To thine own self be true

(bust on my bedroom English literature bookshelf)

There are many quotable lines and speeches taken from Shakespeare: “Beware the Ides of March”, “It was Greek to me.” , “Romeo, Rome, wherefore art thou Romeo?”, but some have a greater ring of truth than others and I have selected some below which have stood out for or influenced me significantly.

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“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.” -Midsummer Night’s Dream

(a romantic/idealistic view of love, but perhaps a more significant version than the mere sensory or physical kind)

“Nothing can come of nothing.” -King Lear

(one needs something to work with if one is going to produce anything/get anywhere; for instance, there have to be words, experiences, imaginings, facts, some context, etc. in order to create)

“Can one desire too much of a good thing? -As You Like It

(good question; the questioning of surfeit occurs elsewhere in S’s poems and plays; no doubt people certainly are/get disappointed whenever a good thing ceases)

“True it is that we have seen better days.” -As You Like It

(as one matures and ages, there will be better days and experiences that are recalled when the going gets tough or one is having an off-day or rough patch)

“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.” -Romeo and Juliet

(this advice often comes in handy especially for young or immature people and old/er people who can physically hurt themselves if moving too fast or incautiously)

“True nobility is exempt from fear.” -Henry VI, Part II

(those we respect and look up to often display courage and a lack of fear even in difficult situations or crises)

“I bear a charmed life.” -Macbeth

(we may feel ourselves to have been lucky or fortunate enough to say the same thing.)

“The play’s the thing.”
–Hamlet

(much of life seems like a play, as reflected in other Shakespearean quotes; this may help us to better understand our lives if we appreciate the wisdom of this metaphor.)

“The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
-Hamlet

(we have all procrastinated about various things in our lives, simply by delaying and thinking too much about them without taking action.)

“There is a diivinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”
-Hamlet

(often there are times when we feel that there is a fate or destiny beyond whatever personal choices we make.)

“We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
-The Tempest

(at times and in the long run, life can tire you out literally; ironically, too we spend a lot of our life dreaming as well as sleeping; much about our lives is basically illusion or dream-like )

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
-As You Like It

(we’ve certainly run into both types of people and understandings; there is irony either way–much of life, as shown in Shakespeare’s writing, is ironic, ambiguous, and paradoxical–these factors are reflected, likewise, in life experience.)

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
-Midsummer Night’s Dream

(a lot of human behavior is foolish/absurd which is not surprising given our love of humor and play; we certainly do take ourselves too seriously at times–something mentioned in the previous quote.)

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
-Julius Caesar

(Timing is very important, as Shakespeare often points out; one has to act when ‘opportunity knocks’ if one wants to be successful in some way; one has to ‘ride the wave’ and ‘go with the flow’ when there are ‘windows’.)

“What’s gone and what’s past help
Should be past grief.”
-Winter’s Tale

(something Robert Frost matter-of-factly records in his “‘Out, Out–‘” poem about the accidental death of a boy–“And,they, since they/ Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”; there is nothing wrong with facing/accepting facts and stoicism in matters of death.)

“Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
-Hamlet

(there seems to be a lot of dishonesty in so many different social situations–cheating on taxes, white lies, plagiarism, etc.; it is always refreshing to meet an outwardly honest person.)

“Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.”
-Henry VI, Part II

(perspective–judging is easy and common; we all make mistakes; no one is perfect)

“Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.”
-Hamlet

(same as above, hold off on easy and fast judgements; be prepared to get judged a lot in the process; it is a good idea to listen closely, too, and get all the facts before responding.)

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
-Hamlet

(this applies to a lot of people who have hidden possibilities and potential, often unknown to themselves.)

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”
-Midsummer Night’s Dream

(it is hard to be pleasant or happy at all times with one’s significant other–no relationship is perfect; there will be upsets, hardships, disagreements, arguments, setbacks, and challenges.)

“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.”
-Twelfth Night

(sometimes one can look too hard for love; sometimes one gets lucky and someone finds us and loves us anyway.)

“To hold, as t’were, the mirror up to nature.”
-Hamlet

(there is some point to this process–what Hamlet did to Gertrude in the closet scene–it may not be easy but be necessary, nonetheless, to level with people and show who they are and how they are behaving with the end of improvement in mind–‘tough love’)

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
-Troilus and Cressida

(nature definitely is what we are a part of, what we arise from; there are many benefits to incorporating nature in our lives and being close to it; potentially, a very positive, renewing and fulfilling relationship.)

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
-Hamlet

(although we may know quite a bit and figure we have a handle on stuff, there are many mysteries and unknowns; these come into play and influence us in significant, unexpected ways.)

“I am a man
More sinn’d against than sinning.”
-King Lear

(this does happen sometime that those who are blamed can also be victimized or marginalized as Lear was; Shakespeare is often perspectively ‘measuring things’ and is concerned about fairness or injustices as much as crimes or mistakes.)

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
-Hamlet

(many situations are relative and not always black-and-white matters; there are usually multiple perspectives on the same thing, different and differing viewpoints; we always reach our conclusions about something through our own thinking; there is ultimately a subjectivity to the process of morality, ethics, and our personal choices.)

“To thine own self be true.”
-Hamlet

(the title of this blog/site; always a starting and reference point; it is usually good to follow your gut instinct, hunches, or intuition when not sure.)

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
-Hamlet

(Shakespeare intended many meanings for ‘wit’–it can refer to humor and intelligence. Most people prefer concise speeches and humor, brief e-mails, and people getting to the point quickly, clearly, and sometime humorously.)

“For I am nothing if not critical.”
-Othello

(that judgemental side of humanity referred to previously; certainly most people have or find things to criticize and complain about.)

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.”
-Twelfth Night

(beyond the quote’s context, some, indeed, are seemingly different, unusual, and unconventional, seemingly marked from birth for greatness; I can’t think of a famous person from history who didn’t have to work to achieve whatever fame and greatness he or she had; it is true, also, that some people are lucky to be in the right place at the right time or become great unexpectedly, perhaps undeservedly.)

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.”
-As You Like It

(life is like a play and the metaphors here clarify in what ways and senses that is true; we experience many scenes and other actors every day; the process of life is play-like or movie-like.)

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d…
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
-The Merchant of Venice

(mercy is good and necessary in some cases; and it does benefit the people who judge as much as the people who are judged–many people need a break; it is particularly good to cut slack in non-life-and-death matters.)

“We have heard the chimes at midnight.”
-Henry IV, Part II

(at some point, we have all stayed up late having fun or carousing, enjoying life)

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions!”
-Hamlet

(seemingly, once we experience troubles, they often mysteriously multiply)

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it”
-Twelfth Night

(beautiful music is extremely pleasurable and satisfying; one can never get enough of it; beautiful music and love go together, complement each other)

“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(truly inspired poets and writers use imagination to create something fine or great out of nothing)

“In delay there lies no plenty.”
-Twelfth Night

(no point in wasting time especially if one is trying to or needs to accomplish something)

“Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
-Macbeth

(sleep is very important and does relieve our worries, restores our faculties, and enables us to go on more clear-headedly)

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.
Which we ascribe to heaven.”
-All’s Well That Ends Well

(too often people rely too much on outside others or external forces to solve their problems; not assuming ultimate responsibility for their own lives)

“All that live must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.”
-Hamlet

(the fact of mortality of all of nature; ‘no one gets out alive’; ‘eternity’–there is a foreverness to death)

“Use every man after his desert and who would ‘scape whipping?”
-Hamlet

(we all make mistakes, have sinned; a certain amount of mercy, leniency, or forgiveness is fair/always a good idea)

“We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.”
-Hamlet

(imperfect language is our medium of communication; we need to be clear in what we say and intend or others will not understand or misunderstand us.)

“The readiness is all.”
-Hamlet

(the readiness for when the time to decide, choose, or act comes; there is merit to preparedness and organization as well as imagination to foresee possibilities and likelihoods)

“The time of life is short;
To spend that shortness basely were too long.”
Henry IV, Part 2

(we need to spend our time more judiciously, thoughtfully, sensitively, usefully)

“O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend,
The brightest heaven of invention.”
-Henry V

(the grandest call for inspiration and to creative expression)

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
-Julius Caesar

(again, we are responsible for what happens to us; character is destiny)

“But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.”
-Julius Caesar

(a statement of integrity and unchangeability, but potentially, too, one of stubbornness and pride before a fall)

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”
-King Lear

(a parent’s worst nightmare: a child’s ingratitude or abusiveness)

“I am tied to the stake, and must stand the course.”
-King Lear

(there always will be those moments when one can’t run, hide, or dodge conflict, crisis, and suffering; one must ‘face the music’)

“The wheel is come full circle.”
-King Lear

(it does so, from time to time, whether good or bad, and we find history repeating itself or familiar situations and recurring truths all over again)

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”
-Macbeth

(well, no one’s perfect’ e.g., Macbeth; sometimes what is fair to someone is foul to someone else–the basic matter of perspective; this is a core life statement which can also refer to the transitions between good and evil, positive and negative situations; given life’s dualities and ambiguities, this is pretty core stuff)

“Nothing is, But what is not.”
-Macbeth

(not surprisingly from the same play, but you can also find many examples of this quote as well in Hamlet, Othello, King Lear; core stuff: appearances can be deceptive, are not always what they seem; reality and illusion are difficult to sort out even on good days!)

“There’s nothing serious in mortality.”
-Macbeth

(very existentialist thought: death is a fact, common, needs to be accepted; this existential point can affect an individual’s attitude)

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death,
Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
-Macbeth

(the poetry of the depressed and nihilistic, the lost soul; life is absurd seen a certain way; well if you were Macbeth….)

“Men should be what they seem,”
-Othello

(would that were true, but people are sometimes/often not what they seem as proven by experience)

“Then you must speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well.”
-Othello

(one can love too much or make mistakes in love; ironically, there are many instances of people, like Othello, hurting or even killing others because they loved them ‘too much’)

“He jests at scars, that never felt a wound.”
-Romeo and Juliet

(very true–once you’ve been hurt, it is possible you will become less sarcastic or more sensitive to others’ pain and suffering)

“These violent delights have violent ends.”
-Romeo and Juliet

(a cautionary note: violence breeds violence–an old story; lots of examples in the day’s headlines)

“How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in ‘t!”
-The Tempest

(true on a good day or a lucky day; there are lots of interesting, ‘beautiful’ people out there; one often stumbles over/onto them)

“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state.”
-Sonnet 29

(failure can be personally isolating and depressing; ‘1 is the loneliest number’, though the rest of this poem is about the power of true friendship and love–the remedy for alienation, isolation, and loneliness)

“Haply I think on thee–and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
that then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
-Sonnet 29

(this is the solution to alienation, isolation, and loneliness, a Shakespeare prescription for what still ails many)

“Not marble, nor gilded monuments
of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”
-Sonnet 55

(the power of great writing, good literature–beyond the physical and ephemeral)

“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or tends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark.”
-Sonnet 116

(if it’s ‘the real thing’, it is not subject to the forces of change; it is sustainable and a form of proof and reference simultaneously)

“Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.”
-Sonnet 116

(ditto, with a note on aging and the passing of time)

“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust.
-Sonnet 129

(a rather broad-based view of physical lust, but as usual candid Shakespeare is right; in this case, about the loss or waste of spirit and the extremes of lust)

“All that glisters is not gold.”
-Merchant of Venice

(we’ve all been there; if it looks too good…, the deceptiveness of favorable appearances; also, this quote is about true value and how it is not necessarily guaranteed in the case of materialism or material acquisition)

“The dog will have his day.”
-Hamlet

(even your favorite underdog sports team may win the odd game)

“Thereby hangs a tale.”
-Taming of the Shrew

(it’s often the story that is most interesting or back of whatever event; we have all lived, told, read, and heard stories; story is a basic metaphor for our lives, much as in the previous play metaphor quotes of Shakespeare)

“If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well
it were done quickly.”
-Macbeth

(excluding murder, one sometimes needs to take decisive action and this is often best done quickly for various reasons, especially in the case of decidedly unpleasant stuff)

“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
-Twelfth Night

(the moral of Prohibition: people will continue to pursue pleasure even if you encourage them to do otherwise; that is, human nature is what it is and some people cannot be changed; temptation and pleasure-seeking are non-stoppable)

“I must be cruel only to be kind.”
-Hamlet

(presumptuous Dr. Phil stuff–very popular these daze; ‘tough love’; but we sometimes ‘have people’s better interests at heart’ when making tough decisions and choices)

“I am not what I am.”
-Othello

(more on the deceptiveness of appearances; the basic irony of evil, too)

“For ’tis sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard”
-Hamlet

(it can be pleasurable to outwit others, especially those that are trying to exploit, manipulate or destroy us)

“More matter with less art”
-Hamlet

(“Brevity is the soul of wit’ revisited; a plea for substance since style is ‘easy’ and can get in the way of communication or the message)

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.”
-Hamlet

(more ‘on a good day’ stuff; can be true–inspirational stuff; after all, there is art, charity, law, civilization, etc.)

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”
-Hamlet

(one of those heads-ups; a call to pay attention to ‘signs’; maybe we are getting ‘messages’, maybe there is a greater, larger, unseen plan)

“Who steals my purse steals trash.”
-Othello

(Shakespeare, cynically, on money; what’s it worth? as this play points out, when contrasted to honour and reputation, for instance; there are far more valuable, important and essential things than mere money; “All that glisters…”)

“But I have that within which passes show.’
-Hamlet

(most people do; but we often judge on the basis of physical appearance; as Hamlet later points out and as Iago pointed out, appearances can be faked and both characters get into that ‘game’)

“I do not know
Why yet I live to say this thing’s to do,
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means to do ‘t.”
-Hamlet

(laziness? procrastination? uncertainty? indecision? fear? cowardice? There are many reasons why people put off doing what they should do)

“The time is out of joint–O cursed spite,
that ever I was born to set it right!”
-Hamlet

(it ain’t gonna be easy, but someone’s gotta ‘bell that cat’ or take out Claudius in Hamlet’s case; there are always difficult things or dilemmas that ‘hang us up’; often the question simply becomes ‘Uh, who else is going to take care of biz’? The fact of the matter is that we may not like or relish the roles we are/seem cast in)

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
-Hamlet

(not just a question of whether to live or die and why; also about being in the sense of taking action or becoming what one needs to become–basic stuff again)

“What’s done, is done.”
-Macbeth

(ironically, not really in this tragedy; at other times, yes, kaputsky–something is over, fini and can’t be revisited or changed down the road)

“The whirligig of time”
-Twelfth Night

(doesn’t that image give some sense of time flying and the neverending swirl of days and years? What Joni Mitchell called “The Circle Game”–we’re all “on the carousel of time”)

“Now is the winter of our discontent”
-Richard III

(your typical Canadian winter with accompanying ennui and snow-shovelling)

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

“The goal of the journey is to discover yourself as consciousness.”–Joseph Campbell, (All Campbell quotes quoted on this blog are from Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion)

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The comet lit up the sky for weeks and months, changing the lives of many. A very intense bright light from somewhere else. In many ways it was the dead greats who could have told you more about it, why and how it moved the way it did. The lovers too, who lived in and for one another. They knew something about the heat and light it gave off in cold winter sky where all was otherwise frost and frigidness.

The comet glowed and was most itself beyond language, beyond time, beyond music, beyond convention, beyond mere limits and limitations of all kinds. It was free and shone like a bright spirit ablaze, filling, nay flooding a room with its veritable light and love-giving radiance.

In the end, all one could say for sure was that it was very large and unlike anything one had ever known or been remotely close to before.

And so it blazed that July on many heads-down days while others worked and chased money and forgot their own vital incandescences. Finally, it was just a brilliant reminder of what might be possible if one broke free or chose a life in stars or dream. This comet, this great glowing spirit which simply was what it was, and nothing else.

No, that would not be my choice of The Great Goodbye. Having a black monster truck flying through the air at the front of my van, debris scattering everywhere after ramming the back end of a truck in the next lane a little ahead of me.
Thursday morning, rush hour, headed to babysit grandson. No one nearby except the white truck ahead in the other lane. It took 5 seconds or likely less for the monster truck going the other way to hit the median and launch madly and absurdly in the air toward our van before coming to a stop, parallel, lengthwise, in front of the van. For me, in those 5 seconds, there was nowhere else to go, no move to make. I had been cast in a limited role and certain collision fate not of my making or choosing, involving being in that place, at that time. A case of real bad timing.
Now usually, I call my own shots and make my own choices happily. But there was no choice in this episode except to brake quickly. Nowhere else to go. I was suddenly thrust into the middle of an unreal action movie scene.
Somehow the driver braked and his truck, surreally, did not flip when his tires briefly hit the concrete on our side of the street. Magically, too, the truck stopped perfectly parallel to the front of our van about one foot away. When I got out, I expected damage to the front of the van because of all the flying debris from the collision with the white truck. None. Not a mark.
I went around to the driver’s side but his windows were steamed and I could see nothing but a sheet of white (rag or paper towel over his face?) while two guys who had seen the whole thing, including the accident he’d earlier triggered, yammering “Don’t let him out. Don’t help him.” They obviously blamed him for the two accidents and wanted to keep him inside till the cops showed up. One of them was dialling the report in as I left to go on.
It is still hard today to comprehend the timing and luck in this event. The randomness, the sudden horror, the absurdity of being thrust involuntarily into someone else’s stupidly-created car-crash movie.
But what got me most is the 5 second or less window and the thought that this might have been really The End as well as the last bit of consciousness I might have had, had the truck followed through on its direct-hit line for the van. It looked like a sure thing with no exit.

I have often commented that, In the midst of life, we are always in the midst of death, but it’s the loss of choice and control yesterday, and the awfulness of the timing and horrific chaos of that five-seconds moment from hell that is frankly way more disturbing than actual death itself.

is avant-garde pianist Philip Glass who has written numerous orchestral pieces for movies, opera, and symphony. Glass’s perpetual nonconformity and focus on the music he hears and imagines has led to an interesting life and career.
This excellent documentary by the director of Shine, Scott Hicks, shows Glass with friends like the Dalai Lama, Ravi Shankar, filmmakers Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese, and Erroll Morris, his Asian meditation advisors, artist Chuck Close, and musical conductors. We see Glass listening for the first time to one of his orchestral pieces played aloud in a concert hall rehearsal. We see him playing different orchestral parts on piano. We see him working out. We see him with family.
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts is a thoroughly insightful, entertaining 2 disc, 2 hr. documentary with 3 hrs. of extras. (Koch Lorber).

(from Eagle Eye Media)

Joni Mitchell: Painting with Words and Music. Well-worth viewing for any Joni fans and anyone interested in the best female jazz singer we’ve ever had (sorry Diana Krall). This is a solid 98 min. show featuring excellent back-up musicians: her ex-husband, producer-bassist Larry Klein, drummer Brian Blade, and Mark Isham and Greg Leisz on pedal steel and trumpet.
Joni’s paintings are also featured on the walls around the venue. This concert in front of a small audience was recorded about the time of her last non-compilation album Turbulent Indigo, from which you can see Joni’s painting of herself as van Gogh which was used as that album’s cover.
Her voice is in fine form and she feels free to bend the melodies of most of what she sings to suit the impromptuness of the occasion. Her suggestive jazzy chords form the base of the group’s playing. Songs include: “Big Yellow Taxi”, “Just Like This Train”, “Night Ride Home”, “Amelia”, “Hejira”, “The Magdelene Laundries”, “Nothing Can Be Done”, and “Woodstock”. Highly recommended show for songwriting and performance.

(soon again to be sauntering around the Emily Carr gallery of the Greater Victoria Art Gallery)

(my late Dad on a favorite foreign beach during Canadian winter; his birthday was/is today–recalling his love of sun, beaches, Nature, and Hemingway; poem about this picture below).

…………………

…of weath.”
–Acharya Nagarjuna

………………………………

My Old Man and the Sea

As photographs go
this is a defining moment.

Dad steps from the ocean
wearing a green ball-cap
bronze pectorals
glistening.

De profundis.

The only things missing
are marlin and trident.

Spirit.
He has emerged.

Transcendent.
He will live forever.

Self.
Only his footprints
grace the sand.

This is his beach.

Reality meets mythos.
Brine on flesh.
Dad is a god.

This is my father.
Sublime. Incarnate.
Even Hemingway nods.

(Much criticized in his own time for the  aesthetic ‘weakness’ of his writing style, Orwell has had the last laugh, his major opus outliving other twentieth-century classics, influencing millions of people around the globe since it was written, and currently enjoying a huge revival.)

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As I was saying previously, much of what I have learned about life and human nature has come from an adult life built on reading and teaching literature. The following quotes are typical of some of the big ideas, truths. and views I have garnered from books and reading.
…………………………………..

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s voice, another soul.
–Joyce Carol Oates

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
–Sophocles, Oedipus the King

The gates of hell are open night and day; smooth is the descent and easy is the way.
–Virgil, The Aeneid

Endure the hardships of your present state. Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate.
–Virgil, The Aeneid

We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.
–Li Bai, Quan Tangshi

He who dares not follow love’s command errs greatly.
–Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot, The Knight of the Cart

Let another’s wound be my warning.
—Njal’s Saga

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.
–Dante, The Divine Comedy

Time, which diminishes and erodes all things, increases and augments generous deeds.
–Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.
–Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

Every man is the child of his deeds.
–Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

One man in his time plays many parts.
–William Shakespeare, First Folio

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
–William Shakespeare, As You Like It

But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
–Andrew Marvell, Miscellaneous Poems

If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?
–Voltaire, Candide

It is certain that nothing on earth but love makes a person necessary.
–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

Poetry is the breath and the finer spirit of all knowledge.
–William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads

Age is no second childhood–age makes plain, children we were, true children we remain.
–Goethe, Faust

A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
–Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.
–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me.
–Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
–Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

All partings foreshadow the great final one.
–Charles Dickens, Bleak House

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.
–Charles Dickens, Bleak House

The poet is a kinsman in the clouds.
–Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

A hundred suspicions don’t make a proof.
–Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.
–George Eliot, Middlemarch

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult to each other?
–George Eliot, Middlemarch

Human beings can be awful cruel to one another.
–Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
–Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
–Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

All interest in disease and death is only really another expression of interest in life.
–Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.
–Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly in to the past.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Here is my secret, very simply: you can only see things clearly with your heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Big Brother Is Watching You.
–George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.
–George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–forever.
–George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
–Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

He was Beat–the root, the soul of beatific.
–Jack Kerouac, On the Road

What is good among one people is an abomination with others.
–Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
–Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view–until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.
–Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

One reads alone, even in another’s presence.
–Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

Memory’s truth….selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies, but in the end it creates its own reality.
–Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

Who, what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have seen done, of everything-done-to-me.
–Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
–Toni Morrison, Beloved

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world.
–Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Is it possible …for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?
–Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
–Zadie Smith, White Teeth

I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.
–Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

When that Coyote dreams, anything can happen.
–Thomas King, Green Grass, Running Water

Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeing.
–Roberto Bolano, 2666

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(ps/Anything quoted in this blog, I agree with, understand, appreciate, have lived and experienced, or see the truth of. “I am large, I contain multitudes.”–Walt Whitman)

(my prized copy of the April 13, 1937 Time, photo by Man Ray, published after The Years came out)

“In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.”
–Virginia Woolf

……………………….

As much as I owe much of my life to other people and past experiences, famous people and their lives, works, and quotations have meant equally as much in forming and developing  my consciousness, sensibility, values, beliefs, character, and life trajectory and process.

(Typical of illustrated movie books sold in bookstores of the day is Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days Almanac, Random House, 1956)

Well, obviously not watching the televised fashion show overflowing with egos, agendas, and political correctness. Again, I chose to watch a classic movie, this time the popular 1956 Best Picture, Around the World in 80 Days, which was such a labor of love spectacular for producer Mike Todd that it nearly bankrupted him.

Based on Jules Verne’s classic, there are many references to the original including the famous Indian attack on the American train and the one-day-confusion in the climax. The movie is largely a travelogue with lots of music, with a pretentious prologue with Edward Murrow (a popular commentator of the day), a famous George Melies silent film short, and a clever animated titles closing by Saul Bass. Countries featured include Spain, India, China, Japan, the U.S., and England (which is the starting, concluding, and reference point throughout the film).

David Niven stars as Phileas Fogg, a stereotypical, proper, stiff-upper-lip Brit, Cantinflas as his acrobatic Charlie Chaplinesque manservant, and Shirley MacLaine as a politically-incorrect Indian princess. Cantinflas has many featured scenes (too many) unnecessarily padding out this three-hour movie ( much like Morrow’s intro, the Meiles film, and Bass’s closing sequence); Todd was a showman and wanted to give people their money’s worth. With guest stars, the cast included 47 established actors including Charles Boyer, Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich, Jose Greco, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, George Raft, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, and John Gielgud.

Victor Young did the soundtrack music (of which there is plenty) including the famous theme song. Lionel Lindon was responsible for the cinematography which makes the movie a delight to watch in widescreen still. Todd pulled out all the stops to entertain including a balloon ride, a humorous bullfight, an extended Spanish dance café scene, an Indian-pyre funeral, Japanese acrobatics, an ostrich ride, an Indian chase, and points-of-view Cinerama-like camerawork from atop a tall Victorian bicycle, a train, and an elephant.

By now you get the general idea, this is still an entertaining film despite all its shortcomings and nostalgic charm. Would it win an Academy Award today? Not likely. But those times were simpler and much more innocent. People warmed to truly entertaining movies that tried hard and offered many possibilities. What Todd’s film might lack in CGI effects, more accurate realism, political correctness, cynicism, and coarseness, does not matter as it harkens back to a time when people went to the movies for straightforward comedy, adventure, romance, and purest escapism.

No, I haven’t watched an Oscar evening in this century and, happily, will go on watching genuine classics and examples of truly great, classic film-making instead, for the rest of my life. Who needs to watch all those clothes, surfaces, egos, pompous speeches, agendas, political statements, and gratuitous shows of political correctness? What does all of that that have to do with truly great filmmaking per se?

Today’s story of the guy who trusted his GPS which led him into a Toronto streetcar tunnel.
Morals: Never trust your life and vehicle to technology (GPS). Don’t believe everything/all information technology tells you. Use common sense and empirical evidence to make your own decisions; they will be more reliable than technology.