Get ready for the dog days

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a man and a dog."  --  Mark Twain.

The law of devolution

Birthday of Charles Darwin, born 1809.

"Perhaps the most admirable among the admirable laws of Nature is the survival of the weakest." -- Vladimir Nabokov.

Or a grain of sand between a baboon's toes

Writer and poet (and father of the Supreme Court justice of the same name) Oliver Wendell Holmes was born on this day in 1809. He wrote:

"I see no reason for attributing to man a significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand."

The war on civilization

World War I began on this day in 1914; it ended on this date also, in 1919.


"You can't say that civilization don't advance--in every war they kill you in a new way." -- Will Rogers.

   As far as the dregs of civilization went, he’d seen it all. The whole sad spectacle of jealousy, greed, vengeance, lust. Still, he had faith. The utmost credulousness together with the perfect cynicism. Which was truly the Shakespearean way to live, as somebody had written about someone. The villains in Shakespeare, when they were front and center you believed in them completely. You were ready to cast your lot with them. Their characters were truths.  --  Chapter 33, The Misforgotten.

He withdrew, to save his soul -- and his neck

Artist Paul Gauguin was born on this day in 1848.


"Fame! What a vain word, and what a vain recompense!" he wrote. "I think only of withdrawing myself far from men, and in consequence far from fame."

"Don't talk to me of Gauguin. I'd like to wring the fellow's neck!" -- Paul Cezanne.

Today is Armed Forces Day -- Sa--lute!!

"The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men." -- Alfred de Vigny.

Words worth heeding

Poet William Wordsworth was born on this day in 1770. He wrote:

"Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?"

Those crazy Founding Fathers

The U. S. Constitution went into effect on this day in 1789.

"That all men are equal is a proposition to which...no sane invidual has ever given his assent." -- Aldous Huxley.

“Plato just assumes some people are better than others,” Vic said.

“Yes, he does.”
“And these will be the rulers.”
“Yes. The wisest will rule the rest.”
“But they won’t be tyrants.”
“No, they’ll be philosophers, and they’ll know what’s best for everybody, including themselves.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” Jeffrey barked.   --  Chapter 19, The Misforgotten.

Here's mud in your eye

English philosopher George Moore was born on this day in 1852.

"Humanity is a pigsty," he wrote, "where liars, hypocrites and the obscene in spirit congregate."

Chapter 13, maybe

The American philosopher William James was born on this day in 1842. He wrote:


"Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."

And here is chapter and verse from H. L. Mencken:

"No one knows who created the visible universe, and it is infinitely improbable that anything properly described as evidence on the point will ever be discovered. No one knows what motives or intentions, if any, lie behind what we call natural laws. No one knows why man has his present form. No one knows why sin and suffering were sent into this world--that is, why the fashioning of man was badly botched."

But ours is the best, right?

The first session of the United Nations General Assembly was held on this day in 1946.

"The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was." -- Thomas Carlyle.

Then I'm the sanest person you'll ever meet

Emily Dickinson's birthday. She was born in 1830.


"It is essential to the sanity of mankind," she wrote, "that each one should think the other crazy."

Cutterback’s dad was a crazy alcoholic, as Cutterback had warned him, but when, the first time Sully ever met him, the old man leveled a gun at him, he was startled nonetheless. Sully had come by Cutterback’s office to help him count inventory, and after about an hour or so the old man had shown up with a case of beer, and they’d all three been drinking while Cutterback and Sully counted and Cutterback’s father told stories. Then the old man had brought out a bottle of whiskey from his cabinet and they’d started in on that, and at a certain point Cutterback had told his dad that he was in the way and holding things up. The old man had pulled out a pistol and started waving it around, and Sully had laughed at the sight of him, and it was then that he’d pointed the gun straight at Sully’s nose.  --  Chapter 25, The Misforgotten.

The Devil didn't make me do it

Novelist Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim) was born on this day in 1857.

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary," Conrad wrote. "Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
 

   Men were bad, incorrigibly so, Sully knew. The specimens lurking in the library lobby, adoze in chairs and at tables, groping in the stacks and jerking off in the stalls, surfing the Internet for God knew what, plotting their hijacks and heists, were wholly representative of the populace at large. Mischief on their minds, malice in their hearts. Malevolence. Here the accumulated wisdom of the world, the exalted ideas of great men and women, published for posterity and arrayed on row after row of shelves, could not avail against its palpable presence. Or so it seemed to Sully. The malingerers, the thieves, the drug and smut addicts, the would-be arsonists, the insane, the prostitutes and pimps, all dressed up with nowhere to go. Except the library. A malignancy. Twitching, festering. A moiling mob. Where did they all come from?  --  Chapter 16, The Misforgotten.

The Marquis de Shame

The Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse-François de Sade) died on this day in 1814. He wrote:

"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."

To read about the Marquis de Sade's death and last wishes, visit farewells.blogspot.com.

   “Well, Augustine said that we have a mind, or a will, which is above the body, but our bodies are always keeping us from doing what our minds will us to do.”

   “Our minds are good, but our bodies are bad?”
   “That’s basically what he said.”
   “I dunno. I got a pretty dirty mind sometimes.” Robert cackled and shot a look around the room.
--  Chapter 27, The Misforgotten.

Give us enough rope

Mark Twain was born on this day in 1835.

"There are times one would like to hang the whole human race," he wrote, "and finish the farce."
 
“He got bitter in his old age. Wanted to blow up the human race. Too bad. Maybe he was too smart. What do you think?”
“I think he went through a lot in his life. As famous as he was, maybe it was a disappointment to him.”
Coach Pickering nodded. “I like that.” He poked at his cobbler. “Be prepared. Expect disappointment, and you won’t be disappointed, right?”  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

Whoever shot J. R. sure was mad

On this day in 1980, 350 million people around the world tuned in to television's popular prime-time drama "Dallas," to find out who shot J.R.


Also, this is the birthday of Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet), born in 1694, the French essayist, philosopher and wit who was famous throughout Europe and whose ideas influenced the leaders of the American Revolution, not to mention the French one.

The book to read by Voltaire is Candide, an attack on optimism. Voltaire was a world-class cynic. His famous statement, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him," was written in a letter.

Voltaire never heard of television but the soap opera flourished even in his time, in the form of plays for the theater, which he also wrote. His literary aim was satire not enlightenment, as he saw that men were incapable of it. He wrote:

"Men will always be mad and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all."

Like something stuck to your shoe?

W. S. Gilbert, the English librettist who was one-half of Gilbert and Sullivan, was born today in 1836. He wrote:
"Man is nature's sole mistake."

How often had he warmed himself by the fire of fellow feeling, reveled in the commingling of like minds, kindred hearts! At a particular pitch of drunkenness, all men were brothers, and the self slipped away, receded temporarily. The only immortality Sully believed in was just this, the persistence of good will, the community of souls that would outlast heaven and earth, that would live on as a rebuke to the implacable enmity of the cosmos.


But how could you permanently maintain what was, after all, only a sporadic impulse? When men were sober they were self-absorbed, hopelessly entangled in their dream lives and therefore blind to the real life of others.  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

Everybody loves fireworks

Author Robert Louis Stevenson was born on this day in 1850. He wrote:
"This world itself, traveling blindly and swiftly in overcrowded space, among a million other worlds traveling blindly and swiftly in contrary directions, may very well come by a knock that will set it into explosion like a penny squib. And what, pathologically looked at, is the human body with all its organs, but a mere bagful of petards?" -- Aes Triplex.

“The heartless voids and immensities of the universe.” That was Melville, wasn’t it? Or was it Flaubert? The universe was as inhospitable to Emma as it was to Ishmael, equally cruel, capricious and senseless on land or at sea. That was what he’d carried away from books. The inscrutable pointlessness of life. The hostility it had in store for us. A hero or heroine, brimming with hope and good will, sets out in a novel to engage with life, prepared for a skirmish, for its inevitable bumps and bruises, and ends up crushed, demolished.


Life took you where it would, but who needed books to learn that?  --  Chapter 22, The Misforgotten.

He's nuts, I should hope

First use of the atom bomb on this day in 1945.


"Cursed is every one who placeth his hope in man."  --  St. Augustine.

“Augustine said that because of that original sin we are all born into sin. We start out with a stain on us.”

“That’s heavy.”
“He said that our only hope was God’s grace. We have to hope that God looks kindly on us.”
“That ain’t worked out so far neither,” Red said.
“You got that right,” Joe chimed in.
“You’ve got me, don’t you?” Cubby piped. “Sweetie.”
“So God is sort of like a prison warden?” Jeffrey asked.
“You could say that. That’s a good analogy.”
                                                                                   -- Chapter 27, The Misforgotten.

Get ready for the Dog Days!

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man." -- Mark Twain.


“There’s a professor here that’s famous for Mark Twain,” Pickering said. “He’s been written up. You like Twain?”

“Yes, sir.”
“You know what Twain said about dogs, don’t you? You pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he won’t bite you. That’s the difference between a dog and a man.”
“Yes, sir. I remember that.”
“He got bitter in his old age. Wanted to blow up the human race. Too bad. Maybe he was too smart. What do you think?”
“I think he went through a lot in his life. As famous as he was, maybe it was a disappointment to him.”