John Dos Passos

"The constant reading of the bible in hundreds of thousands of humble families kept a basic floor of literacy under literature as a whole, and under the English language. The variety of styles of writing so admirably represented, the relative complexity of many

of the ideas involved and the range of ethical levels to be found in that great compendium of ancient Hebrew culture demanded, in its reading and in its exposition to the children, a certain mental activity, and provided for the poorer classes the same sort of cultural groundwork

Today is Samuel Johnson's birthday. Of all mortals, living or dead, I respect him most. To know that there is an "Age of Johnson" in English Literature says it all. Much of my admiration can be described by way of his anti-heroic sense. First an extended quote from Joseph Sobran: "If the first half of his life was a quest for truth amid suffering, the second half was a medley of compassion. His later years were characterized by extraordinary holiness, manifest in the most ordinary of circumstances. As in his writings, there was an immediacy, a freshness,

Forrest McDonald - The Intellectual World of the Founding Fathers

"It has been suggested by various intellectuals that the best thing Americans could do to commemorate the 200th anniversary of our Constitution would be to rewrite it to reflect the realities of the twentieth century. It has been suggested by various jurists that the Supreme Court is, and should be, doing just that. The assumption underlying both notions is that our pool of knowledge and understanding about human nature and political institutions is far more sophisticated than any

John Dos Passos:

"The constant reading of the bible in hundreds of thousands of humble families kept a basic floor of literacy under literature as a whole, and under the English language. The variety of styles of writing so admirably represented, the relative complexity of many



of the ideas involved and the range of ethical levels to be found in that great compendium of ancient Hebrew culture demanded, in its reading and in its exposition to the children, a certain mental activity, and provided for the poorer classes the same sort of cultural groundwork

Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth's mind is overwhelmed with guilt from her complicity in the murder of Duncan. She is tormented no end.

Macbeth:

"How does your patient, doctor?

Doctor: Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest. MACBETH: Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Samuel Johnson was an original member of "The Club," which met at The Turk's Head Inn, hence the sobriquet "The Turk's Head Oracle." Members included, Johnson, Boswell (The Life), Edmund Burke (Reflections on the Revolution in France), Oliver Goldsmith (The Vicar of Wakefield), Joseph Banks (who sailed with Captain Cook), Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations), Sir Joshua Reynolds (the painter), Charles Fox (politician), Richard Brinsley Sheridan (dramatist), David Garrick (Shakespearean actor) and Edward Gibbon (yes, that Gibbon).

In the Spirit with Samuel Johnson

From the introduction to The Quotable Johnson by Joseph Sobran:

If the first half of his life was a quest for truth amid suffering , the second half was a medley of compassion. His later years were characterized by extraordinary holiness, manifest in the most ordinary of circumstances.
As in his writings, there was an immediacy, a freshness, to Johnson's charity: emptying his pockets to beggars who asked for a coin, slipping pennies into the pockets of sleeping waifs so that they might have money for

Andrew Jackson: Veto Message regarding the Bank of the United States (10 July 1832).

"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these

@RBrookhiser GW & Lincoln both touched on balance between liberty and authority.

"And by teaching the people...to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority;....The people should know how "to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws."

GW

"Must a government of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain

From the first paragraph of Moby Dick, following "Call me Ishmael."
Loomings

"Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before

Herman Melville - Literary Critic

"Certain it is, however, that this grat power of blackness in him derives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is is always and wholly free. For, in certain moods, no man can weigh this world, without throwing in something, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance. At all events, perhaps no writer has ever wielded this terrific thought with greater terror than this same

Camille Paglia

"The only problem I have with computers and television is that when all cultures on earth reach the stage we are at it will lead to a kind of homogenization.
Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the US. It is difficult to imagine American students today, even at elite universities, gathering impromptu at midnight for a passionate discussion of big, challenging literary works like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov -

The critic as demolition expert. H. L. Mencken's review of 'Comrades' by Thomas Dixon (photo below), which appeared in the April, 1909 issue of The Smart Set:

"The first chapters of this intolerably amateurish and stupid quasi-novel well-nigh staggered me, and it was only by tremendous effort that I got through them at all. After that, I must confess, the task became less onerous, and toward the end the very badness of the book began to exercise a nefarious fascination. I was exploring new worlds of banality, of vapidity, of melodrama, of

Serious payback. In the assault on Berlin Zhukov lined up 9,000 guns and rockets along an 18.5 mile front on the Seelow Heights 35 miles from Berlin. That's one artillery piece every 11 feet. In the wee hours of April 16, 1945 as many as 500,000 shells were fired in the first 30 minutes. For comparison, the massive Allied assault on the Gustav line in Italy in 1944 featured “only” 2,000 guns firing 174,000 shells over 24 hours. The British bombardment at the Battle of the Somme in World War I boasted 1,537 guns which fired 1.5 million shells over 4 days.

Schopenhauer on the Philistine. From what I see around me, especially from the media, there is no shortage of Philistines about.

"From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred.

Schopenhauer on boredom. What an insight! Check out the reference to inner wealth.
"The result of this mental dullness is that inner vacuity and emptiness that is stamped on innumerable faces and also betrays itself in a constant and lively attention to all events in the external world, even the most trivial. This vacuity is the real source of boredom and always craves for external excitement in order to set the mind and spirits in motion through something. Therefore in the choice thereof it is not fastidious, as is testified by the miserable and