Book Reviews VIII: Eliot, Woolf
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Adam Bede by George Eliot
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
The Mill on the FLoss
By George Eliot
1A. Mary Ann (Marian) Evans, was encouraged to turn from philosophy and journalism to fiction and she subsequently wrote, under the name of George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda.
1. “The gentleman, a gentleman rather highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, spoke of such acquaintances kindly.”
2. Holy Living and Dying by Jeremy Taylor is a book that is discussed.
3. Of one character writes, “He’s a quiet man — not showy, not noisy.”
4. “If you deliver an opinion, do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge.”
1. Uncle Pullet “kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint drops about his person, and when at a loss for conversation, would say, “Do you like peppermints my friend?”
2. There is one character in the novel who became fascinated by a renaissance painting that uncle Pullet had bought.
3. “We’ll see about it,” was the answer uncle Pullet always gave, “carefully abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable number of minutes had passed.”
1. “The contents of the kettle — a stew of meat and potatoes — which had been taken off the fire..." This is a good quote because it suggests that some modern-day "soups" with meat and potatoes should be viewed as stews.
2. "He had noticed remarkable coincidences between these zoological phenomena and the great events of that time, as, for example, that before the burning of the York Minister Bridge there had been mysterious serpentine marks on the leaves of the rose-trees which he had puzzled to know the meaning of."
3. "She took down Baxter's Saint's Everlasting Rest. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open before her on special occasions."
4. In Baxter's book, one of the things that he does is encourage readers, in anticipation of eternal rest, not to become distracted or discouraged by the temporal as he refocuses their minds on the eternal.
5. One character, "found the relation between spoken and written language one of the most puzzling things in this world."
1. Of one character writes, “he had an air of self-confidence inclining to brazenness.”
2. Suggests that you can develop your powers through the medium of Latin and Greek grammar with the application of some sternness.
3. Suggests that one’s knowledge can be “applicable to the everyday affairs of life.”
4. Suggests that teaching comes natural to some people.
5. Suggests that it is impressive to see educated people.
6. Suggests that the Swiss take pride in the beauty of the scenery around them, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors.
7. Encourages abstract thought such as the relation between cases and terminations.
8. "I can’t think why anyone should want to learn Latin,” said Tom. “It’s part of the education of a gentleman,” said Philip. "All gentlemen learn the same things."
9. Suggests that it would be impressive to say just a few lines about each book you’ve read.
10. Suggests that there are no uninteresting or unintelligible ideas.
11. Suggests that there should not be a “rush of projects” in one’s brain.
12. Suggests that one can be “hungry for knowledge.”
1. “Maggie’s mother had become much agitated by the news that her husband wasn’t quite himself again.”
2. “He was in a great way of business, and he had risen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Tom’s ambition.”
3. The grocer said, “I thought I knew his features. He takes after his mother’s family. He’s a fine, straight youth.”
4. He said, “that’s true: but people don’t get much money at anything, my boy, when they’re only sixteen.”
5. "If you're to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the world's made of."
6. "...another had gone to be identified as hers in the hateful publicity of the Golden Lion."
7. "Quite blinded to the presence of Bob, who was looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an intelligent dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his comprehension."
8. "'Now, don't you be up to any tricks Bob,' said Tom, 'else you'll get transported some day.'"
9. "Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful distant hope which kept count of moments within the chamber: but it was measured for them by a fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly."
10. "It is still possible to believe that the attorney was not more guilty towards him, than an ingenious machine is guilty towards the man who is caught up by it."
11. Some books that are discussed include, Virgil, Aldrich’s Logic, and Euclid.
12. Additional books include The Economy of Human Life (Translated from an Indian Manuscript,) by Robert Dodsley, Rasselas' History, and The Christian Year, by Keble.
13. "Both above and below, which way soever dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross: and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.”
14. "Why dost thou here gaze above, since this is not the place of thy rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to be looked on as they forward thy journey thither.”
15. “Here was insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within her own soul.”
16. “And Maggie’s graces of mind and body fed his gloom. He sat patiently enough while she read him a chapter, or said something about trouble being turned into a blessing.”
17. “It was far on in June now, and Maggie was inclined to lengthen the daily walk which was one of her indulgence; but this day, she satisfied her need of the open air by sitting out of doors.”
1. Suggests that youth and health are blessings.
2. An element of life on the banks of the Floss is that "it is a sordid life, irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no active, self-renouncing faith... You could not live amongst such people; you are stifled for want of an oulet towards something beautiful, great, or noble."
3. "Maggie was calmly enjoying the free air, while she looked up at the old fir-trees and thought that those broken ends of branches were the records of past storms which had only made the red stems soar higher."
4. "While her eyes were still turned upward, she became conscious of a moving shadow cast by the evening sun on the grassy path before her, and looked down to see Wakem."
5. Philip says, "You are very much more beautiful than I thought you would be."
"Am I?" said Maggie.
6. "Often when I have been frustrated," said Maggie, "I have gone on thinking till it has seemed to me that I could think away all my duty."
7. "Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure."
8. "'Nay, nay,' said Mr. Glegg, soothingly."
9. Omitted.
10. "I have found great peace in that for the last two or three years..."
11. "I am not resigned: I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson."
12. Suggests that it is good to inhabit the earth peacefully with one another.
13. “Love gives insight.”
14. “If we only look far enough off for the consequences of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results…”
15. “But there was surplus in him that made him half independent of justifying motives.”
16. “…as we look at a first parting in the clouds, that promises us a bright heaven once more.”
17. “And now this comes upon me strongly again that it will lead to evil.”
18. Suggests that one should have knowledge of music.
19. Maggie says, “if we use common words often, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning.”
20. “Of course Maggie wished to know what these alarmingly learned books were, and as it is always pleasant to improve the minds of people by talking to them…”
21. The novel discusses Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatises.
21A. Buckland writes that the terrestrial world and the cosmos were created by God. He goes on to explain that it is the moral nature of man that is often examined.
22. Suggests that you try different subjects.
23. Many of Robert Southey’s works are discussed in the novel.
24. “…he was rewarded as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors and she an alumnus.”
25. “Presently, the rhythmic movement of the oars attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row.”
26. Omitted.
27. “The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and made her inclined to take the lesson merrily.”
28. “She felt the presence of a world of love and beauty and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all the poetry and romance she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries.”
29. “Her mind glanced back once or twice to a time when she had courted privation, when she had thought all longing gone.”
1. “You really have enjoyed the music tonight, haven’t you, Maggie?”
2. “I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood.”
3. "You may think that I am unable to keep my resolutions - but at least you ought not treat me with contempt."
4. Suggests that we reflect on everything.
5. "'This was very good and virtuous of you,' she said, in her pretty treble, like the low conversational notes of little birds."
6. "She was touched not thrilled by the song: it suggested distinct memories and thoughts, and brought quiet regret in the place of excitement."
7. "He had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling that does not find relief in music."
8. "In return for all the help you've given me, I'm giving you this."
9. "He went up to his painting room again, looking round, till he fell into a doze..."
10. “To men of Mr. Deane’s stamp, what goes on among the young people is as extraneous as what goes on among the birds and butterflies - until it can be shown to have a malign bearing on monetary affairs.”
11. “‘How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights among them,’ said Maggie in a low voice. ‘They look as if they belonged to an enchanted land, and would never fade away - I could fancy they were all made of jewels.’"
12. "A great tear fell from her lowered eyelids.”
1. “Maggie sat near the table - doing nothing, however, but listening abstractedly to the music.”
2. “The breath of the unwearied day, the fragmentary song of a passing bird heard now and then, what else could there be in their minds for the first hour?”
3. Briefly discusses "the gift of life."
4. “The rains had been so continuous. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of weather brought about the great floods, which swept the bridge away.”
5. "Life can have a moral end, a high religion, which includes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love towards the individual men and women who come across our path.”
Middlemarch
By George Eliot
1. “[She] had strange whims of fasting… and of sitting up at night to read old theological books.”
2. “We must have thought; else we shall be landed back in the dark ages.”
3. The lands of antiquity lay in humans’ souls.
4. Discusses the stone houses typical of early English architecture.
5. He had declined to fix on any more precise destination than the entire area of Europe."
6. “I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing me to a skeleton.”
1. “She was admitted to Mrs. Lemon’s school, the chief school in the county, where teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female — even to extras, such as getting in and out of a carriage."
2. I learned the origin of the phrase "Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth."
3. “A dead historian, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, glories in his digressions as the least imitable part of his work..."
4. In a previous chapter mentions that one should find his place in the universe.
5. “A man may be puffed up and belauded, envied, ridiculed, admired, and yet remain virtually unknown."
1. “I do not think that all the universe is focused on the obscure significance of your existence.”
2. “This woman whom you have just seen: how would you paint her voice?”
3. “…where she could feel alone with the earth and sky, away from the oppressive masquerade of ages.”
4. “Her husband’s way of commenting on the strangely impressive objects around them had begun to affect her.”
5. “Among the sights of Europe, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking.”
1. “Will you not write the book which will make your vast knowledge useful to the world?”
2. “I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than to have read it as an enigma.”
3. Suggests that some occupations call forth more intellectual strain than others.
4. I learned that one thing which doctors want to see is that their patients are doing good.
5. One of the characters valued her independence.
6. “The meaning we attach to words depends on our feeling.”
7. One book that is discussed is Klopstock’s Messiah.
8. It is easy to learn Greek if you first learn the vowels and then learn the consonants.
9. Her eyes turned up with excitement at the idea that she was taking a trip to the country.
10. “I always think that must be a light study. Get her to read light things…”
11. There is one character in the novel who “took his time about everything.”
12. “…who for some reason seemed more inclined to ruminate than to speak.”
13. One character had “a great deal to tell about old times.”
14. “His talk is just as good about all subjects: original, simple, clear.”
1. “The youth have always a claim on the old to help them forward.”
2. “On that point, we differ.”
3. “They said of old that the soul had human shape, But smaller, subtler than the fleshy self.”
4. “Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable.”
5. “There are things which husband and wife must think of together.”
6. “You have not made my life pleasant to me of late.”
7. Writes that the concept of fate implies that we are not here by mistake, but rather are here for some purpose.
Adam Bede
By George Eliot
Chapter 1
1. Describes Egypt as a land of mysteries.
2. Describes the afternoon sun where a scent of pinewood from a tent like pile of planks mingled with the scent of the elder bushes.
3. Introduces us to the village carpenter Adam Bede, a tall, muscular workman. Bede was a Saxon, with a mixture of Celtic blood.
4. “The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an expression of good-humored honest intelligence.”
5. The next workman is Adam’s brother, Seth, who aside from slight differences, resembles Bede. Still, it is clear that Adam is the hero here.
6. There is another workman present, Jim Salt, known as Sandy Jim, and, while working, the men joke kindly with one another.
7. A fourth workman is also present, Wiry Ben.
8. The men briefly discuss religion, and the Bible, and one of the Adam mentions that "God put his spirit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand.”
9. Sandy Jim thanks Adam for his wise speech, and says that that’s the best sermon he’s heard in a while.
10. Mentions that many a preacher has turned an idle fellow into an industrious one.
11. In the village, “the inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine.”
12. Two men speak admirably about meeting Adam Bede, and one of the men says, “we want such fellows as he to lick the French.”
13. Eliot describes the setting, landscape that resembles North America.
14. “He would have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond the pasture and green cornfields and walnut-trees; but apparently there was more interest for him in the living groups close at hand."
15. Of the benches and a few chairs that had been placed about a maple tree, “some of the Methodists were resting on these, with their eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to continue standing..."
16. One of the women says, “that man of God was Mr Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our blessed Lord did—preaching the Gospel to the poor—and he entered into his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after, but I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one thing he told us in his sermon."
17. “Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, and what he came down for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages, haven’t been to school much, nor read books, and we don’t know much about anything but what happens to us.”
18. Goes on to suggest that we learn more about God.
19. “We know very well that we are altogether in the hands of God: we didn’t bring ourselves into the world, we can’t keep ourselves alive while we’re sleeping, the daylight, and the wind, and the corn, everything we have comes from God.”
20. “Jesus cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to feed the hungry; and he comforted those who had lost their friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for their sins.”
21. “Ah! Wouldn’t you love such a man if you saw him—if he was here in this village? What a kind heart he must have! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.”
22. “The simple things she said seemed like novelties, as a melody thrills us with a new feeling when we hear it sung by the pure voice…; the quiet depth of conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the truth of her message.”
23. “She was not preaching as she heard others preach, but speaking directly from her emotions, and under the inspiration of her own simple faith.”
24. Discusses to the people their guilt, the hatefulness of sin, and the sufferings of the Savior by which a way had been opened for their salvation.
25. Of one character mentions that “these religious deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor morals.”
26. “She had a sense that God was very near her, and that Jesus was close by looking at her, though she could not see him.”
27. You experience happiness if you fill your soul with divine peace and love.
28. “…to be sure that all things will come to good; not to mind pain, because it is our Father’s will…because we are sure that whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.”
29. “And when I’ve opened the Bible for direction, I’ve always lighted on some clear word to tell me where my work lay.”
30. “We mustn’t be in a hurry to fix and choose our own lot; we must wait to be guided.”
31. “It’s good to live only a moment at a time...It isn’t for you and me to lay plans; we’ve nothing to do but to obey and to trust."
32. Briefly discusses the love which a man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies. It is like a sense of divine mystery.
33. Seth and Dinah were of a very old-fashioned kind.
34. “…they sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard.”
1. Lisbeth says, “Have a drop of warm broth.”
2. “Lisbeth had a vague sense that there was some comfort and safety in the fact of his piety.”
3. “So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor wandering father, and for those who were sorrowing for him at home.”
4. “Those were dear times, when wheaten bread and fresh meat were delicacies to working people.”
5. “The night was very still, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep.”
6. “Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination…”
7. “Gyp, instead of barking, gave a loud howl.”
8. Discusses telling a story to mimic, versus telling a story based on pure emotions.
9. “Maybe there’s a world about us we can’t see, but the ear’s quicker than the eye, and catches a sound from’t now and then.”
10. “For my part, I think it’s better to see when your perpendicular’s true, than to see a ghost.”
11. “Gyp began to bark uneasily.”
12. In this scene, their breakfast was porridge.
13. Of Lisbeth writes, “her kitchen always looked the height of cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.”
14. As they were playing chess, one of the character’s says, “You’ve not won that game by fair means, now, so don’t pretend it.”
15. “…but it turns a man’s stomach to hear Scripture misused in that way.”
16. “There entered a young man in a riding-dress; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing and hand-shakings.”
17. One of the books discussed is a volume of poems, Lyrical Ballads, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.
18. One character is interested in The Ancient Mariner. “I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story, but it’s a strange, striking thing.”
19. “Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish, and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and to play no small part in the tragedy of life.”
20. “…for his was one of those kind-hearted natures that never know a narrow or grudging thought.”
21. Discusses books by Theocritus and Sophocles, which includes Theocritus.
1. “Whatever you may think of Mr Irwine now, he somehow harmonized extremely well with that peaceful landscape.
2. Of the house writes, “Plenty of life there!”
3. “But there is always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after the rain.”
4. “The great bull-dog sends forth a thunderous bark.”
5. “And, under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices.”
6. “And there’s linen in the house as I could well spare you, for I’ve got lots o’ sheeting and table-clothing, and towelling, as isn’t made up.” Then discusses how it was spun.
7. “No, I’m sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights. But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don’t you?”
8. Reminds us that we are all people, capable of sin.
9. “Adam is like the patriarch Joseph, for his great skill and knowledge, and the kindness he shows to his brother and his parents.”
10. “Why, Mr Irwine wasn’t angry, then? What did he say to you, Dinah? Didn’t he scold you for preaching?”
“No, he was not at all angry; he was very friendly to me.”
11. “They look as if they’d never tasted nothing better than bacon-sword and sour-cake i’ their lives.”
12. “But Thias Bede—God forgive me for saying so—for he’s done little this ten year but make trouble for them as belonged to him.”
13. "Adam had always been made welcome at Hall Farm, especially of a winter evening, when the whole family, in patriarchal fashion, master and mistress, children and servants, were assembled in that glorious kitchen.”
14. “But all this happened nearly sixty years ago, and Hetty was quite uneducated— a simple farmer’s girl.”
15. “Young souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers, are as unsympathetic as butterflies sipping nectar; they are isolated from all appeals by a barrier of dreams.”
16. “His face, unwashed since yesterday, looked pallid and dry; his hair was tossed shaggily about his forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon watching and sorrow.”
17. Gyp’s excitement vented in a sharp bark.
18. “And poor aged fretful Lisbeth, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love.”
19. “When my dear aunt died, I longed for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence that came when she was gone.”
20. “I trust you feel rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day.”
21. Seth says, “Thank you, Dinah; I should like to walk home with you once more.”
22. “He was holding a discussion with himself, and had issued in a distinct practical resolution.”
23. “…though Arthur, for his part, thought girls were not by any means so soft and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found them twice as cool and cunning as he was himself.”
24. One of the books discussed is John Moore's Zeluco, a gothic novel. Works by an author with a similar-sounding name include the gothic tales of Le Fanu, such as The Purcell Papers.
25. “What a space of time those three moments were.”
26. Arthur hurried to the Hermitage, pitched Zeluco into the most distant corner, and putting his hand in his right pocket, first walked four or five times up and down the length of the little room, then seated himself on the ottoman in an uncomfortable way.
27. Suggests that some people admire you more before you’re married.
28. Hetty begins crying, and Eliot writes, “he must have had eyes of Egyptian granite not to look too lovingly in return.”
29. Of Martin Poyser, writes, “no man judged his neighbors more charitably on all personal matters.”
30. “I’m no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the difference atween a crab an’ a apple; but they may wait o’er so long.”
31. When eating dinner says, “you find fault with your meat, and the fault’s all in your own stomach.”
32. “Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don’t know all the intricacies of her syntax yet.”
33. “And for those tiresome children, they had become the very nuisance of her life.”
34. Suggests that a man can only take so much. Quotes Scripture and writes, “she had opened on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had felt bound to open his heart in a last exhortation and warning.”
35. “I want to tell you that if ever you are in trouble, and need a friend that will always feel for you and love you, you have got that friend in Dinah Morris at Snowfield.”
36. “The old man must give up his business some time, and he has no son; I suppose he’ll want a son-in-law who can take to it.”
37. “You’ve had four or five years of experience more than I’ve had, and I think your life has been a better school to you than college has been to me.”
38. Discusses The Four Plays of Aeschylus, by Aeschylus.
39. “Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven’t you got some cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days, Arthur…”
40. “No indeed. It’s well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my speech…”
41. “But I don’t think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to a country gentleman…”
42. “I’ve been reading your friend Arthur Young’s books lately,” about agriculture.
43. One of the characters says, “Sometimes I dream about the sunshine, how the moon rules the tides."
44. “A man may be very firm in other matters, and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.”
1. “It was clear he was not inclined to enter into details.”
2. “With your excellent husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes.”
3. One of the character’s mentions that she delights in Dutch paintings. She finds in them “a source of delicious sympathy of a monotonous homely existence, as contrasted to a life of pomp or of world-stirring actions.”
4. “She then goes on to describe the details of one such painting.”
5. “Therefore let Art remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representation of commonplace things—and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them.”
6. “There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes.”
7. “It’s the same with the notions of religion as it is with mathematics—a man may be able to work problems straight off in his head as he sits by the fire, but if he has to make a machine or build a building, he must have a will and a resolution, and love something else better than his own ease.”
8. Discusses a man who was very knowledgeable about Scripture, but as for mathematics and the nature of things, was quite ignorant.
9. “That shows me there’s deep, spiritual things in religion. You can’t make much out with talking about it, but you feel it.”
10. Suggests that this is a reason to acquire a knowledge of the classics and religion.
11. “I have often heard Mr Gedge, the landlord of the Royal Oak, sum up his opinion of the people in his parish—and they were all the people he knew.”
12. Omitted.
13. Of Old Martin writes, when he couldn’t get to church, he would to read the first three chapters of Genesis.
14. “‘Yes,’ said Mr Poyser, secretly proud of his wife’s superior power of putting two and two together.”
15. “This threat had the desired effect.”
16. The farmers’ wives recommended dandelion tea, and other home made specifics, for illnesses.
17. “About the bad price the grocer was giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to his solvency.”
18. “Ah! There was nothing now but the brown earth under the white thorn.”
19. “The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relation to our own past.”
20. “It was a special occasion; for an old man familiar to all the parish, had died a sad death—not on his bed, a circumstance the most painful to the mind of the peasant.”
21. “Mayhap the best thing I ever did in my life was only doing what was easiest for myself.”
22. To be continued.
23. “Men’s muscles move better when their souls are making merry music…”
24. Suggests that the best time in a summer day is “when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning.”
25. Suggests that sometimes we get discriminated against and treated unfairly due to our lifestyle choices. After all, remember that we are all people.
26. Suggests that we should have some sympathy for our fellow man.
27. “It had cost Adam a great deal of trouble, and work in over-hours, to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his handicraft, and that acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by inborn inherited faculty.”
28. “Adam was by no means a marvelous man… such men make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them.”
29. “Their lives have no discernible echo beyond the neighborhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two generations after them.”
30. When Adam is talking with his mother, he says, “I’ll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we live.”
31. Suggests that sensory pleasures comprise the difference between life and the afterlife.
32. Discusses a reading lesson where, “the letters, he complained, were so ‘uncommon alike, there was no telling them one from another.’”
33. “The amount of knowledge Massey must possess was something so vast that Bill’s mind recoiled before it.”
34. One of the character’s says, “Don’t be so hard on your fellow man.”
35. “The squire’s cute enough, but it takes something else besides ‘cuteness to make folks see what’ll be their interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right and wrong."
36. Suggests that you shouldn’t “turn your nose up at every opportunity.”
37. Suggests that when birds chirp, they do it while perched on a branch.
38. “And Hetty must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman, with a woman’s destiny before her.”
39. “Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman. They go on with the same thing over and over again, and never come to a reasonable end.”
40. “He cared a great deal for the goodwill of these people: he was fond of thinking that they had a hearty, special regard for him.”
41. “And I hope he’ll live to see us old folks, and our children grown to men and women." And this inspired him to do good things in turn. Furthermore, he says, he hopes that they all share in his pleasure about it.
42. “…every sensible man knows how necessary that humble everyday work is.”
43. Suggests that an education influences your actions.
44. “‘Certainly,’ Arthur said, looking round at the apple-cheeked children.”
45. “Ah, I remember hearing about her: but there are no end of people here that I don’t know.”
46. “…had the sense to keep away from such foolery.”
1. “It’s Ben Cranage—Wiry Ben they call him, rather a loose fish, I think.” Wiry Ben’s dancing amuses the people at the fair.
2. “…that they might look on at the dancing, like the kings and queens in the plays.”
3. In Adam’s presence, Hetty drops a locket with beads.
4. “Grand masses of cloud were hurried across the blue sky.”
5. The children were trying to shout to top the wind with their voices.
6. “We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do…”
7. “In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.”
8. “‘I never meant to injure you,’ said Arthur, with returning anger.”
9. The scene that transpires next, as well as previous segments, suggest that this novel influenced John Steinbeck’s works.
10. “When Arthur was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old gardener’s pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man’s dinner, but on learning that fact, he offered compensation.”
11. Suggests that we show forgiveness to others.
12. “Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the filbert trees, and tearing them up in her hand.”
13. Briefly discusses the life and writings of Aristides the Just.
14. “That was a rare impulse in him, as much as the brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters, or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles.”
15. “…uses them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his younger brother.”
16. Of the sense of Divine strength writes, I close my eyes, and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore.”
17. Quotes Scripture in writing, “If any man loves me, let him take up my cross.”
18. Of Mr Poyser writes, “He would rather give up than have a quarrel, any day.”
19. Suggests that it is acceptable occasionally to speak one’s mind.
20. Briefly discusses Aesop's Fables.
21. “…said that Jonathan Burge’s business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree.”
22. “…that she associated the two objects now, and the thought immediately occurred as to Adam’s motives…”
23. "Before she had time to remember any reasons, came a new sense."
24. "...his eager rapid thought had flown through all the causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on the true one."
25. “…she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented and wanted nothing different.”
26. “One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the meadow.”
27. Mentions the story of man’s life upon this world, and how to understand this life.
28. Tells an anecdote, and writes, “All the force of her nature had been concentrated on the one effort…”
29. “…she craved the means of living as long as possible.”
30. Discusses having “the courage for death.”
31. Hetty had a “quiet, resolute air that she had worn all morning.”
32. She was wondering, “if there would be anything worse after death than what she dreaded in life.”
33. “…death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong in her.”
34. Suggests that many people have a calm, quiet air.
35. Questions our thoughts the moment that we die; and suggests that we put our faith in God during these last moments.
36. "...and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that all this happiness was given him--that this life of ours had such sweetness in it."
37. Asks "who is to blame for man's sins?"
38. Describes a certain awe that comes over us in the presence of greatness.
39. “Her youth and other circumstances will be a plea for her.”
40. Discuss a holiday, Lady Day, Feast of the Annunciation.
41. “He has a heart and a conscience…”
42. “In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small fact, our judgment is wrong.”
43. “It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution.”
44. “The problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of his own deed, is one that might well make us tremble to look into it.”
45. “An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under.”
46. Suggests that this concerns the nature of justice.
47. “…made Adam look back on all previous years as if they had been a dim, sleepy existence, and he had only now awaked to full consciousness.”
48. “Arthur felt there was not air enough in the room to satisfy his renovates life, so he threw up the windows.”
49. Mrs Poyser looked, “with love in her eyes but reproof on her tongue.”
50. Discusses The Life of Madam Guyon, by John Wesley.
51. “Adam, as he paused after drawing a line with his ruler…” Apparently Adam was fond of drawing lines with his ruler.
52. When one of the characters laughs, he goes “Hegh, hegh, hegh!”
53. One of the prisoners was moved almost to tears during her trial.
54. Suggests that it is a gift to be able to sleep for many hours a night.
1. “Even the man Moses, the meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes.”
2. The soul’s language, “and the finest language, I believe, is made up of in imposing words, such as “light,” “sound,” “stars,” “music,”—words…that happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful.
3. These words, “stir the long-winding fibers of your memory, and enrich your present with your most precious past.”
3. “I would be going against my conscience if I took it upon me to say what Dinah’s feelings are.”
4. “…all these things made Lisbeth’s earthly paradise.”
5. Suggests that it is rewarding to look at biblical images.
6. “The book Adam most often read on a Sunday morning was his large pictured Bible.”
7. “You would have liked to see Adam reading his Bible: he never opened it on a weekday, and so he came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and poetry.”
8. “One particular morning, Adam was reading the gospel according to St Matthew…”
9. Of one biblical image writes, “This picture had one strong association in Lisbeth’s memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first saw Dinah…”
10. Adam asks his mother, “Why do you say such things, mother, when you’ve got no foundation for them?”
11. “The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we would know was not summer’s.”
12. “She doesn’t mind about folks enter the Society, so as they’re fit to enter the kingdom of God.”
13. "I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation; and the command was clear that I must go away.”
14. “For it seems to me it’s the same with love and happiness as with sorrow…”
15. “…I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will.”
16. Some books discussed are Tracts for the Times, and Sartor Resartus.
17. One of the characters says, “May the Lord bless you.”
18. Discusses a gentleman who utilized a triumphant specimen of Socratic argument.
19. Adam says, “It’s all nonsense about the French being such poor chaps. Mr Irvine’s seem them in their own country, and he says they’ve plenty of fine fellows among them.”
20. The farmers sing a harvest song during the harvest season.
21. Briefly discusses “the moment of last parting.”
22. Of the familiar faces in the churchyard, writes, “no longer they showed this eager interest on her marriage morning.”
23. “…had made her a present of the wedding dress, though in the usual Quaker form, for on this point Dinah could not give way.”
A Room of One's Own
By Virginia Woolf
1. “This essay is based on two papers read to the Arts Society at Newnham and the Girton colleges in October 1928. The papers were too long to be read in full, and have since been altered and expanded.
2. “A Room of One’s Own was published at a time when feminist writing was so little in vogue as to be effectively moribund, when the Feminist Movement considered its work finished.”
3. “Woolf is concerned with the fate of women of genius, not with that of ordinary women…her passion is for literature not, universal justice.”
4. “The thesis of A Room of One’s Own—women must have money and privacy in order to write—is inevitably connected to questions of class.”
5. Woolf is essentially saying that genius should be cultivated, and should not be “encumbered by fear, or rancor, or dependency, and without money freedom is impossible.”
6. For Woolf, the writer must be encouraged to write.
7. A writer shouldn’t “write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she will write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters.”
8. “Serenity, selfishness, freedom from rage,” these are elements that contribute to great writers.
9. “‘One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,’ she insists.”
10. Suggests that because of the leisure that their class affords them, the upper class often excels more in writing.
11. Woolf believed that World War I caused a shift in the roles of women, and caused anger in men and consequently a decline in society. Her college, for example, “serves stringy beef, custard and prunes.”
12. This contributes considerably to why women are so poor, and why so few women have written.
13. Woolf indicates that “women are poor because, instead of making money, they have "children…she concludes that if a woman were to have written she would have had to overcome enormous circumstances.”
14. The many factors which make up the experience of women is relevant here.
15. “For Woolf is certain that the experience of men and the experience of women are extremely different, and they need different sentences to contain the shapes of their experience.”
16. “Women’s writing has, in addition, been impoverished by the limited access women have had to life.” For example, she indicates that Tolstoi couldn’t have written had he lived in seclusion.
17. Of two figures writes, “..how natural to think of them as cooperating with one another.”
18. She suggests that, “just as there are two sexes in the natural world, there are two sexes in the mind,” and “recalls Coleridge’s idea that a great mind is androgynous.”
19. This division between the sexes is bad for literature.
20. Thus, unless men and women can be androgynous in the mind, literature itself will be permanently flawed.
21. This is the reason for Woolf’s insistence on $500 a year and rooms of their own for women.
22. “What is important, what is essential, is that works of genius be created. The important thing is that they must express reality; they must express their genius, not themselves. They must illuminate their own souls, but they must not allow the souls to get in the way of reality. For pitted against reality, against the great tradition of immortal literature, the self is puny; it is of no interest.”
23. A Room of of One’s Own came to be written because Virginia Woolf was asked to lecture at women’s colleges on the subject of Women and Fiction. Her interest in the subject was vital. She had felt cheated in her education.
24. There is another reason for Woolf’s writing this piece, she explains, “I wanted to encourage the young women—they get fearfully depressed.”
A Room of One’s Own
25. Woolf writes that she has reached the following conclusion: that “a woman must have money and a room of one’s own if she is to write fiction.”
26. Reminds us that fiction can be used as a tool for social change, to better society.
27. “While visiting a prestigious university, Woolf does a great deal of ruminating.”
28. “…it was in Lycidas perhaps, and Lamb wrote how it shocked him to think it possible that any word in Lycidas could have been different from what it is.”
29. Discusses Thackeray’s Esmond, and indicates that “the affectation of the style, with its imitation of the eighteenth century, hampers one.”
30. Suggests that the impressive architecture at some universities contributes to the success rate of their students, and implies that the reverse is also true.
31. In the chapel of the university she is able to reflect upon her religious beliefs, and in the next scene, she writes, “old stories of old deans and old sons came to mind.”
32. Suggests that many universities were built “on a foundation of gold and silver.”
33. Discusses a luncheon party where Tennyson is read.
33. This luncheon causes her to contemplate whether one could name two living poets as great as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti.
34. Mentions that “the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place…hence the difficulty of modern poetry,” and admittedly, the cause of quite a bit of frustration.
35. Discusses "the illusion which inspired Tennyson and Christina Rossetti to sing so passionately, and contemplates which was truth and which was illusion, as well as the search for truth."
36. Of the "willows and the river and the gardens that run down to the river," contemplates "which was the illusion about them?"
37. "Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction--so we are told."
38. Discusses, her contemplation of "all those speculations upon human nature and the character of the amazing world we live in which spring naturally from such beginnings."
39. "...One might be talking of Spain or Portugal, of book or racehorse, but the real interest of whatever was said was none of those things, but a scene of masons on a high roof some five centuries ago."
40. In one scene, Woolf asks questions, and writes, "Let us look up what John Stuart Mill said on the subject."
41. The story is composed largely in a stream of consciousness.
42. "'We cannot have sofas and separate rooms. 'The amenities,' she said, quoting from some book or other, 'will have to wait.'
43. "We are told that we ought to ask for $30,000 at least."
44. If circumstances had been different, "the subject of our talk might have been archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography."
45. "We might have been exploring or writing; talking about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry."
46. Contemplates what would have happened had Mrs. Seton and her like gone into business at an early age.
47. Discusses memories of a happy family, and how wealth contributes to this.
48. "People say, too, that human nature takes its shape in the years between one and five."
49. Of Mrs. Seton and her mother writes, "to earn money was impossible for them," and, had it been possible, "the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned."
50. Indicates that for previous centuries, up until the last forty-eight years, all of Mrs. Seton's money would have been her husband's property-- an unfortunate thought.
51. "...even if I could earn money, is not a matter that interests me very greatly."
52. Of "the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space," writes, "Certainly our mothers had not provided us with anything comparable to all this--our mothers who found it difficult to scrape together thirty thousand pounds, our mother who bore thirteen children to ministers of religion at St. Andrews."
53. "I pondered why it was that Mrs. Seton had no money to leave us; and what effect poverty has on the mind; and what effect wealth has on the mind...and of the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer. A thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky."
Chapter Two
54. "What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?--a thousand questions at once suggested themselves. But one need answers, not questions; and an answer was only to be had by consulting the learned and the unprejudiced, and issued the result of their reasoning and research in books which are to be found in the British Museum."
55. "The British Museum was another department of the factory. Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men?"
56. "How shall I ever find the grains of truth embedded in all this mass of paper, I asked myself..."
57. "...also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women."
58. "Are they capable of education or incapable? Napoleon thought them incapable. Dr. Johnson thought the opposite. Have they souls or have they not souls? Some savages say they have none. Others, on the contrary, maintain that women are half divine and worship them on that account. Some sages hold they are shallower in the brain; others that they are deeper in consciousness. Wherever one looked men thought about women and thought differently. It was impossible to make head or tail of it all."
59. Issues a critique of Professor von X, and his work entitled "The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex." This work created a great deal of anger for Woolf.
60. "Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor."
1. "All that I had received from that morning's work had been the one fact of anger."
2. "The professors--I lumped them together thus--were angry."
3. She asked herself why they were angry.
4. "When I read what he wrote about women I thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself."
5. "But I had been angry because he was angry."
6. "Possibly they were not "angry" at all; often, indeed, they were admiring, devoted, exemplary in the relations of private life."
7. Life, "more than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself."
8. "Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself."
8A. Woolf writes that an expert indicates that Asian women mature earlier than Western women. This could lead to a discussion on the maturity levels of men and women.
9. "Does it explain my astonishment the other day when Z, most human, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, "'The arrant feminist! She says that men are snobs!'"
10. "Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn their crowns or lost them. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women..."
11. "And it serves to explain how restless men are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain or rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism."
12. Mentions "the subject of the psychology of the other sex."
13. At one point, "A solicitor's letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever."
14. For Woolf, the money seemed infinitely more important than current social events such as the act that gave votes to women.
15. "To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning..."
16. "No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labor cease, but also hatred and bitterness."
19. "I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race. It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control."
20. "Moreover, in a hundred years, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared."
21. "Remove that protection, expose them to the same exertions and activiites, make them soldiers and sailors and engine-drivers and dock laborers, and will not women die off so much younger, so much quicker, than men..."
22. "Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation. But what bearing has all this upon the subject of my paper, Women and Fiction? I asked, going indoors."
Chapter Three
23. "It was disappointing not to have brought back in the evening some important statement, some authentic fact. Women are poorer than men because--this or that. Perhaps now it would be better to give up seeking for the truth..."
24. "It would be better to draw the curtains; to shut out distractions; to light the lamp; to narrow the enquirand to ask the historian, who records not opinions but facts, to describe under what conditions women lived, not throughout the ages, but in England, say in the time of Elizabeth."
25. "For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet."
26. "What were the conditions in which women lived, I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that it is...is still attached to life at all our corners."
27. "Shaekspeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves...and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in."
28. "...women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time--Clytemnestra, Antigone, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Phedre, Cressida, Rosalind, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi, among the dramatists; then among the prose writers: Millamant, Clarissa, Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Madame de Guermantes--the names flock to mind, nor do they recall women 'lacking in personality and character.'"
29. Refers to the works of Tennyson, John Webster, Christopher Marlowe, Samuel Johnson, Jean Racine, and Henrik Ibsen.
30. Asks what accounts for the scarcity of prominent women in the art and cultural movement of Elizabethan England. "She never writes her own life and scarcely keeps a diary; there are only a handful of her letters in existence. She left no poems or plays by which we can judge her."
31. Briefly discusses Mary Russell Mitford.
32. "Shakespeare himself went, very probably--his mother was an heiress--to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin--Ovid, Virgil and Horace--and the elements of grammar and logic."
33. After showing an interest in the theater, "very soon he got work in the theater, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wit in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen."
34. "Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not focus on books and papers."
35. "The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theater. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said."
36. One gentleman said, "no woman could possibly be an actress. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight?--killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle."
37. "That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare's day had Shakespeare's genius."
38. "This may be true or it may be false--who can say?--but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare's sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizrds, feared and mocked at."
39. "For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people...that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty."
40. Mentions "Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, who sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man."
41. "Thus, though we do not know what Shakespeare went through when he wrote Lear, we do know what Carlyle went through when he wrote The French Revolution; what Flaubert went through when he wrote Madame Bovary; what Keats was going throgh when he tried to write poetry against the coming death and the indifference of the world.
42. "And so the writer, Keats, Flaubert, Carlyle, suffers, especially in the creative years of youth, every form of distraction and discouragement."
1. For women, "in the first place, to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century."
2. During this time, women were not encouraged to write.
3. "Mr Oscar Browning was wont to declare 'that the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of examination papers, was that, irrespective of the marks he might give, the best woman was intellectually inferior of the worst man."
4. "But though this is possible now, such opinions coming from the lips of important people must have been formidable enough even fifty years ago."
5. "...and the reading, even in the nineteenth century, must have lowered her vitality, and told profoundly upon her work."
6. "Probably for a novelist this germ is no longer of such effect; for there have been women novelists of merit. But for painters it must still have some sting in it; and for musicians, I imagine, is even now poisonous in the extreme."
7. Thus Woolf concludes "that even in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist." In fact, she was discouraged from this through a variety of ways. This, consequently, cause an overall decline in society.
8. "Among your grandmothers and great-grandmother there were many that wept their eyes out. Florence Nightnigale shrieked aloud in agony."
9. "Unfortunately, it is precisely the men or women of genius who mind most what is said of them...Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others."
10. "And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate," because of the mind of an artist, "there must be no obstacle to it, no foreign matter unconsumed."
11. Of Shakespeare writes, "his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare."
Chapter Four
12. "One would also expect to find that a woman's mind was disturbed by alien emotions like fear and hatred and that her poems showed traces of that disturbance."
13. Of one female poet, writes, "Indeed she has to encourage herself to write by supposing that what she writes will never be published."
14. Consequently, rather than write about nature and reflection, she writes about anger and bitterness.
15. "I turned to the other great lady, the Duchess whom Lamb loved, fantastical Margaret of Newcastle, her elder, but her contemporary."
16. "They were very different, but alike in this, that both were noble and both childless, and both married to the best of husbands. In both burnt the same passion for poetry" as well.
17. "What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind!"
18. Of Aphra Behn, writes, she had to work on equal terms with men.
19. "You need not give me an allowance; I can make money by my pen."
20. "That profoundly interesting subject, the value that men set upon women's freedom and its effect upon their education."
21. "Aphra Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind, but was of practical importance."
22. This activity was founded on the fact that women could make money by writing.
23. "Thus, towards the eighteenth century a change came about. The middle-class woman began to write."
24. "For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice."
25. "Jane Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny Burney, and George Eliot done homage to the robust shade of Eliza Carter."
26. "All the literary training that a woman had in the early nineteenth century was training in the observation of character, in the analysis of emotion."
27. Mentions that two of the four famous novelists were Emily Bronte and George Eliot.
28. "But perhaps it was the nature of Jane Austen not to want what she had not. Her gift and her circumstances matched each other completely."
29. Suggests that the country is more tranquil and conducive to writing.
30. "...is not made by the relation of stone to stone, but by the relation of human being to human being. Life conflicts with something that is not life."
31. "The whole structure, it is obvious, thinking back on any famous novel, is one of infinite complexity, because it is thus made up of so many different judgements."
32. "What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth."
33. "And since a novel has this correspondence to real life, its values are to some extent those of real life."
34. "But it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are 'important', the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial.'
35. "Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
36. "Lamb, Browne, Thackeray, Newman, Sterne, Dickens, De Quincey--whoever it may be--never helped a woman yet, though she may have learnt a few tricks of them and adapted them to her use."
37. "All the great novelists like Thackeray and Dickens and Balzac have written a natural prose..."
38. "Indeed, since freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art, such a lack of tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools, must have told enormously upon the writing of women."
39. "And yet, where shall I find that elaborate study of the psychology of women by a woman?"
40. "Happily my thoughts were now given another turn."
Chapter Five
41. "There are almost as many books written by women now as by men."
42. "There are Jane Harrison's books on Greek archaeology; Vernon Lee's books on aesthetics; Gertrude Bell's books on Persia. There are books on all sorts of subjects which a generation ago no woman could have touched. There are poems and plays and criticism; there are histories and biographies, books of travel and books of scholarship and research; there are even a few philosophies and books about science and economics."
43. "The natural simplicity, the epic age of women's writing, may have gone. Reading and criticism may have given her a wider range, a greater subtlety. The impulse towards autobiography may be spent. She may be beginning to use writing as an art, not as a method of self expression. Among these new novels one might find an answer to such questions."
44. "I took one of them down at random. It stood at the very end of the shelf, was called Life's Adventure, or some such title, by Mary Carmichael, and was published in this very month of October. It seems to be her first book, I said to myself, but one must read it as if it were the last volume in a fairly long series, continuing all other books that I have been glancing at--Lady Winchilsea's poems and Aphra Behn's plays and the novels of the four great novelists. For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately."
45. "Even so it remains obvious, even in the writing of Proust, that a man is terribly hampered and partial in his knowledge of women, as a woman in her knowledge of men."
46. Suggests that a woman's creative power differs greatly from the creative power of men.
47. "Think how much women have profited by the comments of Juvenal; by the criticism of Strindberg."
48. "Comedy is bound to be enriched. New facts are bound to be discovered."
49. Describes London in October, 1928. "At this moment, as so often happens in London, there was a complete lull and suspension of traffic. Nothing came down the street; nobody passed. A single leaf detached itself from the plane tree at the end of the street, and in that pause and suspension fell." We then acquire a view of the town from the perspective of the falling leaf. And then a girl and a young man get in a taxi, and then the taxi glided off "as if it were swept by the current elsewhere." This is very similar to the story "The Cherry Orchard," by Anton Chekhov.
50. "But some of these states of mind seem, even if adopted spontaneously, to be less comfortable than others."
51. "It is not only that they celebrate male virtues, enforce male values and describe the world of men; it is that the emotion with which these books are permeated is to a woman incomprehensible."
52. "They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within."
53. "However, the blame for all this, if one is anxious to lay blame, rests no more upon one sex than upon the other."
54. Discusses writing with an androgynous style, versus writing to display your manhood or womanhood.
55. "She has tried to lay bare the thoughts and impressions that led her to think this."
56. "That is all as it should be, for in a question like this truth is only to be had by laying together many varieties of error."
57. "No opinion has been expressed, you may say, upon the comparative merits of the sexes even as writers."
58. "I do not believe that gifts, whether of mind or character, can be weighed like sugar and butter, not even at Cambridge, where they are so adept at putting people into classes and fixing caps on their heads and letters after their names."
59. Refers to the Table of Precedency which you will find in Whitaker's Almanac.
60. Indicates that she is not advocating materialism.
61. "...a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born."
62. "Women have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own."
63. "For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy."
64. The poet, "She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight...but she lives."
7:00am - 8:00am
11. This and the thought that they were being treated unjustly infuriated them
12. An alliance between our countries means that we apply peaceful, diplomatic ways of governing our countries.
13. This treaty shall be submitted to the allies for their agreement. If the allies have any objections to raise, they shall refer the treaty to their home governments.
14. Disputes between private individuals shall be settled in accordance with the laws of the states concerned.
15. The Spartans and Argives now made a combined expedition with 1,000 men each. First the Spartan force went by itself to Sicyon and reorganized the government there on more democratic lines.
16. During the work of rebuilding the country of Argos, carpenters and masons came to help them from Athens.
17. The Melenians are a colony from Sparta. They had refused to join the Athenian empire like the other islanders, and at first had remained neutral without helping either side; but afterwards, when the war began, they became open allies of Argos.
18. No one can objet to each of us putting forward our own views in a calm atmosphere. That is perfectly reasonable. What is scarcely consistent is the present threat of your making war on us.
19. We are met here to discuss the safety of our country.
8:00am - 9:00am
20. As allies, each country will state how it can help other countries, as well as describing its current needs that could make it stronger.
21. We are more concerned with the nomadic tribes. These are the people who are most likely to act in a reckless manner and cause the most harm.
22. Historically, people have designated as holy or sacred, certain sites and locations, based on traditions and beliefs.
23. Zancle was originally founded by pirates who came from the city of Opicia.
24. When one country began pressing the other country by land and sea, the country reminded the other of the alliance they made and of the peace treaty.
25. It would be a wise thing for Athens to make use of the allies, especially as Egesta would supply sufficient money to finance the operation. The people then voted in favour of first sending delgates to Egesta in order to see whether the money they needed was in the treasury.
26. Five days later another assembly was held to discuss the quickest means of getting the ships ready to sail and to vote any for additional supplies that the generals might need for the expedition.
11:00am - 12:00pm
The Marriage Contract, Honore de Balzac
1. “Madame!” he exclaimed, “is it possible you can think of breaking off the marriage?”
“Monsieur,” she replied, “to whom am I accountable? To my daughter. When she is twenty-one years of age she will receive my guardianship account and release me. She will then possess a million, and can, if she likes, choose her husband among the sons of the peers of France. She is a daughter of the Casa-Reale.”
2. “Madame is right,” remarked Solonet. “Why should she be more hardly pushed to-day than she will be fourteen months hence? You ought not to deprive her of the benefits of her maternity.”
3. Like a general who, in a moment, upsets the plans skilfully laid and prepared by the enemy, the old notary, enlightened by that genius which presides over notaries, saw an idea, capable of saving the future of Paul and his children, unfolding itself in legal form before his eyes.
4. “To save you from being ruined,” replied the old notary, in a whisper. “You are determined to marry a girl and her mother who have already squandered two millions in seven years; you are pledging yourself to a debt of eleven hundred thousand francs to your children, to whom you will have to account for the fortune you are acknowledging to have received with their mother.
5. Now, while Mathias was more than a mere notary, he was a man of wisdom and experience.
6. Hearing this speech uttered in the accents of the heart, and noting, more especially, the limpid azure of Paul’s eyes, whose glance betrayed no thought of double meaning, Madame Evangelista’s satisfaction was complete. She regretted the sharp language with which she had spurred him, and in the joy of success she resolved to reassure him as to the future.
7. “Solonet advises me to put the proceeds of this house into an annuity,” said Madame Evangelista, “but I shall do otherwise; I won’t take a penny of my fortune from you.”
8. The stones were not to be sold, and yet he was to estimate them as if some private person were buying them from a dealer. Jewellers alone know how to distinguish between the diamonds of Asia and those of Brazil. The stones of Golconda and Visapur are known by a whiteness and glittering brilliancy which others have not,—the water of the Brazilian diamonds having a yellow tinge which reduces their selling value. Madame Evangelista’s necklace and ear-rings, being composed entirely of Asiatic diamonds, were valued by Elie Magus at two hundred and fifty thousand francs. As for the “Discreto,” he pronounced it one of the finest diamonds in the possession of private persons; it was known to the trade and valued at one hundred thousand francs. On hearing this estimate, which proved to her the lavishness of her husband, Madame Evangelista asked the old Jew whether she should be able to obtain that money immediately.
9. “A good many Portuguese diamonds from Brazil are among them. They are not worth more than a hundred thousand to me. But,” he added, “a dealer would sell them to a customer for one hundred and fifty thousand, at least.”
10. Let me deal with politics, you deal with your business.
11. “Madame, an entail being an appanage, or portion of property set aside for this purpose from the fortunes of husband and wife, it follows that if the wife dies first, leaving several children, one of them a son, Monsieur de Manerville will owe those children three hundred and sixty thousand francs only, from which he will deduct his fourth in life-interest and his fourth in capital. Thus his debt to those children will be reduced to one hundred and sixty thousand francs, or thereabouts, exclusive of his savings and profits from the common fund constituted for husband and wife. If, on the contrary, he dies first, leaving a male heir, Madame de Manerville has a right to three hundred and sixty thousand francs only, and to her deeds of gift of such of her husband’s property as is not included in the entail, to the diamonds now settled upon her, and to her profits and savings from the common fund.”
12. “We tried to trick them out of three hundred thousand francs,” he whispered to the angry woman. “They have actually laid hold of eight hundred thousand; it is a loss of four hundred thousand from our interests for the benefit of the children. You must now either break the marriage off at once, or carry it through,” concluded Solonet.
13. Guilty without profit, she saw herself the dupe of an honorable old man, whose respect she had doubtless lost.
14. He would put him on his guard against the wily woman who had lowered herself to this conspiracy; he would destroy the empire she had conquered over her son-in-law!
15. Though she still maintained the dignity and reserve of a diplomatist, her chin was shaken by that apoplectic movement which showed the anger of Catherine the Second on the famous day when, seated on her throne and in presence of her court (very much in the present circumstances of Madame Evangelista), she was braved by the King of Sweden.
16. Invest some of your money in stocks, some in bonds, some in real estate...
16-A. Put some of your money in a checking or savings account.
17. “I get a three-thousand franc fee for the guardianship account, three thousand for the contract, six thousand on the sale of the house, fifteen thousand in all—better not be angry.”
He closed the door, cast on Madame Evangelista the cool look of a business man, and said:—
“Madame, having, for your sake, passed—as I did—the proper limits of legal craft, do you seriously intend to reward my devotion by such language?”
18. Her devotion to Natalie made her, in a moment, as shrewd and calculating as she had hitherto been careless and wasteful. She resolved to turn her capital to account, after investing a part of it in the Funds, which were then selling at eighty francs.
19. “It seems to me,” he said to himself, “that without that good Mathias my mother-in-law would have tricked me. And yet, is that believable? What interest could lead her to deceive me? Are we not to join fortunes and live together? Well, well, why should I worry about it? In two days Natalie will be my wife, our money relations are plainly defined, nothing can come between us. Vogue la galere—Nevertheless, I’ll be upon my guard.
20. This character, slumbering in married happiness for sixteen years, occupied since then with the trivialities of social life, this nature to which a first hatred had revealed its strength, awoke now like a conflagration; at the moment of the woman’s life when she was losing the dearest object of her affections and needed another element for the energy that possessed her, this flame burst forth.
21. A wife does not always have to do what her husband wishes.
22. The life of a woman lies in the words, ‘I will not.’ They are the final argument.
23. A woman should learn how to say "No." Do not give in to everything, set the bounday for people.
24. “You can count on me,” he replied. “I can find you investments in merchandise on which you will risk nothing and make very considerable profits.”
25. Let me, therefore, make one more sacrifice for your happiness. I have given you my fortune, and now I desire to resign to you my last vanities as a woman. Your notary Mathias is getting old. He cannot look after your estates as I will. I will be your bailiff; I will create for myself those natural occupations which are the pleasures of old age. Later, if necessary, I will come to you in Paris, and second you in your projects of ambition. Come, Paul, be frank; my proposal suits you, does it not?
7:00pm - 8:00pm
The Epic of Gilgamesh
1. Acquire a knowledge of Middle Eastern / Arabic literature.
2. In fact the extent and value of the discovery was not realized till later when the clay tablets with wedge-shaped characters were deciphered.
3. Division of the material has complicated the work of decipherment, for in some cases one half of an important tablet has been stored in America and the other in Istanbul, and copies of both must be brought together before the contents are understood.
4. The recent decipherment of the so-called 'linear B' script of Bronze-Age Mycenae and Crete has revealed no literature.
5. They had already irrigated the country and filled it with their cities, before it was conquered by the Semitic tribes in the course of the third millennium.
6. The influence of this gifted people, shown in laws, language, and ideas, persisted long after they had been conquered by their Semite neighbours.
7. In the Sumerian Early Dynastic age each city already had its temples of the gods. They were magnificent buildings decorated with reliefs and mosaics, and usually comprising a great court and an inner sanctuary.
8. So when Gilgamesh calls on the goddess Ninsun, his divine mother, she goes up on the roof of the temple to offer prayer and sacrifice to the great Sun God.
9. 'Gilgamesh and Agga' like the 'Death of Gilgamesh' is known only in Sumerian. It is a detached and not very heroic tale of debate and mild warfare between the rival states of Kish and Uruk.
10. The cause of the quarrel is commercial, and appears to revolve around the barter of oil from Uruk against precious metals, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and probably building stone from Aratta.
11. Here, in the valleys of the great rivers, he believes that they inherited the civilization and prosperity of the settled inhabitants, who are known to us only by their beautiful pottery and by village settlements of reed-huts and sun-dried brick houses.
12. At the beginning of the poem the hero is described. He is two parts god and one part man, for his mother was a goddess like the mother of Achilles. From her he ingerited great beauty, strength, and restlessness. From his father he inherited mortality. There are many strands in the story, but this is the tragedy: the conflict between the desires of the god and the destiny of the man.
13. Lugbulbanda reigned in Uruk second before Gilgamesh and third after the flood. He was a guardian and protectr of the city, and is called a god; he reigned 1,200 years.
14. In the character of Gilgamesh, from the beginning, we are aware of an over-riding preoccupation with fame, reputation, and the revolt of mortal man against the laws of separation and death.
15. The story is divided into episodes: a meeting of friends, a forest journey, the flouting of a fickle goddess, death of a companion, and the search for ancestral wisdom and immortality: and through them all runs a single idea like a refrain of the medieval poet, 'Timor mortis conturbat me'.
16. The cities of Mesopotamia shared a common pantheon, but the gods were not worshipped everywhere under the same names. The Semites when they invaded Mesopotamia inherited most of the Sumerian gods, but they altered their names, their mutual relations, and many of their attributes.
17. It is not possible to say today if any were native to Mesopotamia, and belonged to the still older stratum of the population which may have been in occupation of the land before the arrival of the Sumerians...
18. From the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon, early in the second millennium, Marduk was the most popular diety among the Semites, but in our epic he is never mentioned.
19. Each city had its own particular protector who looked after its fortunes and had his house within its walls. Anu (Sumerian An) was a father of gods, not so much Zeus as Uranus, the sky-god who to the Greeks was little more than an ancestral link in the chain of creation; from whose union with Earth came Ocean, the rivers, the seas, the Titans and last of all, Cronos the father Zeus.
20. A reconstruction of the Sumerian theogony has been made, according to which An was the first-born of the primeval sea. He was the upper heavens, the firmament, not the air that blows over the earth...and Nanna in turn begot the sun Utu of Shamash, and Inanna or Ishtar the goddess of love and war.
21. He was a figure who possessed a great deal of latent power.
12:00pm - 1:00pm
The History of the Peloponnesian War
1. Citizens are entitled to freedom from ill treatment by their government.
2. In this case, if any man has skill or courage greater than another, now if ever, when he can help himself and save us all, is the time for him to show it.
3. There is nothing cowardly in retreating to save yourself.
4. The Syracusans and Gylippus would not accept these proposals. They attacked and surrounded his army, raining missiles on them from all sides until evening.
5. But some of the Syracusans who had been in contact with him were afraid, and this was not good for the character of their army.
6. The army unit took the credit for the victory in war.
7. It was because of his family connection that he was such good friends with the senators.
8. When the soldiers stopped fighting, the war was over.
9. On the same day, late in the evening, the Athenians sailed to Lesbos to give what help they could.
10. When the army siezed the town, they pulled down the statues and paintings of the former regime.
11. And if, incalculable as is the life of man, they made a mistake, there were many others who thought, like them, that Athens was on the point of collapse, and who came also to realize their error.
12:00am - 1:00am
The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan, Honore De Balzac
1. “Like you,” resumed the princess, “I have received more love than most women; but through all my many adventures, I have never found happiness. I committed great follies, but they had an object, and that object retreated as fast as I approached it. I feel to-day in my heart, old as it is, an innocence which has never been touched. Yes, under all my experience, lies a first love intact,—just as I myself, in spite of all my losses and fatigues, feel young and beautiful. We may love and not be happy; we may be happy and never love; but to love and be happy, to unite those two immense human experiences, is a miracle. That miracle has not taken place for me.”
2. -- “I own I am pursued in this retreat by dreadful regret: I have amused myself all through life, but I have never loved.” -- “What an incredible secret!” cried the marquise. -- “Ah! my dear,” replied the princess, “such secrets we can tell to ourselves, you and I, but nobody in Paris would believe us.”
3. He replaced his desire with his focus on reading.
4. -- “She is so now,” replied Madame d’Espard. “Why did she leave her husband? What an acknowledgment of weakness!” -- “Then you think that Madame de Rochefide was not influenced by the desire to enjoy a true love in peace?” asked the princess.
5. “But,” said the marquise, interrupting the princess, “why ask the dead? We know living women who have been happy. I have talked on this very subject a score of times with Madame de Montcornet since she married that little Emile Blondet, who makes her the happiest woman in the world; not an infidelity, not a thought that turns aside from her; they are as happy as they were the first day. These long attachments, like that of Rastignac and Madame de Nucingen, and your cousin, Madame de Camps, for her Octave, have a secret, and that secret you and I don’t know, my dear."
6. -- “If it were a lie, how easy to dress it up with commentaries, and serve it as some delicious fruit to be eagerly swallowed! But how is it possible to get a truth believed? Ah! the greatest of men have been mistaken there!” added the princess, with one of those meaning smiles which the pencil of Leonardo da Vinci alone has rendered. -- “Fools love well, sometimes,” returned the marquise. -- “But in this case,” said the princess, “fools wouldn’t have enough credulity in their nature.”
7. “Ah! how I wish I might not leave this world without knowing the happiness of true love,” exclaimed the princess.
8. “I first noticed this beautiful passion about the middle of the winter of 1829. Every Friday, at the opera, I observed a young man, about thirty years of age, in the orchestra stalls, who evidently came there for me. He was always in the same stall, gazing at me with eyes of fire, but, seemingly, saddened by the distance between us, perhaps by the hopelessness of reaching me.”
9. He admired the power to transform fools into clever women, peasants into countesses; the more accomplished a woman was, the more she lost her value in their eyes, for, according to Michel, their imagination had the less to do. In his opinion love, a mere matter of the senses to inferior beings, was to great souls the most immense of all moral creations and the most binding.
10. In a relationship, the two people can study language, literature, and other subjects.
11. Neither Blondet nor Rastignac could deceive d’Arthez; but they told him, laughing, that they now offered him a most seductive opportunity to polish up his heart and know the supreme fascinations which love conferred on a Parisian great lady. The princess was evidently in love with him; he had nothing to fear but everything to gain by accepting the interview; it was quite impossible he could descend from the pedestal on which madame de Cadignan had placed him.
12. When two friends meet each other, they present a touching spectacle of harmony, which is never troubled.
13. Sometimes, one's emotions can express themselves in a person's complexion and on his face.
14. Her manner was doubtless the same with the King of France and the royal princes. She seemed happy to see this great man, and glad that she had sought him. Persons of taste, like the princess, are especially distinguished for their manner of listening, for an affability without superciliousness, which is to politeness what practice is to virtue. When the celebrated man spoke, she took an attentive attitude, a thousand times more flattering than the best-seasoned compliments. The mutual presentation was made quietly, without emphasis, and in perfectly good taste, by the marquise.
15. After this d’Arthez threw himself into the general conversation with the gayety of a child, and a self-conceited air that was worthy of a schoolboy. When they left the dining-room, the princess took d’Arthez’s arm, in the simplest manner, to return to Madame d’Espard’s little salon. As they crossed the grand salon she walked slowly, and when sufficiently separated from the marquise, who was on Blondet’s arm, she stopped.
16. There are beings who have the privilege of passing among men like beneficent stars, whose light illumines the mind, while its rays send a glow to the heart. D’Arthez was one of those beings.
17. If you observe carefully the noble faces of ancient philosophers, you will always find those deviations from the type of a perfect human face which show the characteristic to which each countenance owes its originality, chastened by the habit of meditation, and by the calmness necessary for intellectual labor. The most irregular features, like those of Socrates, for instance, become, after a time, expressive of an almost divine serenity.
18. Have you observed, that men have two natures? One being that of their private life, and one being there public self.
19. I have often heard miserable little specimens of my sex regretting that they were women, wishing they were men; I have always regarded them with pity. If I had to choose, I should still elect to be a woman. A fine pleasure, indeed, to owe one’s triumph to force, and to all those powers which you give yourselves by the laws you make!
20. These words, said in a soulful voice, betrayed angelic sensibility. D’Arthez was deeply moved. The curiosity of the lover became, so to speak, a psychological and literary curiosity. He wanted to know the height that woman had attained, and what were the injuries she thus forgave; he longed to know how these women of the world, taxed with frivolity, cold-heartedness, and egotism, could be such angels.
21. She became a psychological curiosity for him. He wanted to know why she did what she did, he scrutinized her every movement.
22. She thought to herself that men of genius must know how to love with more perfection than conceited fops, men of the world, diplomatists, and even soldiers, although such beings have nothing else to do. She was a connoisseur, and knew very well that the capacity for love reveals itself chiefly in mere nothings.
23. Sometimes humans go above and beyond nature.
24. They are so close to me. I am afraid to make even the slightest movement.
25. “It is true,” he said to himself. We writers invent no more than the truth.
6. A long train of pack animals and horsemen slowly and painfully made their way up the narrow road.
7. The general wanted to march on the town, but a fresh fall of snow made further progress impossible and he abandoned the idea. The conditions were just too bad.
8. The snow made their feet and clothing wet.
9. He kept asking her for things, then she said, "Wait until the baby goes to sleep."
10. I put my hand in the purse that I used for charity, intending to give her something, but she said: 'Go away, you futile fellow...so I left her and went off reciting these lines.'
11. I saw a black man walking. I spoke to him. He said: "Are you not proud of what you said? By Your love for me. But how do you know that God loves you? Where do you suppose I was when God helped me to understand His unity and singled me out to learn about Him? Remember that God loves you."
12. The black man said, "I was once a slave, and now I am buying you as a slave."
13. A man met another man. He was a handsome man with a bright face.
14. The man entered a store. He said, "Now that I am in the store, I want to buy some of the goods after I have examined them and tried them on." The man thought that he was telling the truth and, as he could see no harm in it, allowed the man to do as he wanted.
15. A man had a large house, so he told his maid to take him to the top of the house. When he was at the top of the house, he looked down at the ground and thought about jumping off. Eventually, he threw himself from the top of the house, but God sent an angel who carried him on his wings and brought him to the ground safe and uninjured.
16. By way of graitude to God, we have to conceal our poverty and so we must continue yesterday's fast through tonight, as a duty owed to Him.
17. The woman had an oven. She got up, filled the oven with wood and lit it in order to trick her neighbors. Then she recited the lines: I shall conceal my hardship and my sorrows, And light my fire so as to deceive my neighbors. I am content with what my Master has ordained; I humble myself before Him, so that, seeing this, He may now be content.
18. The woman asked for her husband's chair. When she looked at it she saw that there was a hole in its side. "What is this gap?" she asked, and she was told that it had been left by the jewel that had fallen through the roof of their house.
19. She woke up and said: "Husband, pray that God may put this jewel back in its place, for to endure hunger and poverty for a few days is easier than having to sit among the virtuous on a chair with a hole in it." The man prayed and, as they both watched, the jewel rose through the roof.
20. A story is told that al-Hajjaj al-Thaqafi had launched a hunt for a certain important person and when the man was brought before him he said: 'Enemy of God, He has put you in my power." He gave orders that the man was to be taken to prison and chained up tightly with heavy fetters; a cage was to be built over him which he could not leave and which no one could enter.
21. A story is told that a virtuous man heard that in a certain town there was a smith who could put his hand into the fire and take out hot iron without suffering any harm. The other man said, "Brother, I have heard of the miraculous power that God has given you and I have seen you using it, but on looking at your devotion to worship, I have not seen any obvious source of miracles."
22. One of the women said, "Death is better than disobedience to God."
23. A man met a woman. "This was in the cold of winter, and I left her in order to get fire from the oven. At that, a burning coal fell on my body, but thanks to the power of the Almighty I felt no pain and I told myself that her prayer had been answered. Even when I took the coal in my hand it did not burn me, and so I went to her and said: 'Good news: God has answered your prayer.'
24. There was a man. He did not know what God intended for him, And, in his case, repentance came unsought.
4:00pm - 5:00pm
The Duchesse of Langeais
1. It was a time of prosperity, when vast wealth characterized the countryside.
2. The Duke and Duchess were leading lives entirely apart, the world none the wiser. Their marriage of convention shared the fate of nearly all family arrangements of the kind. Two more antipathetic dispositions could not well have been found; they were brought together; they jarred upon each other; there was soreness on either side; then they were divided once for all. Then they went their separate ways, with a due regard for appearances.
3. --"Act like a woman, be more delicate." --"I am acting like a woman!"
4. Physical strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape well-nigh exhausted his energies. When he reached the French colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his memories of his former life were dim and shapeless. The great sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his studies of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations. One story will give an idea of all that he passed through.
5:00pm - 6:00pm
The Jewish War, Josephus
1. They brought no presents but relied on the same arguments as they had used with Aretas, begging him to repudiate the violent methods of Aristobulus and to restore to his throne the man to whom, as the elder and better of the two, it belonged.
2. At his brother's invitation he came down again, argued the rights and wrongs of the case, and went away without hindrance from Pompey.
3. Finally however Pompey insisted on his evacuating the forts, and as the commanders had instructions to take no notice of any order not written by Aristobulus himself, he forced him to send each one of them a written order to march out.
5:00am - 6:00am
The Arabian Nights
1. Sometimes, doctors don't know what the disease is, so they have to define it and describe it. After doctors do this, then they have to find medication to treat it.
2. "I saw a man lying under a tree. His clothes were giving off the odour of musk. We spoke for a short time."
3. He liked the heavy musk odor.
4. "Use Axe Dark Temptation body spray like air freshener."
5. ...When the man was at the point of death, his son sat by his head and asked for his instructions. 'My dear son,' said his father, 'do not swear by God, whether untruthfully or falsely.'
8:00pm - 9:00pm
1. The captured soldiers were relocated, or moved to another state within the country. There they operated under established rules, and did jobs to contribute to the entire country's economy.
1. Hebrew cohen, a reference to the author's lineage.
2. Hebrew ancestry can determine one's geneology maybe leading to Jesus Christ.
4. The hymn refers to the ten Sefirot in the following order: Stanza 1 - Malkhut; 2 - Yesod...
5. Bar Yohai, you ascended to the Field of Apple Trees to gather fragrances: the mysteries of the Torah, which are like blossoms and flowers. 'Let us make man' was pronounced for your sake.
6. Bar Yohai, when you entered the Holy of the Holies, the green zone which is the source of time, the palace of the seven Sabbaths, the mystery of the fifty gates and of the Jubilee - you bound together the three supreme Sefirot.
7. Bar Yohai, you gazed into the depths of His Glory, into the primordial point of Wisdom - the Beginning, the first word of creation - which flows forth into the thirty-two paths of hidden lore.
8. Bar Yohai, you were afraid to look at the wondrous light, the Supreme Corwn, for its fullness is overwhelming.
9. Bar Yohai, happy is your mother! Happy are the people who study your doctrines, who decipher your secrets.
The Paradox, Sa'adiah Longo
10. Some paradoxes or puzzles, once you solve them, may reveal valuable information, but it might take a long time to solve them.
The Scoundrel's Song
11. She invited him to share a deep secret. He made light of her desire. But her honeyed words could melt the heart of any lord, prince, or king.
12. "Call if you wish - will anyone answer you?" said the scoundrel. May he mourn his own loss!
Her Hair, Judah Zarco
13. O peerless beauty, veil your hair, lest you play havoc with the world, without lifting a finger! The weakest, softest strand on your head can pu;; a mountain by its roots...I pray you, graceful deer, have pity on my life, don't make me die so young...I am, for life, your abject slave and chattel. From dawn to dusk I await your favour.
After the Vision
14. How can I play the lute when my hand is ensnared in fetters of fear?
15. How does someone become a popular musician? They go to music school, or they are taught by someone how to play an instrument and create music.
The Plea
16. O living and terrible God, replace my prison, this round pit, by a full moon and a goblet. Pray, turn the darkness of my hell into a shinig light, and this dwelling-place of dusk into an orchard, a blossoming garden. I call to You, O God, out of the depths of my thoughts I cry out in innocence, not as a rebel or a slanderer. Grant me my wish, set loose my ship of desire, for it is now anchored deep in a sea of troubles.
The Late-Comer, Joseph Bibas
17. He will surely come with songs of joy, carrying the child, in the full assembly. My friends, wait here for the bridegroom of blood.
18. He should be coming down the road. Why is the child so late? You ladies, who are charged with swaddling the child, go forth and see...I pray you my lords, stay with us, do not presume to leave. Truly, here he comes - the soft-skinned delicate child, wrapped in robes of myrrh and aloes!
19. Now, here he comes, carrying the child with songs of joy. Bless God in the full assembly!
The Ass's Complaint, Samuel Archivolti
20. To the Rock of Salvation I say: Make haste, grant me the privilege of carrying Your Messiah, so that Your children should no longer be scattered in every corner like paupers and vagabonds.
The Old Man and the Girl
21. Do not mock me for singing songs now that I have grown old. Does not the ember glow beneath the ashes? So is my heart awake within me even when I sleep.
"To His Self," Isaac Luria
"Beloved of my Soul," Eliezer Azikri
22. Faithful One, let your heart be moved with tenderness, spare the son of Your beloved friend, Abraham, for he has longed these many years to behold Your mighty splendour. My God, my heart's delight, oh come quickly, do not forsake me...Make haste, my Love, for the time has come; show me Your favour as in the days of old.
12:00pm - 1:00pm
The Jewish War, Josephus
1. The senator had his soldiers focus on the enemy base, and enemy hotspots.
2. The soldiers countered the weapons of the enemy with weapons of their own.
3. To prevent their excursions, the senator charged the men with offenses.
4. The Roman, not in the least moved by his changed situation, laughed uproariously and called him Antigone. But he did not treat him like a womman and let him go free: he put him in fetters and kept him in custody.
5. The senator even worked in secret to get their kings, Herod and Malchus, put to death.
6. Herod got the better of the fighting-men by using Roman tactical skill.
7. Herod dealt with matters both foreign and domestic. The king appealed to some, threatened others, and drove yet others back by force of arms...
8. Antony was sober enough to realize that one part of her demands was utterly immoral. Herod placated her hostility with costly gifts, and leased back from her the lands broken off from his kingdom, at two hundred talents a year.
9. Finally, he escorted her all the way to Pelusium, showing her every attention.
4:00am - 5:00am
The Jewish War, Josephus
1. The English who colonized America are no different than the Mexicans, who migrate to America for a better life. The English did it in an official, democratic way, and the Mexicans do it in a rather uncivilized way.
2. They saw free land that was unoccupied, and decided to settle and colonize it.
3. At once Arab confidence was stimulated by rumour, which always makes disasters seem worse than they are.
8:00am - 9:00am
13. He was aided not only by a clear conscience but by the vigour of his oratory - he was a very effective speaker.
14. For he was accompanied by Antipater, who had inspired his hate but dared not openly reveal his enmity through respect for the reconciler.
15. Back in Jerusalem Herod assembled the citizens, presented his three sons, explained his absence, and expressed his deep gratitude to God and to Caesar for setting his troubled household to rights and bestowing on his sons concord.
16. The sweets of power they will emjoy, but the burden of responsibility is mine, however unwelcome.
17. The king said, "My kingdom is big enough to hold all peoples."
4:00am - 5:00am
1. Hippocrates is the father of medicine. There are several books about him.
2. Eating "bad" food can cause health problems. The clean, sterile methods which are used in America to produce, supply, and consume food, contribute to the health of its citizens.
1. The Russian Orthodox Church, and Russian saints, are very popular in Russia. Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, is a popular book about saints.
3. Medical statements should correspond to long-standing medical research.
4. A doctor should give people medical treatment, and not be influence by his personal opinion.
5. The above items are from The Genuine Works of Hippocrates.
3. Essentially, how to treat medically treat someone is a simple process.
4. The are certain universal methods for treating a disease.
5. Doctors should have knowledge of human and comparative anatomy.
6. Doctors should know how to stop, and not treat a disease with medication if it can be treated by other methods.
7. In order to be a physician, you should have knowledge of many different subjects.
8. The practice of medicine should be free from the trammels of superstition.
9. Some principles of medicine are abstract, and some are concrete.
10. The reality is that sometimes, medicine may fail to cure someone.
11. Doctors should understand the causes of epidemic and endemic diseases.
12. On one topic, Hippocrates was known as the eminent authority on the subject.
3:00pm - 4:00pm
The Jewish War, Josephus
1. The husband roughed up the wife of the senator, and then the senator called a meeting, and told his soldiers.
2. To overcome the detestation in which he was universally held was beyond him, so he relied on terror to maintain his security.
3. Antipater's mother began to throw her weight about in the palace, even daring to affront two of the king's daughters.
4. Instead of exchanging friendly greetings, they pretended to quarrel with each other in the king's chambers.
5. He asked her to pay him money.
6. He poisoned him with a powerful drug. He flew to Egypt to get the drug.
7. By a heavy bribe he won over Caesar's treasurer.
8. When he refused to pay the bribe, he became furious, and demanded that the rogue pay the money.
9. He had worked as a bodyguard.
10. When he died, his body was flown to Italy, and given a magnificent funeral.
11. Antipater said, "I only wish he would strip us of everything, and leave us to live naked."
12. As punishment, he asked her to surrender all her jewelry and wealth, and banished her to another kingdom.
13. When she fell down, she did not fall on her head, but fell on other parts of her body.
14. She stated that she had obtained the drug from a brother who practiced medicine in Alexandria.
15. He came under another concoction, a poisonous compound of the stingers of wasps and other reptiles.
16. In the city, it's normal for people to get into trouble from committing minor offenses.
17. Despite this, all his rascalities, however small, had come to light with the major crime.
18. The king, after talking to him, urged him to hurry home, if he came quickly.
5:00pm - 6:00pm
How to Cook Canned Vegetables
1. Get a can of canned vegetables.
2. Empty the canned vegetables into a pot on the stovetop.
3. Cook on Medium heat, until hot.
4. When hot, put into a bowl, and eat!
The Jewish War
Sunday, December 22, 2024 -- 3:16am
3:00pm - 4:00pm
The Jewish War, Polybius
1. He was amazed to find himself utterly alone: everyone avoided him and no one ventured near him.
2. You shall have a fair trial, and Varus has come at the right time to be your judge. Go and think out your defence for tomorrow; I will give you a chance to prepare some of your little tricks.
3. Next day the king summoned a court consisting of his counsellors. He had all the witnesses brought in.
4. I know the little beast; and I can guess what specious pleas and crocodile tears he can produce.
5. How can I be a parricide if, as you agree, I have been your protector through thick and thin?
6. It is as though I had been a man with the soul of a savage beast.
7. One should not treat old age as a joke.
8. He made the statement against his will, he was pressured to make it.
9. Herod was too angry to think reasonably.
10. When the prisoner drank the poison, death was instantaneous.
11. When it is all over, kindly remember your promise.
12. The king felt that the documents had not been genuine.
13. Even though he was a very old man, his spirits had not been broken, because he exercised, read, and spent time with his children and grandchildren.
14. He instructed many students in law.
15. The king had put over the Great Gate a golden eagle. This the rabbis urged them to cut down saying that even if danger was involved, it was a glorious thing to die for the laws of their fathers...
16. At this the king exploded with rage, forgetting his sickness and poor health.
17. The king reluctantly agreed: those who had lowered themselves from the roof together with the rabbis he exiled.
18. He brought together the most eminent men of every village in the whole of Judea.
19. Even though Herod was a very old man, in poor health, he was still a brave and courageous soldier. He became king of the territory, and reigned for 20 years.
6:00pm - 7:00pm
The Ethics, by Benedict de Spinoza
1. The nature of man, is to desire food, love, happiness, etc.
2. God exists, but he's not necessarily good.
3. A thing is called necessary either in respect to its essence or in respect to its cause; for the existence of a thing necessarily follows, either from its essence and definition, or from a given efficient cause.
4. A person can be a remarkable individual, and not look impressive to the eyes. A person's intelligence and experience should matter.
5. During one case, day to day examples showed evidence of this.
6. The senator wanted to cause the most benefit to mankind.
7. Things which are perceived through our sense of smell are styled fragrant or fetid.
8. Whatsoever affects our ears is said to give rise to noise, sound, or harmony.
9. If all things follow from a necessity of the absolutely perfect nature of God, why are there so many imperfections in nature?
10. End of Part I.
11. "How to build a bridge," or "How to build a bridge 101," is a good term to learn how to build a bridge.
12. "Guard Dennehy would gladly escort a child to school." --Frank McCourt
13. Dishwashing liquid can remove dirt, plaque, germs and grease from dishes so that they can be rinsed down the drain.
Criminal justice is an umbrella term that refers to the laws, procedures, institutions, and policies at play before, during, and after the commission of a ...
Social Work Practice in the Criminal Justice System
Criminal Law & Criminal Justice: An Introduction
Understanding Criminal Justice: Sociological Perspectives
Criminal Justice Policy
11:00pm - 12:00am
1. By 'body' I mean a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God, in so far as he is considered as an extended thing.
2. Understand that some properties belong to the body, and some properties belong to the mind.
3. All bodies are either in motion or at rest.
4. Bodies are individual things, which are distinguished one from the other in respect to motion and rest; thus each must necessarily be determined to motion or rest by another individual thing...
5. When a body in motion impinges on another body at rest, which it is unable to move, it recoils, in order to continue its motion, and the angle made by the line of motion in the recoil and the plane of the body at rest, whereon the moving body has impinged, will be equal to the angle formed by the line of motion of incidence and the same plane.
Postulates I. The human body is composed of a number of individual parts, of diverse nature, each one of which is in itself extremely complex.
II. Of the individual parts composing the human body some are fluid, some soft, some hard.
III. The individual parts composing the human body, and consequently the human body itself, are affected in a variety of ways by external bodies.
IV. The human body stands in need for its preservation of a number of other bodies, by which it is continually, so to speak, regenerated.
V. When the fluid part of the human body is determined by an external body to impinge often on another soft part, it changes the surface of the latter, and, as it were, leaves the impression thereupon of the external body which impels it.
Proof - 6. The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions.
7. The human body is affected by external elements, and these are different than the faculties of the human mind.
8. Sometimes the human mind can affect the human body, and vice versa.
The Ethics
Monday, December 23, 2024 -- 12:50am
12:00am - 1:00am
The Ethics, Benedict Spinoza
1. By 'body' I mean a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God, in so far as he is considered as an extended thing.
2. Understand that some properties belong to the body, and some properties belong to the mind.
3. All bodies are either in motion or at rest.
4. Bodies are individual things, which are distinguished one from the other in respect to motion and rest; thus each must necessarily be determined to motion or rest by another individual thing...
5. When a body in motion impinges on another body at rest, which it is unable to move, it recoils, in order to continue its motion, and the angle made by the line of motion in the recoil and the plane of the body at rest, whereon the moving body has impinged, will be equal to the angle formed by the line of motion of incidence and the same plane.
Postulates I. The human body is composed of a number of individual parts, of diverse nature, each one of which is in itself extremely complex.
II. Of the individual parts composing the human body some are fluid, some soft, some hard.
III. The individual parts composing the human body, and consequently the human body itself, are affected in a variety of ways by external bodies.
IV. The human body stands in need for its preservation of a number of other bodies, by which it is continually, so to speak, regenerated.
V. When the fluid part of the human body is determined by an external body to impinge often on another soft part, it changes the surface of the latter, and, as it were, leaves the impression thereupon of the external body which impels it.
Proof - 6. The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and is so in proportion as its body is capable of receiving a great number of impressions.
7. The human body is affected by external elements, and these are different than the faculties of the human mind.
8. Sometimes the human mind can affect the human body, and vice versa.
9. Sometimes, the human body can affect the human mind, in a way that is unwanted.
10. Sometimes, two bodies at once can be affected by the same idea.
11. We now clearly see what 'Memory' is. It is simply a certain association of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications (affectiones) of the human body.
12. Sometimes, it is as though the mind is not united to the body.
13. The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body.
14. The parts of the human body are highly complex individuals, whose parts can be separated from the human body without in any way destroying the nature and distinctive quality of the latter...
15. The idea of each modification of the human body does not involve an adequate knowledge of the human body itself.
16. We can only have a very inadequate knowledge of the duration of our body.
17. The duration of our body therefore depends on the common order of nature, or the constitution of things.
18. Every idea, which in us is absolute or adequate and perfect, is true.
19. Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.
20. There is nothing positive in ideas, which causes them to be called false; but falsity cannot consist in simple privation (for minds, not bodies, are said to err and to be mistaken), neither can it consist in absolute ignorance, for ignorance and error are not identical; wherefore it consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.
21. For instance, men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions.
22. Hence it follows that there are certain ideas or notions common to all men; for all bodies agree in certain respects, which must be adequately or clearly and distinctly perceived by all.
23. Some minds can perceive more or different things, than oher minds.
24. For instance, those who have most often regarded with admiration the stature of man, will by the name of man understand an animal of erect stature; those who have been accustomed to regard some other attribute, will form a different general image of man, for instance, that man is a laughing animal, a two-footed animal without feathers, a rational animal, and thus, in other cases, everyone will form general images of things according to the habit of his body.
25. It is thus not to be wondered at, that among philosophers, who seek to explain things in nature merely by the images formed of them, so many controversies should have arisen.
26. He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.
27. I think I have thus sufficiently answered these questions—namely, if a true idea is distinguished from a false idea, only in so far as it is said to agree with its object, a true idea has no more reality or perfection than a false idea (since the two are only distinguished by an extrinsic mark); consequently, neither will a man who has a true idea have any advantage over him who has only false ideas.
28. Further, no one doubts that we imagine time, from the fact that we imagine bodies to be moved some more slowly than others, some more quickly, some at equal speed.
29. Many errors, in truth, can be traced to this head, namely, that we do not apply names to things rightly. For instance, when a man says that the lines drawn from the centre of a circle to its circumference are not equal, he then, at all events, assuredly attaches a meaning to the word circle different from that assigned by mathematicians.
30. Very many controversies have arisen from the fact, that men do not rightly explain their meaning, or do not rightly interpret the meaning of others.
31. There is in the mind no volition or affirmation and negation, save that which an idea, inasmuch as it is an idea, involves.
32. Will and understanding are one and the same.
33. We have, however, seen that one idea has more reality or perfection than another, for as objects are some more excellent than others, so also are the ideas of them some more excellent than others; this also seems to point to a difference between the understanding and the will.
34. If it be said that there is an infinite number of things which we cannot perceive, I answer, that we cannot attain to such things by any thinking, nor, consequently, by any faculty of volition. But, it may still be urged, if God wished to bring it about that we should perceive them, he would be obliged to endow us with a greater faculty of perception, but not a greater faculty of volition than we have already.
35. Some ideas are universal, and some ideas are specific to groups or individuals.
36. We must therefore conclude, that we are easily deceived, when we confuse universals with singulars, and the entities of reason and abstractions with realities.
37. The more we educate ourselves, the more we understand life.
38. I have thus fulfilled the promise made at the beginning of this note, and I thus bring the second part of my treatise to a close. I think I have therein explained the nature and properties of the human mind at sufficient length, and, considering the difficulty of the subject, with sufficient clearness. I have laid a foundation, whereon may be raised many excellent conclusions of the highest utility and most necessary to be known, as will, in what follows, be partly made plain.
4:00 - 5:00
1. "Since the world was a cold, cruel place, Tiny Tim didn't get any presents for Christmas. Then the people in the world experienced a moral enlightenment. Then Tiny Tim got all the presents in the store for Christmas presents." --A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
1. To nibble is to eat in small bites.
2. "The mouse nibbled the cheese." --Charles Dickens
2. "The man nibbled the cheese."
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