When your elevator doesn't reach the top floor,
You have to use the stairs.

ARG

Griefs upon griefs! Disappointments upon disappointments. What then? This is a gay, merry world notwithstanding.

John Adams, as quoted by David McCullough in his John Adams.

What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.

Laurence Sterne, as quoted by David McCullough in his John Adams.

His understanding lies, I think, rather in seeing large things largely than correctly....In the conduct of affairs he may perhaps be able to take so comprehensive a view as to render invention and expedient unnecessary.

Franklin Alexander, describing John Adams as quoted by David McCullough in his John Adams.

I am not going to speak to you at all about the justice or injustice of your conduct. I know very well that this word is nothing but noise, when it is a question of the general interest. I could speak to you about the means by which you could succeed, and ask you whether you are strong enough to play the role of oppressors; this would be closer to the heart of the matter. However I will not even do that, but I will confine myself to imploring you to cast your eyes on the nations who hate you: ask them; see what they think of you, and tell me to what extent you have resolved to make your enemies laugh at you.

Denis Diderot in June 1776 to John Wilkes in reference to British pursuit of war to suppress the American colonies, as quoted by Emma Rothschild in The New York Review (March 25, 2004).

Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people.

John Adams as quoted by David McCullough in his John Adams.

Forget about the reasons and
The treasons we are seeking.
Forget about the notion that
Our emotions can be kept at bay,
Forget about being guilty,
We are innocent instead
For soon we will all find our lives swept away.

Dave Matthews, Seek Up

Concentrate on the real thing while you have the chance.

Bob Shaw, The Ceres Solution (A good SciFi read.)

Lyrics On Demand - for when you need to know all the words.

…the lessons to be learned from Thucydides are no different from the ones that the tragic playwrights teach: that the arrogant self can become the abject Other; that failure to bend, to negotiate, inevitably results in terrible fracture; that, because we are only human, our knowledge is merely knowingness, our vision partial rather than whole, and we must tread carefully in the world.

Daniel Mendelsohn, “Theatres of War,” The New Yorker, January 12, 2004

The Nile First Descent Expedition - Pasquale "PV" Scaturro's site

McQuillan walked into a bar and ordered martini after martini, each time removing the olives and placing them in a jar. When the jar was filled with olives and all the drinks consumed, the Irishman started to leave. "S' cuse me", said a customer, who was puzzled over what McQuillan had done,"what was that all about?" "Nothin', said the Irishman, "me wife just sent me out for a jar of olives!"

A martini joke, not an Irish joke: "He said, like James Bond? I said, yes, just like James Bond."

…all the provisions that He has [made] for the gratification of our senses…are much inferior to the provision, the wonderful provision that He has made for the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason. He has given us reason to find out the truth, and the real design and true end of our existence.

A young John Adams as quoted by David McCullough in his John Adams.

latitudinarian adj. Not restrained; not confined; thinking or acting at large.

latitudinarian n.s. One who departs from orthodoxy.

From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary

Consciousness is an interminable yakking, a frantic effort to keep up appearances, to make the game seem always to be your game.

Louis Menand, review of Updike's fiction in the December 1, 2003 New Yorker.

Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth, the better.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell

A pessimistic law of history was at work here. Many such mixed communities [as Nagorny Karabakh] coexisted for centuries, not just in the Caucasus but throughout Eurasia and North Africa. And yet they were, in reality, only held together by fear, the fear of what a brutal outside authority would do to them all if mutual tolerance broke down. When the external pressure was removed, whether it was the Caliphate, the Tsardom, the Ottoman or British Empire, or Soviet power, then the current of fear which enforced that mutual tolerance was switched off.

Neal Ascherson, In the Black Garden, New York Review of November 20, 2003.

The John Clare page

Strictly Business by Paul Krugman in the NYRB.

What we think is a gesture of freedom is a symptom of our cage. ...Planets and moons form, and people stick to them because something in the cosmos is trying to keep itself company.

Nicolas Pizzolatto, "Ghost-Birds" in the October 2003 Atlantic Monthly