Dorothy Sayers, one of the great Oxford Inklings contemporaneous with C.S. Lewis, Charles Lamb, and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote marvelous mysteries. My introduction to her was one I will not forget for we still sometimes share whispered mysteries in a haunted corner of the house and her brilliance can change from telling an unraveling mystery to [...]
Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
My Favorite Lines from Unnatural Death: Sir Peter Wimsey
Posted in Literature, tagged Dorothy Sayers on July 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Silmarillion
Posted in Literature on June 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I recently started to listen to The Silmarillion on CD, Tolkien’s posthumously published mythic work which gives the origins of Middle-Earth. The following quote gave me chills in realizing that my painful sins, the adversaries’ means in my trials, and even death are all a part of accomplishing His purpose. Ponder this: …thou, Melkor, shalt [...]
Favorite Jane Eyre Quotes
Posted in Literature on January 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
FROM ROCHESTER… Mr. Rochester: Jane, you’re a strange and almost unearthly thing. Mr. Rochester: This is my wife. Your sister, Mason. Look at her. She is mad! So was her mother. So was her grandmother. Three generations of violent lunacy. I wasn’t told about that, was I, Mason? All I was told about was that [...]
Quote of the Day–John Greenleaf Whittier
Posted in Literature on January 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’
James Whitcomb Riley’s “The Ripest Peach”
Posted in Literature on December 31, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Seems very much like C.S. Lewis’s line, “Unattainability. The most intense joy lies not in the having, but in the desiring.” The ripest peach is highest on the tree – And so her love, beyond the reach of me, Is dearest in my sight. Sweet breezes, bow Her heart down to me where I worship [...]
“The Clockmaker”: a poem by Daniel Mark Epstein
Posted in Literature, tagged Daniel Fuller Epstein, poetry on February 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
THE CLOCKMAKER Time should be heard as well as seen, Says the clockmaker, carving a cuckoo bird. My wife gives the sick child his medicine. Who said children should be seen, not heard? – I work all night until my sight is blurred, At this abandoned craft that now is mine For all the comfort [...]
Ishmael and Huck–Waters I Have Known
Posted in Literature, tagged Literature, melville, river fiction, sea fiction, twain on January 3, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Recently, I was asked to name the top five American novels. Let me boil down the list to two: Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In some ways, two books could not be different for I believe that in them, we have represented the two broad strokes in which the [...]
Favorite G.K. Chesterton Passages
Posted in Art, Literature, Religion, tagged chesterton quotes, Thomas Aquinas on January 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
G.K. Chesterton (1818-1901), the great British mystery writer and Dickens critic, wrote a life of Thomas Aquinas called The Dumb Ox, a pejorative leveled at Aquinas’ bulking presence and quietude by some of his fellow students. Chesterton asserts that nothing could be further from the truth and spends the whole of the book praising Aquinas’ [...]
High Art: The Beautiful Writing of Anton Ego in Ratatouille
Posted in Art, Culture, Literature, tagged Anton Ego, Art, film, Ratatouille, writing on January 5, 2008 | 10 Comments »
Well, it certainly ain’t James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, but Ratatouille, Pixar’s stellar computer animated film about a Rat’s quest to cook, has some great language capping the end of the film. The writer behind the food critic, Anton Ego, uses a turn of phrase and some self-analysis of a critic’s role that is both touching [...]
