoked against rats, he will perhaps aid us in the office, too.
p. 110 As a lecturer Dr. Talk was renowned for the facile and sarcastic wit and easily digested generalizations that made him popular among the girl students and helped to conceal his lack of knowledge about almost everything in general and British history in particular.
p. 127 After having fought with his father for almost thirty-five years, Mr. Levy had decided that he would spend the rest of his life trying not to be bothered. But he was bothered every day that he was at Levy's Lodge by his wife simply because she resented his not wanting to be bothered by Levy Pants. And in staying away from Levy Pants, he was bothered even more by the company because something was always going wrong there. It would all be simpler and less bothersome if he would have really operated Levy Pants and put in an eight hour day as manager. But just the name "Levy Pants" gave him heartburn.
p. 159 Mrs. Levy was a woman of interests and ideals. Over the years she had given herself freely to bridge, African violets, Susan and Sandra, golf, Miami, Fanny Hurst and Hemingway, correspondence courses, hairdressers, the sun, gourmet foods, ballroom dancing, and, in recent years, Miss Trixie.
p. 185 Ignatius, a very bad crack-up is on the way. You must do something. Even volunteer work at a hospital would snap you out of your apathy, and it would probably be non-taxing on your valve and other things. Get out of that womb-house for at least an hour a day. Take a walk, Ignatius. Look at the trees and birds. Realize that life is surging all around you. The valve closes because it thinks it is living in a dead organism. Open your heart, Ignatius, and you will open your valve.
p. 331 Fortuna wished to make amends. Somehow she had summoned and flushed Myrna mink from a subway tube, from some picket line, from the pungent bed of some Eurasian existentialist, from the hands of some epileptic Negro Buddhist, from the verbose midst of a group therapy session.
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