Sedulia's Quotations

D.H. Lawrence on the essential American soul

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.

     --D.H. Lawrence in Studies in Classic American Literature, ch 5

James W. Foley: A pebble in the water...no way of telling where the end is going to be

Just a pebble in the water; just a splash and it is gone;
but there's half-a-hundred ripples circling on and on,
spreading, spreading, from the center, flowing on out to the sea
and there's no way of telling where the end is going to be....

--An unattributed quotation found in the chapbook of U.S. Army nurse Frances Slanger, who was killed in Belgium in October, 1944 by German artillery fire. From the book American Nightingale by Bob Welch.

Update: The quotation is by James W. Foley (1874-1939). You can read the whole poem here.

Münster swan jilts swanboat

A female black swan in the German city of Münster, who became famous for her "well-known tragic liaison" with a swan-boat for the past two years, has now fallen in love with a white mute swan.

"'And of course the swan-boat is the last to find out,' stated zoo boss Adler soberly, adding, 'It's almost painful.'"

Dorothy Draper's family Christmas: "How simple it all was and how charming"

In our own family calendar a star marks the Christmas dinner parties that until last year my mother and father used to have regularly for all the members of our rather big family....They can never happen any more now that my father has gone....

The evening began at the front door...opened by old Hunt, the butler. Hunt had served my family off and on for more than fifty years....

There was Annie, the old waitress, with her black dress and white organdy apron and high fluted cap. There was the white colonial dining room with... the three Gilbert Stewart portraits on the walls and the old silver tankard which George Washington gave my great-grandfather, Oliver Wolcott-- and there was my father, courtly and gracious and happy at his end of the table, seated under the portrait of his father. I can see him now, as dinner progressed, smiling down the length of the table at my mother.

The table itself, with the heavy white damask tablecloth which had belonged to my mother's grandmother and which had woven in it the design of her house on the Hudson-- the tall rococo candelabras....

Phil Thompson always proposed a toast which we drank to our one-eyed laundress, "Old Mrs Smith," who made the plum puddings, and good they were with their lighted brandy sauce! And then my father, looking so adorable in his immaculate evening clothes, would rise and make a speech of welcome to us all....

How simple it all was and how charming.

   --Dorothy Draper (1889-1969), Entertaining Is Fun! (1941)

John Hawks: Ten thousand years ago, no one on planet Earth had blue eyes.

Ten thousand years ago, no one on planet Earth had blue eyes.

--Anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, discussing recent findings that imply that human evolution has been rapid within the past 10,000 years. From an article by David Biello in Scientific American, December 10, 2007

P.G. Wodehouse: ...the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

     --Opening of The Luck of the Bodkins, by P.G. Wodehouse

Pledge of the U.S. Army Nurse, World War II

As an Army nurse I accept the responsibilities of an officer in the Army Nurse Corps.

I shall give faithful care to the men who fight for the freedom of this Country and to the women who stand behind them.

I shall bring to the American soldier, wherever he may be, the best of my knowledge and professional skill.

I shall approach him cheerfully at all times, under any conditions I may find.

I shall endeavor to maintain the highest nursing standards possible in the performance of my duties.

I shall appear fearless in the presence of danger and quiet the fears of others to the best of my ability.

My only criticism shall be constructive. The reputation and good name of the Army Nurse Corps and of the nursing profession shall be uppermost in my thoughts, second only to the care of my patients.

I shall endeavor to be a credit to my country and to the uniform I wear.

   --Cited in Men Without Guns: The Story of Army Medicine (1946) by DeWitt MacKenzie and  Clarence Worden

John Leo: Deliberate single parenthood compared to building a Yugo

[In a 1996 panel discussion on "Reframing Family Values" at the Woodrow Wilson Center]

When my turn came, I attempted a few chart-free comments: To bolster the family, we  certainly have to come to terms...with '60s values, particularly the core value that self-fulfillment is a trump card over all obligations and expectations. By breaking the taboos against unwed motherhood and casual divorce, we have created the world's most dangerous environment for children... 

...Much umbrage was taken at my comments. In closing the panel, the co-moderator, a well-known economist, said that a woman's right to have a baby without having the father around is what feminism is all about. In shaking her hand afterward, I remarked, perhaps a bit ungraciously, that intentionally planning to have a fatherless family was like setting out intentionally to build a Yugo.

     --John Leo in U.S. News and World Report, 5 February 1996

Jimmy Stewart's Oscar

When [Jimmy Stewart] won the Best Actor Oscar for "The Philadelphia Story," he remembers, "It was 3:45 [a.m.] when I got home and the phone rang. It was my father: 'I hear on the radio they gave you a prize or something. What is it, a plaque or a statue?' I told him it was a sort of statue. He said, 'Well, send it home to me and I'll put it in the hardware store window.' [His father ran a hardware store in Indiana, Pennsylvania.] So the next day, I got it, packed it up, and sent it. It was there for 20 years."

    --John Meroney in the Wall Street Journal, 20 May 1997

What to say to the movie director after the screening

Q:...Last week, I went to a screening for an independent movie. The director was there, and right afterward, he cornered a few of us to see what we thought. He was really aggressive. I thought the film was pretty weak and predictable and said something vague about the costumes and production design. He glared at me. What do you say to a director if you see his movie and think it's lame? Should I have been more positive and lied? --M.F., Hollywood Hills

Dear M.F., Lied? We don't call it that here in Hollywood. We prefer the term "stunt talk." And if you simply can't muster up the grace to gild your adjectives, you should pack up your earnestness and move back to Idaho. Hollywood is no place for a person whose sincerity can't roll over and play dead once in a while.

Directors are as touchy as new moms with postpartum depression. After making a film, they are needy, exhausted and slightly deranged from being in labor for almost two years....

What would you do if you leaned into a baby carriage and saw an infant shaped like a cantaloupe with no discernible chin?

"You say, 'Wow! That child is so alert!'" says one studio exec, who declined to go on the record for this column....

    --Monica Corcoran as The Mannerist, manners column in the Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2007