“During their leisure time you will see them promenading on the streets and boulevards. One of them takes his friend, male or female, by the hand and they set out on a stroll, going back and forth with purposefulness as if they had a goal in mind, but their only intention is talk and relaxation. Sometimes one even does it by oneself. They say it is ( Read more... )

"Curiously enough, the automobile has created its own species of knights. Lulled into a false sense of security by the armor around him, flattered by the speed he controls, arrogant towards those with inferior mounts or no mounts at all, the modern motorist will display chivalry towards an attractive woman, pay grudging deference to the owner of a ( Read more... )

“Humiliation, however it was produced, was a necessary stage in exploration … out of the very bottom, when the moral and intellectual self one so carefully builds up has been pulled down, when there is nothing between one and the uncaring trampling foot of reality, then one may at last and genuinely observe and know. And the process of humiliation ( Read more... )

"Man, they got more shrinks than cons in the joint. Group therapy on every floor ( Read more... )

Last night I read my first Isak Dinesen story. Here are a couple of quotes:

It was April, the sky and the sea were so clear that it was difficult to hold one’s eyes up against them--salt, infinitely wide, and filled with bird-shrieks--as if someone were incessantly whetting invisible knives, on all sides, high up in Heaven ( Read more... )

"Colonel MONTGOMERY was killed in a duel about a dog; Capt. RAMSAY in one about a servant; Sterne's father was wounded by a Capt. PHILLIPS, in a duel about a goose; and there is a popular story of a gentleman who shot his adversary in consequence of mistaking anchovies for capers."

- The Duelling Handbook by Joseph Hamilton (1829), the only ( Read more... )

Dear Individual who tore five pages out of the library's copy of Dean Miller's Imperial Constantinople:

You are an asshole. Do you think I want to look at the ugly mugs of my fellow commuters?

The book was getting good too. The five pages were missing from one of those "Daily Life..." chapters and right after this passage:
"The residents of the ( Read more... )

( Read more... )