Monday, November 27, 2006

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"What a strange life we all lead in this town," he said, "and all because we think we're doing the right thing for the country."
"If all the people who talk about doing the right thing for the country only did the right thing for the country," Brig said with weary dryness, "what a wonderful country it would be."
"It is a wonderful country," the director of the Post said. "It just gets a little mixed-up sometimes."
Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1959)

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"Like a city in dreams, the great white capital stretches along the placid river from Georgetown on the west to Anacostia on the east. It is a city of temporaries, a city of just-arriveds and only-visitings, built on the shifting sands of politics, filled with people passing through. . . . They come, they stay, they make their mark, writing big or little on their times, in the strange, fantastic, fascinating city that mirrors so faithfully their strange, fantastic, fascinating land in which there are few absolute wrongs or absolute rights, few all-blacks or all-whites, few dead-certain positives that won't be changed tomorrow; their wonderful, mixed-up, blundering,stumbling, hopeful land in which evil men do good things and good men do evil in a way of life and govenment so complex and delicately balanced that only Americans can understand it and often they are baffled."
--Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (1959)

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Mr. President's Neighborhood

A semi-regular educational program designed to wean viewers from naive optimism and nascent jingoism.

Episode 3: Mr. P Says "Just Say No to the Course"
http://mm.dfilm.com/mm2s/mm_route.php?id=3076336

Episode 4: Mr. P Fiddles with a Riddle.
http://mm.dfilm.com/mm2s/mm_route.php?id=3076353

[Paste the URL in your browser if necessary or just convenient.]

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Religious Priorities, Take II

"Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? The sun, the moon, and the stars have been worshipped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky? ... See how much He has been able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and preach. The Word did it all. Had I wished I might have started a conflagration at Worms. But while I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow."

--Martin Luther

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Truer Words Seldom Spoken

"We know so little about even those who are closest to us," said Alex. "We're all mysteries to one another--and often we're profound mysteries to ourselves."
. . . He closed his eyes. Then suddenly he said very clearly: "Oh God, how we all lie to one another!"

--Alex Jardine, Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch

"Most people have, at some time or another, to stand alone and to suffer, and their final shape is determined by their response to their probation: they emerge either the slaves of circumstances or in some sense captains of their souls."

--Charles E. Raven, A Wanderer's Way
Quoted in Ultimate Prizes by Susan Howatch
Truer Words Seldom Spoken

At the last dinner party I had attended, some inebriated youth had tried to tell me that the Beatles were greater musicians than Beethoven; that was the moment when I knew beyond doubt that the 1960s had parted company with reality.

--Charles Ashworth, Absolute Truths by Susan Howatch