“It is great sin to swear unto a sin. But greater sin to keep a sinful oath. Who can be bound by any solemn vow to do a murderous deed, to rob a man, to force a spotless virgin’s chastity, to reave the orphan of his patrimony, to wring the widow from her custom’d right, and have no other reason for this wrong but that he was bound by a solemn oath?” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 5.1
Category: Lit & Crit
“Small things make base men proud.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 4.1
“Small curs are not regarded when they grin; but great men tremble when the lion roars.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 3.1
“Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud: and after summer evermore succeeds barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold: so cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 2.4
“Of all base passions fear is most accurs’d.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – First Part 5.2
“Care is no cure, but rather corrosive, for things that are not to be remedied.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – First Part 3.3
“To cause wit in others, you must learn how to be laughed at, how to absorb it, and finally how to triumph over it, in high good humor.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tamed submission to usurped authority or even the natural resistance to it, has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance, has more attraction than abstract right.” – William Hazlitt (quoted in Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human)
“Word choices frame our discourse on every subject, and to a large extent govern the range of our thinking.” – Ed Walker, “Index And Introduction To The Subject And Power By Michel Foucault”
“Actual authorship of a military document is seldom known.” – James Lee Cate, E. Kathleen Williams, & Louis E. Asher Fellow, “The Air Corps Prepares for War, 1939-41,” The Army Air Forces in World War II
“Fagan’s battalion, with Company M of the 3d Raider Battalion and a forward observer team from the l2th Marines attached, embarked on board LCMs and LCVPs at cape Torokina early on the morning of 29 November [1943]. One hour later, at 0400, the boats moved in toward the Koiari beach and the Marines were landed virtually in the middle of a Japanese supply dump. The surprise was mutual. A Japanese officer, armed only with a sword, and apparently expecting Japanese boats, greeted the first Marines ashore. His demise and the realization of his mistake were almost simultaneous. The Marines, now committed to establishing a beachhead in the midst of an enemy camp, dug in as quickly as possible to develop the situation.” – Maj. Douglas T. Kane, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., “Northern Solomons Operations: End of a Mission,” Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II
“Every defect in a man, and in others’ way of taking him, our agreement that gold has value gives us power to rise above.” – Regina Corrado, “Unauthorized Cinnamon”, Deadwood
“A disappearance isn’t like a death. You spend your time saying to yourself, One day, he’ll come back. You wonder, Where does he live? What’s become of him? Is he suffering? A missing person is a ghost.” – Emmanuel Carrère, “The Art of Nonfiction” (interviewed by Susannah Hunnewell in The Paris Review)
“The death of belief becomes the birth of invention.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.” – Nick Cave (interviewed by Jarvis Cocker, Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service)
“In the war against Ethiopia, 1935-36, Italian bombers gained experience in the use of various types of projectiles, and experiments were conducted in dropping ammunition, food, and water to the Italian ground forces; even fresh meat was supplied for the troops by the dropping of live goats and sheep which parachuted to the desert and took up the march with the army until they were needed for food.” – E. Kathleen Williams & Louis E. Asher Fellow, “Air War, 1939-41,” The Army Air Forces in World War II
“New Georgia lacked the drama of the early months of Guadalcanal and the awesome scope of later battles in the Central Pacific. Instead, it was characterized by a considerable amount of fumbling, inconclusive combat; and the final triumph was marred by the fact that a number of command changes were required to insure the victory. There were few tactical or strategic successes and the personal hardships of a rigorous jungle campaign were only underscored by the planning failures.” – Maj. Douglas T. Kane, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., “End of a Campaign,” Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II
“Breakfast on the morning of the 10th was not a problem for the raiders who had not eaten since the morning of the 9th. There was no food.” – Maj. Douglas T. Kane, USMC, and Henry I. Shaw, Jr., “The Dragons Peninsula Campaign: Capture of Enogai,” Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II
“Western culture, if it is to survive its current self-hatred, must become only more Hamlet-like. We have no equally powerful and influential image of human cognition pushed to its limits; Plato’s Socrates comes closest. Both think too well to survive.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“I don’t fear things that will only kill me. I don’t even fear things that will kill me and take out a city block. I fear most the things that will leave me alive in good health, and living with the terror of my continued existence.” – Matt Harbowy, “What Chemical Do Scientists Fear the Most?”
“Nature is a forgiving mistress, and you might could have some time to fill before she collects her due.” – Jody Worth, “A Lie Agreed Upon (Part II)”, Deadwood
“Each of us is a servile breath, a fool or victim, base, cowardly, sleepy, a concourse of atoms, caught between past and future in an illusory present, poor, moon-crazed, friendless, and subject to a thousand little deaths. We are our anxieties; no more, no less.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human
“Modern war with its extravagant material factors places an especial importance upon a nation’s economic structure and particularly upon its ‘industrial web.’ A nation may be defeated simply by the interruption of the delicate balance of this complex organization, which is vulnerable to the air arm and directly to neither of the other arms. It is possible that a moral collapse brought about by disturbances in this close-knit web may be sufficient to force an enemy to surrender.” – James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, “The Army Air Arm Between Two Wars, 1919-39,” The Army Air Forces in World War II
“Of the roughly 21,000 Japanese defenders, 216 survived the battle to be taken prisoner, and an estimated 3,000 went into hiding during the U.S. occupation of the island. By August 1945, most of these had either been killed, captured, or had surrendered, but one group did not lay down its arms until 1949.” – Carsten Fries, “Battle of Iwo Jima”
“I wouldn’t trust a man that wouldn’t try to steal a little.” – Elizabeth Sarnoff, “Suffer the Little Children,” Deadwood
“Some goddamned time a man’s due to stop arguin’ with hisself. Feeling he’s twice the goddamned fool he knows he is. Because he can’t be somthin’ he tries to be every goddamned day without once getting to dinnertime and not fucking it up.” – Elizabeth Sarnoff, “Here Was a Man,” Deadwood
“People never prize what they have always had in abundance.” – Anton Chekhov, “The Trousseau” (trans. Constance Garnett)
“Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one’s eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.” – Anton Chekhov, “A Living Chattel” (trans. Constance Garnett)
“Blind love finds ideal beauty everywhere.” – Anton Chekhov, “A Living Chattel” (trans. Constance Garnett)
“Few among us are qualified to testify as to whether God is dead, or alive, or wandering somewhere in exile (the possibility I tend to favor).” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human