iosephvs bibliothecarivs > Recent Status Updates

'Elizabeth, this is the most beautiful vest in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!'

This panel made me laugh out loud at the coffee shop this morning haha

'If he went to church, he explained that it was not "because he believed in it, which he did not, but because it was good for the people to get clean and come together once a week - like discipline in the army."'

'The problem of who was to live at Max Gate apart from ghosts remained.'

A wonderful sentence conveying the truth of the complicated situation at Hardy's house after the death of his first wife and displaying Tomalin's great skill as a popular biographer.

'How long he stood he did not know, but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as an animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground. He stood a long long time, listening to the warm crackle of the flames.'

'[Hardy] was always exceptionally anxious and sensitive about reviews.... He might have spared himself the trouble: the divide between those who disliked his language, his lower-class characters, his troubling women and his gloom, and those who appreciated the beauty and imaginative power of his work, was already there and remained firmly fixed throughout his career as a novelist.'

'In [Richard III], the Lieutenant of the Tower... receives a written directive that he turn over his prisoner... to the two thuggish-looking characters.... [He] knows perfectly well that his prisoner has not received a trial, fair or otherwise, but, handing the keys to the murderers, he asks no questions and offers no protest.... By multiple acts of this kind, taken by respectable people..., tyranny is enabled.'

On Oct 30, 2024, I accidentally left this book in Los Angeles. It was easily replaceable but the Stonehenge bookmark from our first trip to England was not. Thanks to my cousin Summer, both book and bookmark arrived back at my house in Utah on Apr 26, 2025!

"'[Francis of Assisi] shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace.'"

'Why would anyone, [Shakespeare] asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth?'

'It was better to award a light penance that would one day put someone into purgatory to endure further punishment there, than to assign a heavy one that would not be done and might send the defaulter to hell.'

Cahill finally getting to his thesis:

'While Rome and its ancient empire faded from memory and a new, illiterate Europe rose on its ruins, a vibrant, literary culture was blooming in secret along its Celtic fringe.'

'So Patrick was really a first - the first missionary to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law. The step he took was in its way as bold as Columbus's, and a thousand times more humane.'

One fifth read and the Irish have barely been mentioned. It's interesting information but not what I opened the book for. Too much background for a popular history of only 250 pages.

Also, what's with the fictional homophobic sentiment on page 44? A quote would have been understandable but to invent one was unnecessary.

'The fact that all were at rest after the working week in a spiritual and social environment may ... have been a source of comfort.'

'True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force - tension, confusion, or war; it is the presence of some positive force - justice, good will, and brotherhood.'

'By the eleventh century... the church congregation formed a similar grouping to that of its members' everyday lives. One often began, continued, and ended one's spiritual life in the local church. One went there with one's neighbors. Most churches would grow in size in later times, but the essential parish church community had now been created.'

'[Hardy] could no longer believe, but he cherished the memory of belief, and especially the centrality and beauty of Christian ritual in country life, and what it had meant to earlier generations and still meant to some.'

'[Hardy] went several times to hear Dickens read... and to hear John Stuart Mill speak on the hustings, and to the House of Commons to listen to Lord Palmerston. When Palmerston died, he got tickets for the funeral in Westminster Abbey, very conscious of the fact that the great man had stood in the House with Pitt, Fox, Sheridan and Burke. It was the personal link always that stirred Hardy's interest in history.'

Prologue p. xxii-xxiii: 'There is rising excitement in the writing as of someone making discoveries. He has found the most perfect subject he has ever had, and he has the skills to work on it.' 3/3