The Word (Language and Expression)

Below are quite a few quotes that I have heard, read, and/or have been taught that have stimulated my world, and participation in it. Though these quotes may seem small, unimportant, and/or difficult to understand, they are important blocks in the structure of my education and the way I have chosen to live or have found myself living. Feel free to read the greater works from which these quotes come from.

• …for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

~Final sentence from Middlemarch by George Eliot.

• I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on the particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

~The Narrator speaking in Middlemarch by George Eliot.

• Following his eyes, she saw that we was gazing at a star.‘In my pain an trouble, lookin up yonder, -wi’ it shinin’on me –I ha’ seen more clear, and ha’ made it my dying prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, an get a better unnerstan’in o’one another, than when I were in’t my weak seln.’
  

~Excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times.

• Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have makes us who we are.

~Stated by an unknown author.

• With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.

~Quote from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

• One equal temper of heroic hears,
• Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
• To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

~Lines from Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• Part of the reason why the Roman Catholic Church ‘gained power’ in Europe is because of its role in the infrastructure of the general territories left by the Roman Empire. Meaning, with the collapse of the Roman Empire there were no systems in place to take care of the peoples and kingdoms. The Church was the only organized system that could hold these duties without the complete collapse of a civilization in the Medieval period.

~Lecture notes from my Medieval History course.

• The origins of monasticism are to be sought in Egypt in the second half of the third century. This veneration for ascetics and belief in their special powers (when one had mastered his or her own body and the lusts of the flesh) may have had its roots in earlier and pre-Christian traditions in Egyptian society.

~Quoted from Early Medieval Europe by Roger Collins.

• This work is owing to the Noble Idea’s and Fancy of Sig. Cæƒar Ripa, an Italian, who applied himself with indeƒatigable Study to make a Collection of the Figures of the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and to produce others of his own and other celebrated Authors in this Science: Theƒe Images are the Repreƒentatives of our notions; they properly belong to Painters, who by Colours and Shadowing, have invented the admirable Secret to give Body to our Thoughts, thereby to render them viƒible.

~Sentence from the Preface of Iconologia: or, Moral Emblems by Cæƒar Ripa.

• Blessings be with them and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, The poets - who on earth have made us heirs of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

~Quote from William Wordsworth's monument in Westminster Abbey.

• A book must be an ax for the frozen sea inside.

~Quote from Oskar Pollack.

• But Jonson also makes it clear that in the House of Fame, heroism is a secondary virtue: heroes are glorified not by their deeds alone, but by the enduring and transforming power of poetry. Every hero has his poet, and the building is inspired by Chaucer. Heroism is the royal consort; but the highest virtue is that of the specific king, not a warrior, but a classical scholar and poet.

~The Illusion of Power by Stephen Orgel who describes Ben Jonson’s House of Fame.

• Ceremonies in the Renaissance period, which include marriages, funerals, dances, masques, architectures, religious, royal, and peace celebrations, created a precedent and that is why ceremonies then and now are important.

~Lecture notes from Spectacles of State course.

• Structures are frames for symbols, signs; words to signify the purpose of the event. The message.

~Lecture notes from Spectacles of State course.

• It’s literature…there is something latent in it.

~Spoken by 19th Century Course Convener Sarah Woods.

• ‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’ ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Grandgrind. The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter of fact prospect the world afforded.

~Excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times.

• Theory gives value to something. The Liberal Arts were the highest arts during the Renaissance. What made them important was the theory behind the practice. The Renaissance valued theory more than practice.

~Lecture notes from Spectacles of State course.