a shandean commonplace book

I suppose one reason why we are seldom able to comfort our neighbors with our words is that our goodwill gets adulterated, in spite of ourselves, before it can pass our lips. We can send black puddings and pettitoes without giving them a flavour of our own egoism; but language is a stream that is almost sure to smack of a mingled soil. George Eliot, Silas Marner

I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to believe the world can be better. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me.   Alice Walker

The reason we’re made of flesh that feels pain, we’re evolving to be careful creatures who handle one another with all considerateness.                         Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey

    His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow ; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.                     George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bar...

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.                         Adrienne Rich

to call a woman ‘hysterical’ because you have not the knowledge necessary to deny her facts is the last refuge of the unmanly and the coward…I always felt when termed hysterical that I had triumphed because it meant my arguments cannot be met nor my statements denied…                         Emily Hobhouse [MS. Hobhouse 25].

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.                        Gwendolyn Brooks

In everyone there sleeps A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make By loving others, but across most it sweeps, As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.                          Philip Larkin   

A scholar is just a library's way of making another library. Daniel Dennett

How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?                         Anthony Doerr

There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.  Arundhati Roy

It is a great nuisance that knowledge can be acquired only by hard work. W. Somerset Maugham

Understanding is love’s other name.                        Thich Nhat Hanh

“Listen, if it’s got four wheels or a dick you’re goin a have trouble with it, guaranteed,” said Palma.                         Annie Proulx

You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty. Jessica Mitford

No amount of belief makes something a fact.                        James Randi

    It may be that when we no longer know what to do     we have come to our real work,     and that when we no longer know which way to go     we have come to our real journey.     The mind that is not baffled is not employed.     The impeded stream is the one that sings.                         Wendell Berry

It’s always night, or we wouldn’t need light.                        Thelonious Monk

And if you’ve ever been to the lonely coast you’ve seen how the shore rock drops off into the black water and how the light on the point is final. Beyond are the old rollers coming on for millions of years. It is like that here at night but instead of the rollers its wind. But the water was here once. You think about the sea that covered this place hundreds of millions of years ago, the slow evaporations, mud turned to stone. There’s nothing calm in those thoughts. It isn’t finished, it can still tear apart. Nothing is finished. You take your chances.                        Annie Proulx   

You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.                        Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon