Sedulia's Quotations

Radclyffe Hall: The enormous courage of trees

In July came the Allied counter-offensive, and now in her moment of approaching triumph France knew to the full her great desolation, as it lay revealed by the retreating armies. For not only had there been a holocaust of homesteads, but the country was strewn with murdered trees, cut down in their hour of most perfect leafing; orchards struck to the ground, an orgy of destruction, as the mighty forces rolled back like a tide, to recoil on themselves-- incredulous, amazed, maddened by the outrage of coming disaster. For mad they must surely have been, since no man is a more faithful lover of trees than the German.

 

Stephen as she drove through that devastated country would find herself thinking of Martin Hallam-- Martin who had touched the old thorns on the hills with such respectful and pitiful fingers: "Have you ever thought about the enormous courage of trees? I have and it seems to me amazing. The Lord dumps them down and they've just got to stick it, no matter what happens-- that must need some courage." Martin had believed in a heaven for trees, a forest heaven for all the faithful; and looking at those pitiful, leafy corpses, Stephen would want to believe in that heaven.

 

 

           --Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943), The Well of Loneliness (1928)

Karle Wilson Baker: Let me grow lovely, growing old

Let me grow lovely, growing old--

so many fine things do; 

laces, and ivory, and gold, 

and silks need not be new;

and there is healing in old trees,

old streets a glamour hold;

why may not I, as well as these,

grow lovely, growing old?

   --Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960)

Carl Hiaasen: The Seminoles never surrendered

From 1835 to 1842, the United States government for the second time directed its military might against a small band of Indians settled in the wilderness of Florida. During those years the Seminoles were pursued by almost every regiment of the regular army, and more than fifty thousand volunteers and militiamen. By the time it was over, the Second Seminole War had cost the United States an estimated thirty million dollars, a mountainous sum in that era, and more than three thousand lives.

The toll was all the more astounding because, at the peak of its strength, the Seminole tribe had no more than a thousand warriors.

Absurdly outnumbered, braves would lure the white infantry deep into the boggy swamps and pine barrens, then attack in lightning flurries. The strategy proved effective at first, but in the end the Indians were overrun. Their home camps were razed, hundreds of families were wiped out and nearly four thousand tribal members were deported to Indian Country, the bleak plains of Oklahoma. Nevertheless, the small number of Seminoles who remained in Florida refused to surrender, and to this day their descendants have never signed a peace treaty with Washington, D.C.

    --Carl Hiaasen (1953- ) in Nature Girl

Manzoni: The most careful and innocent behavior is not enough to keep troubles away

"I have learned," [Renzo] said, "not to get involved in riots; I have learned not to preach in the square; I have learned to watch whom I speak with; I've learned not to drink too much; I've learned not to lift the doorknocker when there are people inside with hot heads; I've learned not to kick a doorbell before thinking what could happen;  and a hundred other things."

But Lucia, although she did not find this doctrine wrong in itself, was not satisfied; it seemed to her, although confusedly, as if something were missing. After hearing the same song repeated, and wondering every time-- "And I?" -- she said one day to her moralist, "What do you think we have learned? I did not go looking for trouble; it's trouble that came for me. Unless I mean," she added, smiling softly, "that my mistake was to love you, and promise myself to you."

After a long debate and thinking it over together, they concluded that troubles come rather often, because there are causes for them; but that the most careful and innocent behavior was not enough to keep them far away; and that when they come, with or without fault, the faith in God makes them easier to bear, and makes them useful for a better life. This conclusion, although found by poor people, seems so fair that we have decided to put it here, as the juice of the the entire story.

     --Renzo and Lucia, the hero and heroine, after going through many perils and hardships, at the end of The Betrothed [I Promessi Sposi] by Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873)

Ho imparato, - diceva, - a non mettermi ne' tumulti: ho imparato a non predicare in piazza: ho imparato a guardare con chi parlo: ho imparato a non alzar troppo il gomito: ho imparato a non tenere in mano il martello delle porte, quando c'è lì d'intorno gente che ha la testa calda: ho imparato a non attaccarmi un campanello al piede, prima d'aver pensato quel che possa nascere -. E cent'altre cose.

Lucia però, non che trovasse la dottrina falsa in sé, ma non n'era soddisfatta; le pareva, così in confuso, che ci mancasse qualcosa. A forza di sentir ripetere la stessa canzone, e di pensarci sopra ogni volta, - e io, - disse un giorno al suo moralista, - cosa volete che abbia imparato? Io non sono andata a cercare i guai: son loro che sono venuti a cercar me. Quando non voleste dire, - aggiunse, soavemente sorridendo, - che il mio sproposito sia stato quello di volervi bene, e di promettermi a voi.

Dopo un lungo dibattere e cercare insieme, conclusero che i guai vengono bensì spesso, perché ci si è dato cagione; ma che la condotta più cauta e più innocente non basta a tenerli lontani; e che quando vengono, o per colpa o senza colpa, la fiducia in Dio li raddolcisce, e li rende utili per una vita migliore. Questa conclusione, benché trovata da povera gente, c'è parsa così giusta, che abbiam pensato di metterla qui, come il sugo di tutta la storia.

Li Shimin: When you use antiquity as a mirror, you can see prosperity and decline

When you use bronze as a mirror,  you can straighten your clothes and hat. When you use antiquity as a mirror, you can see the waxing and waning. When you use a person as a mirror, you can know if you grasp things or not. Wei Zheng is gone;  I have lost my mirror.

     --Li Shimin 李世民, who became Tang dynasty emperor Taizong 唐太宗 (599-649), about his minister Wei Zheng 魏徵 (580-643). Tang Taizong is considered among the greatest rulers in Chinese history.

人以銅為鏡，可以正衣冠，以古為鏡，可以見興替，以人為鏡，可以知得失。魏徵沒，朕亡一鏡矣。

De Quincey: Children look with more searching gaze than adults

Into all the elementary feelings of man, children look with more searching gaze than adults.

  --Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) in Suspiria de Profundis (1845)

Joe Mozingo: The Wiers start over in their eighties

POWAY, CALIF. -- The 88-year-old man sits on a bench and lights a cracked briar pipe. He looks out at the black void and sighs.

The firestorm three months ago killed most of the sound here. No birds warble, no leaves flutter, no coyotes yelp in the night. The giant, tilted slabs of granite on the ridge peer like statues down on a moldering pyre.

Jerome "Joe" Wier comes up here most days in his little Chevy pickup and secondhand clothes. He sits for hours under a scraggly tree, staring up at the boulders -- and at the place where his house once stood.

A neighbor across the gully has seen him crying. He denies it.

He built the house with his own hands. When the fire took it, Wier and his wife, Marion, lost every possession they had collected over 58 years of marriage. They lost every photo of their family, the bundle of letters that Joe sent her while he was in the Navy, the leather-bound journal Marion scribbled her thoughts in for the last quarter century. They lost all their clothes, keepsakes, records, medications -- even Joe's hearing aid and dentures.

And they lost this bit of wilderness that fed the life in themselves.

"Remember the hummingbirds we had here, Joe?" Marion asks, looking out at the canyon. "Oh, sure, nature will rejuvenate itself in a few years. But we don't have a few years, Joe. That's the sad part."

     --Joe Mozingo in the Los Angeles Times, 23 January 2008

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.

Zbigniew Herbert: Advice to a reluctant hero. (Real title: Message to Mr Cogito)

The Message of Mr Cogito

Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize

go upright among those who are on their knees
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust

you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony

be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important

and let your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten

let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards - they will win
they will go to your funeral with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography

and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

beware however of unnecessary pride
keep looking at your clown's face in the mirror
repeat: I was called - weren't there better ones than I

beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak
light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don't need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you

be vigilant - when the light on the mountains gives the sign- arise and go
as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star

repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends
because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand

and they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap

go because only in this way you will be admitted to the company of cold skulls
to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes

Be faithful Go

        --Zbigniew Herbert (Polish, 1924-1998), Polish. Translated by Peter Dale Scott (Canadian, 1929-) and Czeslaw Milosz (Polish, born in Lithuania, 1911-2004).

Przesłanie Pana Cogito

Idź dokąd poszli tamci do ciemnego kresu
po złote runo nicości twoją ostatnią nagrodę
idź wyprostowany wśród tych co na kolanach
wśród odwróconych plecami i obalonych w proch
ocalałeś nie po to aby żyć
masz mało czasu trzeba dać świadectwo
bądź odważny gdy rozum zawodzi bądź odważny
w ostatecznym rachunku jedynie to się liczy
a Gniew twój bezsilny niech będzie jak morze
ilekroć usłyszysz głos poniżonych i bitych
niech nie opuszcza ciebie twoja siostra Pogarda
dla szpiclów katów tchórzy - oni wygrają
pójdą na twój pogrzeb i z ulgą rzucą grudę
a kornik napisze twój uładzony życiorys
i nie przebaczaj zaiste nie w twojej mocy
przebaczać w imieniu tych których zdradzono o świcie
strzeż się jednak dumy niepotrzebnej
oglądaj w lustrze swą błazeńską twarz
powtarzaj: zostałem powołany - czyż nie było lepszych
strzeż się oschłości serca kochaj źródło zaranne
ptaka o nieznanym imieniu dąb zimowy
światło na murze splendor nieba
one nie potrzebują twego ciepłego oddechu
są po to aby mówić: nikt cię nie pocieszy
czuwaj - kiedy światło na górach daje znak - wstań i idź
dopóki krew obraca w piersi twoją ciemną gwiazdę
powtarzaj stare zaklęcia ludzkości bajki i legendy
bo tak zdobędziesz dobro którego nie zdobędziesz
powtarzaj wielkie słowa powtarzaj je z uporem
jak ci co szli przez pustynię i ginęli w piasku
a nagrodzą cię za to tym co mają pod ręką
chłostą śmiechu zabójstwem na śmietniku
idź bo tylko tak będziesz przyjęty do grona zimnych czaszek
do grona twoich przodków: Gilgamesza Hektora Rolanda
obrońców królestwa bez kresu i miasta popiołów
Bądź wierny Idź

Blackstone: The man who bases his conduct on the law

The man who bases his conduct on the law is neither an honest man nor a good citizen.

        --William Blackstone (1723-1780), quoted by Clarence Darrow