Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, r. Dec. 2014

p. xxvi Our ancestors were not more distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians; they had "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions" [Shakespeare]; were "fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer," as ourselves. The tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings, must have borne the same general proportion to our own.

p. 52 The walls of the apartment were so ill finished, and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook to the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort their was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.

p. 82 At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area…. It is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. To borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little - "The knights are dust, And their good sword are rust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust" [Coleridge]. Their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins - the place that once knew them, knows them no more - nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!

p. 291 These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony.

p. 304 …Glory, maiden, glory! …

p. 330 Trust me each state must have its policies: Kingdoms have edicts, cities have their charters; Even the wild outlaw, in his forest-walk, Keeps yet some touch of civil discipline; For not since Adam wore his verdant apron, Hath man with man in social union dwelt, But laws were made to draw that union closer." [Old Play]

p. 359 For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.

p. 388 …trial moves rapidly on when the judge has determined the sentence beforehand.

The Americas on the Eve of Discovery by Harold Drive, r. Jul. 2014

p. 87 (Zuñi) The breath is the symbol of life. It also is the means by which spiritual substance communicate and the seat of [impersonal] power or mana. Inhaling is an act of ritual blessing. One inhales from all sacred objects to derive benefit from their mana.

p. 91 (Zuñi) The sense of conflict as the basic principle of life does not dominate man's relation to the universe any more than it dominates man's relation to man. The Promethean theme - man's tragic and heroic struggle against the gods - has no place in Zuñi philosophic speculation. Nor have any of the other concepts of cosmic conflicts which have always absorbed the interest of Asiatic and European philosophers and mystics, the antithesis between good and evil, or between matter and spirit. There is no Satan in Zuñi ideology, and no Christ. The world, then, is as it is, and man's plan in it is what it is. Day follows night and the cycles of the years complete themselves. In the spring the corn is planted, and if all goes well the young stalks grow to maturity and fulfill themselves. They are cut down to serve man for food, but their seeds remain against another planting. So man, too, has his days, and his destined place in life. His road may be long or short, but in time it is fulfilled and he passes on to fill another rôle in the cosmic scheme. He, too, leaves his seed behind him. Man dies but mankind remains. This is the way of life; the whole literature of prayer shows no questioning of these fundamental premises. This is not resignation, the subordination of desire to a stronger force, but the sense of man's oneness with the universe. The conditions controlling human affairs are no more moral issues than those, like the blueness of the sky, to which we may well be indifferent. It is a remarkably realistic view of the universe. It is an attitude singularly free from terror, guilt, and mystery. The Zuñi feels great awe of the supernatural, and definitely fears certain beings in his pantheon - the recently dead, the Koyemci, certain "dangerous" katcinas, but this is quite different from the cosmic terror that crushes many primitive and civilized peoples.

p. 111 (Incas) In this way there were very few cultivable lands that remained desert in the time of the Incas, but all were peopled, as is well known to the first Christians who entered the country. Assuredly, it causes no small grief to reflect that these Incas, being gentiles and idolaters, should have established such good order in the government and maintenance of such vast provinces, while we, being Christians, have destroyed so many kingdoms. For wherever the Christians have passed, discovering and conquering, nothing appears but destruction.

The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout, r. Jul. 2013

p. viii (intro by Walter Mosley) This juxtaposition of light and dark is much more satisfying than the struggle between good and evil. It is the essence of positive and negative space in literature.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, r. Dec. 2012

p. 27 Not for one moment did I doubt that you were the Buddha, that you have reached the highest goal which so many thousands of Brahmins and Brahmins' sons are striving to reach. You have done so by your own seeking, in your own way, through thought, through meditation, through knowledge, through enlightenment. You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings. To nobody, O Illustrious One, can you communicate in words and teachings what happened to you in the hour of your enlightenment. The teachings of the enlightened Buddha embrace much, they teach much - how to live righteously, how to avoid evil. But there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain to secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced..."

p. 57 At times he heard within him a soft, gentle voice, which reminded him quietly, complained quietly, so that he could hardly hear it. Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.

p. 68 When he looked up and saw the stars, he though: I am sitting here under my mango tree, in my pleasure garden. He smiled a little. Was it necessary, was it right, was it not a foolish thing that he should possess a mango tree and a garden?

p. 78 I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace, to hear Om again, to sleep deeply again and to awaken refreshed again.

p. 87 But he learned more from the river that Vasudeva could teach him. He learned continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions.

p. 87 READ THIS PART that starts "Yes, Siddhartha..." about life being a river

p. 116 The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people - eternal life.

p. 119 Also with this great teacher, the thing to me is of greater importance than the words; his deeds and life are more important to me than his talk, the gesture of this hand is more important to me than his opinions. Not in speech or though do I regard him as a great man, but in his deeds and life.

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, r. Sep. 2012

p. 7 Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.

p. 11 "We have indeed advanced, thanks to the Machine," repeated the attendant, and hid the Himalayas behind a metal blind.

p. 15 That was my first lesson. Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.

p. 16 For Kuno had lately asked to be a father, and his request had been refused by the Committee. His was not a type that the Machine desired to hand on.

p. 19 "Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine?"

p. 25 The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his neighbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished. They had left full directions, it is true, and their successors had each of them mastered a portion of those directions. But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, r. Jun. 2012

p. 1122 The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

p. 1186 'A great Shadow has departed,' said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sounds was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known.

p. 1210 And Gandalf said: 'Many folk like to know beforehand what is to be set on the table; but those who have laboured to prepare the feast like to keep their secret; for wonder makes the words of praise louder.'

p. 1276 In the Southfarthing the vines were laden, and the yield of 'leaf' was astonishing; and everywhere there was so much corn that at Harvest every barn was stuffed. The Northfarthing barley was so fine that the beer of 1420 malt was long remembered and became a byword. Indeed a generation later one might hear an old gaffer in an inn, after a good pint of well-earned ale, put down his mug with a sigh: 'Ah! that was proper fourteen-twenty, that was!'

p. 1283 I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you.

The Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White, r. Apr. 2012

p. 10 Steering a car toward home is a very different experience from steering a car toward a rostrum.
p. 47 I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
p. 97 No longer is a small town autonomous - it is a creature of the state and of the Federal Government.
p. 111 But I feel sadness at All Last Things, too, which is probably a purely selfish, or turned-in, emotion - sorrow not at my dog's death but at my own, which hasn't even occurred yet but which saddens me just to think about in such pleasant surroundings.
p. 127 Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good Happening.
p. 135 "The trouble today," [de Madariaga] wrote, "is that the Communist world understands unity but not liberty, while the free world understands liberty but not unity. Eventual victory may be won by the first of the two sides to achieve the synthesis of both liberty and unity."
p. 147 ...so many million dollars spent on the idea that our trains and our motorcars should go fast and smoothly, and the child remembering, not the smoothness, but the great--big--BUMP.
p. 165 Men [nowadays] go to saloons to gaze at televised events instead of to think long thoughts.
p. 182 "She is at that enviable moment in life (I thought) when she believes she can go once around the ring, make one complete circuit, and at the end be exactly the same age as at the start."
p. 185 The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change - and we all instinctively avoid it, and object to the passage of time, and would rather have none of it.
p. 210 ...there is a period near the beginning of every man's life when he has little to cling to except his unmanageable dream, little to support him except good health, and nowhere to go but all over the place.
p. 247 It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing.
p. 301 "This curious world which we inhabit is far more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used." He would see that today ten thousand engineers are busy making sure that the world shall be convenient even if it is destroyed in the process, and others are determined to increase its usefulness even though its beauty is lost somewhere along the way.
p. 303 Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
p. 323 [From Strunk] "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."
p. 363 [From his Aunt Caroline in her nineties] 'Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the rememberance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive world.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien, r. Nov. 2011

p. 181: "Here is a pretty toy for Tom and for his lady! Fair was she who long ago wore this on her shoulder. Goldberry shall wear it now, and we will not forget her!"

p. 286: Time doesn't seem to pass here: it just is. (Rivendell)

p. 330: "And it is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one."

p. 334: Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

p. 431: Indeed in nothing is the power of the Dark Lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all those who still oppose him.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, r. Apr. 2011

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting; you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote. -p. 207

A leader's true authority is a power you voluntarily give him, and you grant him this authority not in a resigned or resentful way but happily; it feels right. -p. 225

But if you're subjected to great salesmen and sales pitches and marketing concepts for long enough - like from you earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let's say - it is only a matter of time before you start believing deep down that everything is sales and marketing, and that whenever somebody seems like they care about you or about some noble idea or cause, that person is a salesman and really ultimately doesn't give a shit about you or some cause but really just wants something for himself. -p. 227

Salesman or leader or neither or both, the final paradox - the really tiny central one, way down deep inside all the other campaign puzzles' spinning boxes and squares that layer McCain - is that whether he's truly "for real" now depends less on what is in his heart than on what might be in yours. - p. 234

By turning against the popular utilitarianism of the Enlightenment, [Kant] also knew exactly that what was at stake was not any particular moral code, but rather a question of the existence or nonexistence of the distinction between good and evil and, consequently, a question of the fate of mankind - p. 271