Ex Libris Kirkland

New Deal! New site.

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Thu, 20 May 2010 19:03:00 +0000

New deal, people! I'm moving my self-centered book musings over to a new site: ExLibrisKirkland.com.

December 30, 2009: Pickwick is my Christmas book.

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:56:00 +0000

"Man is but mortal: and there is a point beyond which human courage cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and--we will not say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat--he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him."

- Pickwick, Dickens, 1837

October 30, 2009: Milton takes a stab at book hoarders

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:50:00 +0000

"However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore."

Milton, Paradise Regained, 1671.

October 22, 2009: Chesterton on business books

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:51:00 +0000

"On every book stall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books."

- G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, 1909

October 6, 2009: The Romance of Pepper

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:07:00 +0000

". . . gold and jewels and elephants and pepper. Especially pepper! Pepper may not mean much to us, but in that age it ranked with precious stones. Men risked the perils of the deep and fought and died for pepper. We find that hard to understand, perhaps, for the romance of pepper has now faded from the earth."

- Elaine Sanceau, The Land of Prester John, 1944.

September 14, 2009: Two notes from Dosto on work

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:38:00 +0000

"The work did not seem very heavy, and it was not until long afterwards that I understood that it was hard labour not because it was hard and unending, but because it was compulsory and unavoidable. The peasant works harder and longer--at times far into the night in summer, but he works for himself, for a sensible purpose, and suffers far less than the convict who does a compulsory task that is utterly useless to him. It once occurred to me that if it were desired to crush a man completely, to punish him so severely that even the most hardened murderer would quail, it would only be needed to make his work absolutely pointless and absurd."

and

"Without work they would have destroyed each other like spiders in a jar."

- Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House, 1862.

August 31, 2009: Coudal on failures

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:17:00 +0000

"If it’s a good idea and it gets you excited, try it, and if it bursts into flames, that’s going to be exciting too. People always ask, “What is your greatest failure?” I always have the same answer – We’re working on it right now, it’s gonna be awesome!"

Jim Coudal, 2009

August 29, 2009: Melville on attainable felicity

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:16:00 +0000

"It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times sperm was such a favorite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener! such a softener; such a delicious mollifier! After having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralize.
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, wove almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as. I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,- literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti."

Melville, Moby-Dick, 1851

August 1, 2009: Elliot defines emotions.

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:27:00 +0000

"Emotions are not primitive impulses to be controlled or ignored, but cognitive judgments or construals that tell us about ourselves and our world. In this understanding, destructive emotions can be changed, beneficial emotions can be cultivated, and emotions are a crucial part of morality. Emotions also help us to work efficiently, assist our learning, correct faulty logic and help us build relationships with others."

- Matthew Elliot, Faithful Feelings - Rethinking Emotion in the New Testament, 2006.

July 27, 2009: I know this pleasure.

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:04:00 +0000

"But they made me out a sinister (though clumsy) agent of Imperialist intrigue, a kind of shady Lawrence; and I could not help feeling pleased that anyone should take me so seriously."

- Peter Fleming, News from Tartary, 1936.

July 22, 2009: Shelley on determination

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:20:00 +0000

"Are you so easily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious expedition? And wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was smooth and placid as a southern sea, but because, at every new incident, your fortitude was to be called forth, and your courage exhibited; because danger and death surrounded it, and these you were to brave and overcome . . . Oh! Be men, or be more than men . . . This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable, and cannot withstand you, if you say that it shall not."

Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818.

July 8, 2009: Fleming on the pleasures of hunger

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:46:00 +0000

"We were never short of food; but, with the exception of perhaps an hour after the evening meal, there was no single moment in the day when we would not have eaten, and eaten with the greatest relish, anything that appeared remotely edible. Dog biscuits would have been welcome. A plate of cold tapioca pudding would have vanished in a flash. Your dust-bins, had we come across them, would not have been inviolate."

Peter Fleming, News from Tartary, 1936.

July 6, 2009: Charmingly vague, yes?

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 05:48:00 +0000

"The [unidentified feral donkeys] are known to Tibet and Ladakh as 'kyang', to the Turkis of Sinkiang as 'kulan,' to China (always charmingly vague about natural history) as 'wild horses.'"

Peter Fleming, News from Tartary, 1936.

July 3, 2009: Father John on mysterious hats

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:16:00 +0000

After spending a long paragraph explaining the female Tartar's headdress . . .

"The Tartar men have hats different from other peoples' whose form we cannot clearly describe."

- Friar Giovanni DiPlano Carpini, Historia Mongolorum, 1250ish

June 17, 2009: The peasants' refrain

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:29:00 +0000

I absolutely love this. At first it seemed awkward, but as it repeats throughout the poem it becomes quite lovely - a beautiful, chorus-like refrain. It's almost incantatory.

"We argued and argued,
While arguing quarrelled,
While quarrelling fought,
Till at last we decided
That never again

Would we turn our steps homeward
To kiss wives and children,
To see the old people,
Until we have settled
The subject of discord;
Until we have found
The reply to our question--
Of who can, in Russia,
Be happy and free?"

- Nicholas Nekrassov (trans. Soskice), Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?, 1879.

June 2, 2009: Trueman on blog attacks

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:22:00 +0000

"The gung-ho ferocity of blog attacks is often matched only by the oleaginous fawning of the webwarriors when encountered in the flesh, something which I confess has been, on occasion, a source of some mild, and probably sinful, amusement to me as I observe their unctuous and sycophantic squirming in my presence. I have seen the future, and, frankly, it looks like Uriah Heep with a Facebook account."

- Carl Trueman, Thank God for Bandit Country, 2009

May 31, 2009: Turgenev on the cause of misfortune

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:04:00 +0000

"For example, if any misfortune were mentioned, lightning starting a village fire, floods washing away a mill, or a peasant chopping off his hand, whatever it might be, with concentrated fury he would insist: 'what is her name?' The 'her' referred to teh woman who was the cause of the misfortune, since, in his view, if only you probed inoto any misfortune, you would find a woman at the bottom of it."

- Turgenev (trans Alec Brown), Rudin, 1855.

May 30, 2009: Hodge quotes somebody else

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:11:00 +0000

"There are but two places into the whole universe of God from which infants are excluded. The one is hell; the other is the Baptist Church."

- quoted by Charles Hodge, 'The Church Membership of Infants", 1858

May 29, 2009: Field on Donkeys

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:13:00 +0000

"They are not silent like workhorses
Who are happy or indifferent about the plow and the wagon;
Donkeys don't submit like that
For they are sensitive
And cry continually under their burdens
. . .
And if I tried to explain to them
Why work is not only necessary but good,
I am afraid that they would never understand
And kick me with their back legs
As commentary on my wisdom."

Edward Field, Stand Up, Friend, With Me, 1963.

May 10, 2009: Three Drunkards on Democracy

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:47:00 +0000

"Democracy! Democracy! Country A or B is merely a division made for the sake of convenience in naming various parts of the earth. These names were not meant to build walls among its inhabitants. Democracy creates a single, large, complete circle embracing the entire earth by bringing together the wisdom and love of the people of the world."

Nakae Chomin, A Discourse by Three Drunkards on Government, 1887

May 6, 2009: Coffeen on Monologues and Conversations

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:40:00 +0000

"What I enjoy is the monologue and the conversation. In the monologue, someone holds forth, generously bestowing the audience with his or her spin on things. The more monologues the better, especially if they are strange and beautiful.

Conversations, too, make my heart go pitter patter. In a conversation — a good conversation —, the participants try together to push, pull, fold, spin ideas into strange and beautiful shapes, a collaborative monologue, if you will."

- Daniel Coffeen, An Emphatic Umph, 2009

May 6, 2009: Small on the loss of primative cultures

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:43:00 +0000

"No one knows how many San still practice hunting and gathering, but clearly the traditional way of living is, for the most part, no more. . . Some might feel a sense of loss for the San way of life, but that would be unfair. All societies change, absorbing the ways of others, and who are we to say that the San must hold on to a lifestyle just because we think it provides clues to the past?
People are not museums."

- Meredith Small, Our Babies, Ourselves, 1998.

May 4, 2009: Preemie sideshow!

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:40:00 +0000

"In 1896, Martin Conoey designed the incubator, a device developed to aid premature babies. . . In a bizarre combination of medicine and sideshow, Cooney gathered hundreds of premature babies (they were easy to obtain because doctors assumed premature infants would die), put them into incubators, and exhibited them at various expositions and fairs in America and Europe."

- Meredith Small, Our Babies, Ourselves, 1998.

May 3, 2009: Donne on God's creation of the cure, but not the illness

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Mon, 04 May 2009 06:26:00 +0000

"I know thou hast made the matter, and the man, and the art; and I go not from thee when I go to the physician. Thou didst not make clothes before there was a shame of the nakedness of the body, but thou didst make physic before there was any grudging of any sickness; for thou didst imprint a medicinal virtue in many simples, even from the beginning; didst thou mean that we should be sick when thou didst so? when thou madest them? No more than thou didst mean, that we should sin, when thou madest us: thou foresawest both, but causedst neither."

- Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624.

May 2, 2009: Mandeville on the proof of the True Cross

noreply@blogger.com (matt kirkland) — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:31:00 +0000

"And that was the very cross assayed; for they found three crosses, one of our Lord, and two of the two thieves; and Saint Helen proved them by a dead body that arose from death to life, when that it was laid on it, that our Lord died on."

- John Mandeville, The Travels of John Mandeville, 1351.