July 2012
15 posts
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From "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck
“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole...
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From "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck
“And there we were, like a man scratching at his own face and bleeding into his own beard.”
-From “East of Eden,” by John Steinbeck
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Words of the Day
Words of the day: 1) “Eructation” (n): The act of belching. OR an erumpent blast of gas, wind, or other matter ejected from earthly depths.
2)Erumpent” (adj): Bursting through or as if through a surface or covering.
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From "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck
“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge head or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins. And just as there...
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From "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck
“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory....
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From "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck
“When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into its grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of the gods: they do not fall a little; they...
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From "East of Eden," by John Steinbeck
“Cyrus Trask mourned for his wife with a keg of whiskey and three old army friends who had dropped in on their way home to Maine. Baby Adam cried a good deal at the beginning of the wake, for the mourners, not knowing about babies, had neglected to feed him. Cyrus soon solved the problem. He dipped a rag in whisky and gave it to the baby to suck, and after three or four dippings young Adam...
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From "Meditations," by Marcus Aurelius
“Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how often a certain day and hour as it were, having been set unto thee by the gods, thou hast neglected it. It is high time for thee to understand the true nature both of the world, whereof thou art a part; and of that Lord and Governor of the world, from whom, as a channel from the spring, thou thyself didst flow; and that there...
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From "Meditations," by Marcus Aurelius
“…for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, but to be in opposition?”
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From "Meditations," by Marcus Aurelius
“VII. From Alexander the Grammarian, to be un-reprovable myself, and not reproachfully to reprehend any man for a barbarism, or a solecism, or any false pronunciation, but dextrously by way of answer, or testimony, or confirmation of the same matter (taking no notice of the word) to utter it as it should have been spoken; or by some other such close and indirect admonition, handsomely and...
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From "Meditations," by Marcus Aurelius
“To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, or quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of…”
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From "Meditations," by Marcus Aurelius
“II. Of him that brought me up, not to be fondly addicted to either of the two great factions of the courses in the circus, called Prasini and Veneti: nor in the amphitheatre partially to favour any of the gladiators, or fencers, as either the Parmularii, or the Secutores. Moreover, to endure labor; nor to need many things; when I have anything to do, to do it myself rather than by others;...
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From "In Dubious Battle," by John Steinbeck
“They heard a rough, monotonous voice outside, and then a few shouts, and then the angry crowd-roar, a bellow like an animal in fury. ‘London’s telling them,’ said Jim. ‘They’re mad. Jesus, how a mad crowd can fill the air with madness. You don’t understand it, Doc. My old man used to fight alone. When he got licked, he was licked. I remember how lonely...
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From "Gravity's Rainbow," by Thomas Pynchon
“And those who do let go at last: out of each catharsis rise new children, painless, egoless for one pulse of the Between … tablet erased, new writing about to begin, hand and chalk poised in winter gloom over these poor human palimpsests shivering under their government blankets, drugged, drowning in tears and snot of grief so real, torn from so deep that it surprises, seems more than...
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From "Gravity's Rainbow," by Thomas Pynchon
“Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night’s old smoke, alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery, permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror’s secret by which—though it is not...
