Hal Johnson's Blog, page 28
September 17, 2023
A garland of quotations XXXIII
Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in some trifling or some enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found necessary to the strongest.
•Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
It was a quick-witted school, and knew how to turn quotations and allusions. Much of its art, like the art of the Euphues, is bestowed on making pedantry look attract...
September 10, 2023
A garland of quotations XXXII
What is the greatest question in the world? The greatest question is that of getting food to eat.
•Mao Zedong, The Hsiang River Review #1 (1919).
The economic problem, the struggle for subsistence, always has been hitherto the primary, most pressing problem of the human race. If the economic problem is solved, mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose.
•John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” (1930).
There’s no such thing as time.
•Stock answer t...
September 3, 2023
A garland of quotations XXXI
Everything, even lies, advances the truth. Shadows do not blot out the sun.
•Kafka, quoted in Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (1953).
Usefulness: They induce vomiting.
Dangers: They cool the stomach greatly.
Neutralization of Dangers: By vomiting.
•Ibn Butlân on apricots, Tacuinum Sanitatis (C11).
Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal—less for the pleasure of eating someone than the pleasure of vomiting him.
•E.M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born (1973).
As a dog return...
August 27, 2023
A garland of quotations XXX
Or this postmodern novel for 99¢?
I wanted to turn the whole of mankind into an aristocracy of the world. An aristocracy nourished by millions of mechanical slaves.
•Karl Capek, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) (1921).
You get in a fight, you fight in a war, and you figure all the worst of it will be worth it for the one big moment—but that moment as good as it is it's never good enough
•Frank Miller, Sin City (1992).
No lover is anything but disappointed, since the great...
August 25, 2023
Sudden Glory
“Oscar was not sure what to do with his time, so he tried looking to books for advice. He knew that patriotism, according to Emerson, was the last refuge of the scoundrel. He also knew that violence, according to Asimov, was the first refuge of the incompetent. Oscar took out his datebook and wrote ‘violence’ in the morning and ‘patriotism’ in the evening, and figured he’d wing the parts in between.”
My new book, Sudden Glory, drops today, and at a special introductory price of only 99¢ on (God h...
August 20, 2023
A garland of quotations XXIX
After the storm I see again a weasel.
•Hegelochus (408 BC)
You don’t catch a weasel asleep.•Horatio Alger, Only an Irish Boy (1874).
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
•W.B. Yeats, “1919” (1921).
All move in their passage to the same mother-country,
the dirt-clawing weasel, the blank owl or sunning seal.
Faith grows mutinous.
•Derek Wolcott, “The Bounty” (1997).
W...
August 13, 2023
A garland of quotations XXVIII
Impossible Histories new this year!
Apprentice Academy new this month!
The wine we really drink is our own blood.
•Rumi, Divan-Shamsi Tabriz (ca. 1247).
Never smell of wine, lest you hear said of you those words of the philosopher: “This is not offering a kiss but proffering a cup.”
•Jerome, letter 52 (394).
Ques. What is the origin of the history of Bacchus?
Ans. He was probably some prince who taught the people to till the ground, and cultivate the vine. They disgraced his memory in after times by th...
August 6, 2023
A garland of quotations XXVII
Apprentice Academy new this week!
Impossible Histories new this year!
I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.
•W.M. Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1848).
Nor do you acknowledge one another as brethren, unless indeed for the purpose of fratricide.
•Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius (ca. 200).
The bubble winked at me and said,
“You’ll miss me, brother, when you’re dead.”
•Oliver Herford, Overheard in a Garden (1900).
August 1, 2023
Apprentice Academy: Sorcerers, released today from its ancient imprisonment
I don’t want to bother you too much on this beautiful day, but I should mention that today is released my new book, an all-ages extravaganza about everyone’s favorite kind of academy.
It’s beautifully illustrated by Cathrin Peterslund, and, as all children’s books should be, it is both educational (in the sense that it is filled with stories from the world’s myths and legends) and a bad influence (in the sense that our charming narrator is forever drawing the wrong conclusion from said stories).
I...
July 30, 2023
A garland of quotations XXVI
Age hot is like a monster to be seen:
My hairs are white, and yet my sins are green.
•Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606).
It is said that when Augurello applied to him for a reward, the pope, with great ceremony and much apparent kindness and cordiality, drew an empty purse from his pocket, and presented it to the alchymist, saying that since he was able to make gold, the most appropriate present that could be made him, was a purse to put it in.
•Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary...
