September 20, 2008: Flaubert's chemist on priests - 0 Comments

"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month—a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."

"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."

The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."

- Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 1857.

September 14, 2008: Trollope makes the gift richer by delaying it - 0 Comments

"But she was highly ambitious, and she played her game with great skill and great caution. Her doors were not open to all callers; - were shut even to some who find but few doors closed against them; - were shut occasionally to those whom she most specially wished to see within them. She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it. We are told the Latin proverb that he who gives quickly gives twice; but I say that she who gives quickly seldom gives more than half."

- Trollope, Phineas Finn, 1869.

September 6, 2008: The Mole and the Rat hear the piping - 0 Comments

"`O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.'"

- Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, 1908.

September 3, 2008: Ironquill on Type - 0 Comments

"All night the sky was draped in darkness thick;
From rumbling clouds imprisoned lightnings swept;
    Into the printer's stick,
    With energetic click,
The ranks of type into battalions crept,
Which formed brigades while dreaming labor slept;
And ere dawn's crimson pennons were unfurled,
The night-formed columns charged the waking world."

- Ironquill, Rhymes of Ironquill, 1898