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You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren’t joke about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.
Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June. He doesn’t know who is here nor care.
Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.
Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful.
Our national epic has yet to be written,
—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious. They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness.
—O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots?
Music hath charms. Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be. Wisdom while you wait.
Empty vessels make most noise.
Beauty of music you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look.
Ireland comes now. My country above the king.
—Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein amhain! The friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before us.
—Well, they’re still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that matter so are we.
Gob, there’s many a true word spoken in jest.
Jesus, there’s always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing.
And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God. —He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead. —Whose God? says the citizen. —Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me.
In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions.
