Monday, September 27, 2010

He had no more learning than what he could not help.

Johnson on a member of the Literati on April 16, 1779 as quoted in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

Saturday, September 25, 2010

In all pleasure hope is a considerable part.

Johnson on April 7, 1779 as quoted in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

Thursday, September 16, 2010

…the dream departed, leaving him there, his heart racing with hopes that would not come to pass.

Agamemnon's dream, The Illiad (Book Two, line 40, Robert Fagles' translation)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Force is that X that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all.


Simone Weil, The Illiad, Or The Poem of Force

Monday, September 06, 2010

Hope of salvation must be founded on the terms on which it is promised that the mediation of our Saviour shall be applied to us,--namely obedience; and where obedience has failed, then, as suppletory to it, repentance. But what man can say that his obedience has been such, as he would approve of in another, or even in himself upon close examination, or that his repentance has not been such as to require being repented of?

… mere existence is so much better than nothing, that one would rather exist even in pain…

… it is in the apprehension of it that the horror of annihilation consists.

Johnson on April 15, 1778 as quoted in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson