Rob Baker > Recent Status Updates

"..a sonnet is a little song
to hold a thing that otherwise cannot
be held: a lonely thing: a death: a bear" (28).

from "Tender", Sophie Klahr

I did not know that the franchising of Brown's Chicken and the founding of Portillo's were so closely linked (or that the two businesses/families were connected at all, for that matter).

"Bathsheba was momentarily relieved of that wayward heaviness of the past twenty-four hours which had quenced the vitality of youth in her without substituting the philosophy of maturer years..." (308).

Of course, you'll have a drop. A man's twice the man afterwards. You feel so warm and glorious, and you whop and slap at your work without any trouble, and everything goes on like sticks a-breaking.

Too much liquor is bad and leads us to that horned man in the smoky house; but after all many people haven't the gift of enjoying a wet, and since we be highly favoured with a power that way, we should make the most o't.

"To one who knew the man and his story there was something more striking in this immobility than in a collapse.

The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry" (236).

"We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man; but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek.

Where there is much bias there must be some narrowness, and love, though added emotion, is subtracted capacity" (227).

"She walked nearly two miles of her journey, watching how the day was retreating, and thinking how the time of deeds was quietly melting into the time of thought, to give place in its turn to the time of prayer and sleep..." (202).

Her culpability lay in her making no attempt to control feeling by subtle and careful inquiry into consequences. She could show others the steep and thorny way, but reck'd not her own rede.

Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface, thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.

"Never did a fragile tailless sentence convey a more perfect meaning. The careless sergeant smiled within himself, and probably too the devil smiled from a loop-hole in Tophet, for the moment was the turning point of a career.

Her tone and mien signified beyond mistake that the seed which was to lift the foundation had taken root in the chink: the remainder was a mere question of time and natural changes" (177).

"The maltster's lack of teeth appeared not to sensibly diminish his powers as a mill. He had been without them for so many years that toothlessness was felt less to be a defect than hard gums an acquisition.

Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a straight line--less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubltful if he would ever reach it at all" (115).

"'Young Cain Ball is a very good lad.'

'How did Cain come by such a name?' asked Bathsheba.

"Oh you see, mem, his pore mother, not being a Scripture-read woman, made a mistake at his christening, thinking 'twas Abel killed Cain, and called en Cain, meaning Abel all the time.

The parson put it right, but 'twas too late, for the name could never be got rid of in the parish. "Tis very unfortunate for the boy'" (94).

The poor feller were faithful and true enough to in his wish, but his heart would rove, do what he could.

I believe he cured it by making her take off her wedding-ring and calling her by her maiden name, and so 'a would get to fancy she was only his sweetheart, and not married to him at all.

And as soon as he could thoroughly fancy he was doing wrong and committing the seventh, 'a got to liker her as well as ever.

"'And here's a mouthful of bread and bacon that mis'ess have sent, shepherd...Don't ye chaw quite close, shepherd, for I let the bacon fall in the road outside as I was bringing it along, and may be 'tis rather gritty...'

'Don't let your teeh quite meet, and you won't feel the sandiness at all. Ah! 'tis wonderful what acan be done by contrivance'" (73).

"He had passed through an ordeal of wretchedness which had given him more than it had taken away.

There was left to him a dignified calm he had never bfore known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of sublimity when it does not.

And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain" (57).

"Can you get me a lodging?" inquired Gabriel.

"That I can't, indeed," he said, moving past Gabriel as a Christian edges past an offertory-plate when he does not mean to contribute" (67).

"It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance ofusing it" (58).

Should finish this today! The last twenty pages or so are end notes, etc.