– How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life, Massimo Pigliucci
“Legends and lore are known from around the world, some dating from oral traditions passed on over a multitude of generations.”
*Chesapeake Legends and Lore from the War of 1812 *by Ralph E. Eshelman and Scott S. Sheads
“Lo! the glory of the kings of the people of the Spear-Danes in days of old we have heard tell, how those princes did deeds of valour.”
Beowulf, translation by J.R.R. Tolkien
“Atlantis? A fairy tale!”
Operation Time Search by Andre Norton
Two or three times a week I treat myself to a few sips of iced cappuccino at my local coffee bar. (More than a few sips would cause insomnia and fast heart-beat.) I sip slowly and read from a book I keep in my car just for that purpose. I read slowly from the book to savor it too!
The book is Citizen Hearst, a splendid biography of one of America’s most splendid characters. (The subject of Citizen Kane led a boring life compared to the real W.R. Hearst.)
The first sentence of the book is neither short enough to type easily nor would it give a good idea about the book. But today I read something interesting about the 1932 Democratic Convention. Hearst had tried for the Presidency himself several times, and delighted in playing the role of kingmaker, but although he often controlled both New York City and the State of California, none of his candidates had ever become President. His own candidate in 1932, Speaker John Garner, was failing despite the support of Hearst-controlled delegations, especially from California. It was clear to all the cigar-smokers that the fourth ballot was FDR’s last chance. Otherwise Al Smith would win the nomination.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Holy Bible
The average human can expect to live more than two billion seconds, but there are only a few moments when everything can change at once.
“End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World” by Bryan Walsh
“This book is for a boy who was born in Berlin during the last months of the war.”
Cornelius Ryan, The Last Battle (Simon and Schuster, 1966)
The rest of the paragraph reads:
“His name was Peter Fechter. In 1962, he was machine-gunned by his own people and left to bleed to death by the side of the most tragic memorial to the Allied victory—the Berlin Wall.”
“It is to you, dear Mother, to you who are doubly my Mother, that I come to confide the story of my soul.”
Story of a Soul, by St. Therese of Lisieux
In the hospital of the orphanage-the boys’s division at St. Cloud’s, Maine-two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision. se
The Cider House Rules by John Irving
(Not many books have “penises” in the first line)
At one minute out, the Black Hawk crew chief slid the door open.
No Easy Day – Mark Owen and Kevin Maurer
“I’ll never get used to it!”
Pauline, by Margaret Storey
“Sing in me, O Muse, of all things Greek that excite the imagination and delight the senses and magnify the lives of mortals, things that have survived three thousand years and more, since the time before the time of Homer, things that were old then and are new now–you know, the eternal.”
Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, by Mary Norris
“The wizard Heald coupled with a poor woman once, in the king’s city of Mondor, and she bore a son with one green eye and one black eye.”
– The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia McKillip
“The Soviet system took shape under the impact of not one revolution but of two.”
Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941. Robert C Tucker (WW Norton & Company, Inc; 1990).
“When I was seven, I found a door.”
-The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix Harrow
On the 15th of September 1840, at six o’clock in the morning, the *Ville-de Montereau * was lying alongside the Quai Saint-bernard, ready to sail, with clouds of smoke coming from its funnel.
- Sentimantal Education *
Gastave Flaubert
“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance.”
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)
“In writing forewords to my mystery stories, I have from time to time stressed the importance of legal medicine.”
The Case of the Demure Defendant, by Erle Stanley Gardner
“Marriage was once represented as a field of battle rather than a bed of roses, and perhaps there are some who may still support this view; but just as Dr. Maturin had made a far more unsuitable match than most, so he set about dealing with the situation in a far more compendious, peaceable and efficacious way than the great majority of husbands.”
The Ionian Mission by Patrick O’Brian (1981)