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VIsiting my father in Monterey, Carmel Valley, Big Sur, etc.

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We do not have to acquire humility. There is humility in us. Only we humiliate ourselves before false gods. —Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

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What a deal of talking there would be in the world if we desired at all costs to change the names of things into definitions. —G. C. Lichtenberg

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If one listens to academics, one might make the mistake of thinking they would like their complaints to be remedied; but in fact the complaints of academics are their treasures, and were you to remove them, you would find either that they had been instantly replenished or that you were now their object. The reason that academics want and need their complaints is that it is important for them to feel oppressed, for in the psychic economy of the academy, oppression is a sign of virtue.

Stanley Fish, “The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos”

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It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, the kind where you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away. —P. G. Wodehouse, "Jeeves Takes Charge"

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You harvest darkness from the light itself

'Because your appetites are fixed on things that, divided, lessen each one’s share, envy’s bellows pushes breath into your sighs.

'But if love for the highest sphere could turn your longings toward heavenly things, then fear of sharing would pass from your hearts.

'For there above, when more souls speak of ours, the more of goodness each one owns, the more of love is burning in that cloister.'

'I am more starved for answers,' I said, 'than if before I had kept silent, since now my mind is filled with greater doubt.

'How can it be that a good, distributed, can enrich a greater number of possessors than if it were possessed by few?'

And he to me: 'Because you still have your mind fixed on earthly things, you harvest darkness from the light itself.

'That infinite and ineffable Good, which dwells on high, speeds toward love as a ray of sunlight to a shining body.

'It returns the love it finds in equal measure, so that, if more of ardor is extended, eternal Goodness will augment Its own.

'And the more souls there are who love on high, the more there is to love, the more of loving, for like a mirror each returns it to the other.

Dante, Purgatorio XV (49-75). Translated by Jean Hollander & Robert Hollander

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Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common where the ‘choosing’ by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were ‘destined’ for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by ‘failure’ and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean heart, and fidelity of will…

J. R. R. Tolkien, from a letter to his son Michael, 6-8 March 1941

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It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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In Memory Of My Mother by Patrick Kavanagh

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see You walking down a lane among the poplars On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday— You meet me and you say: 'Don't forget to see about the cattle—' Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland Of green oats in June, So full of repose, so rich with life— And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after The bargains are all made and we can walk Together through the shops and stalls and markets Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay, For it is harvest evening now and we Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight And you smile up at us — eternally.

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Leave Them Alone by Patrick Kavanagh

There's nothing happening that you hate That's really worthwhile slamming; Be patient. If you only wait You'll see time gently damning

Newspaper bedlamites who raised Each day the devil's howl, Versifiers who had seized The poet's begging bowl;

The whole hysterical passing show The hour apotheosised Into a cul-de-sac will go And be not even despised.

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Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world.

Samuel Johnson

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Tove Jansson

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“The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.”

— Yoshida Kenkō (1283-1350), ca. 1338

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R. S. Thomas, "Arrival"

Not conscious          that you have been seeking                  suddenly          you come upon it the village in the Welsh hills                  dust free          with no road out but the one you came in by.                  A bird chimes          from a green tree the hour that is no hour          you know.  The river dawdles to hold a mirror for you where you may see yourself          as you are, a traveller                  with the moon’s halo          above him, who has arrived          after long journeying where he                  began, catching this          one truth by surprise that there is everything to look forward to.

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From The Lost Spells by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris

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Happy the one who, like Ulysses, has taken a marvelous journey, or like him who won the golden fleece, and then comes home, full of wisdom and knowledge, to live among his family the rest of his days! Alas, when will I see the smoke from the chimneys of my little village, and what time of year will I see again the garden walls of my poor house, which to me is a province and much more? The home my forefathers built pleases me more than the bold façades of Roman palaces, more than hard marble I like fine slate; more my Gallic Loir than the Tiber of Rome, more my little Liré than the Palatine Hill, more the softness of Anjou than the sea air.

—Joachim du Bellay (ca 1522–1560), Les Regrets, Sonnet XXXI (1558)

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To plumb the consciousness of another person, separate from us by the interval of generations, we must virtually lay aside our own ego, whereas, to say what we think, we need only to remain ourselves. This is a less arduous endeavor. [...] It is so easy to denounce. We are never sufficiently understanding.

Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft