Quote of the Day (Sam Lipsyte, on ‘No Time for Self-Pity’)

“Certain truths, like the fact that in this twisted world it's the charlatans who emerge victorious, still hurt, but now is no time for self-pity.”—American novelist and short-story writer Sam Lipsyte, No One Left to Come Looking for You (2022)

(The image accompanying this post, of Sam Lipsyte at a Philip Roth birthday reading at the Library of Congress, was taken Mar. 19, 2014, by Slowking.)

Quote of the Day (Patricia Marx, Imagining a New Voice-Mail Message for the U.S. Government)

“You have reached the U.S. government. We are currently unable to answer your call, because everyone has been fired except Bob. If you would like to leave a message, listen carefully, as most of our menu options have been fed into the wood chipper. Please note that this call is being recorded so that we can use it against you.”—American humorist Patricia Marx, “Shouts and Murmurs: You Have Reached the U.S. Government,” The New Yorker, Mar. 3, 2025

Quote of the Day (Baseball’s Casey Stengel, on How Leo Durocher Couldn’t Slug With Fists or Bat)

“That fresh boob is lucky I didn’t knock out his few brains with that bat, but nothing like that was necessary. He can’t hit any harder with his fists than he can with a bat.”—Then-Brooklyn Dodger manager (and future New York Yankee skipper) Casey Stengel (pictured), on a May 12, 1936 beneath-the-stands altercation with light-hitting St. Louis Cardinal infielder (and future manager) “Leo the Lip” Durocher, originally in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, quoted by John Swanberg, “Men of Summer,” The New York Times Book Review, Apr. 2, 2017

Think I could let Opening Day go by for the Yankees without genuflecting reverently towards their past?

Well, maybe not so reverently, judging from today’s quote. But a few choice words from Casey Stengel, over a decade before his glory days with the Bronx Bombers, were irresistible.

You can be sure that Leo Durocher gave his side of the story to waiting reporters, and that Stengel didn’t come off anywhere so well as his own account suggested.

But let it also be said that the Ol’ Professor wasn’t the first Yankee employee who took exception to the antics of “Leo the Lip”—nor would he be the last person associated with major league baseball to regard him balefully.

None other than Babe Ruth accused him of stealing his watch. Durocher’s vehement denial might have to be taken with a grain of salt, considering that the telephone-and-bell system he rigged up in Polo Ground offices enabled his New York Giants to storm back against the Dodgers and win the 1951 pennant.

Ultimately, Stengel had the last laugh on his hated rival, being still alive for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The controversial Durocher wasn’t around to enjoy his own induction in 1994.

Catcher and broadcaster Joe Garagiola wrote a book, Baseball Is a Funny Game. In the case of Stengel and Durocher, it was also a scrappy one.

Play ball!

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Man Who Would Be King,’ on What a Whiff of Power Can Do)

[Two soldiers, dismissed from Her Majesty’s service in India, have traveled to remote Kafiristan, where they conquer opposition and set themselves up as overlords. One, Danny, has not only had himself crowned king and masqueraded as a god, but now also desires to take a wife so he can establish a dynasty, breaking an agreement with friend Peachy that they would abstain from sex and alcohol.)

Peachy Carnehan [played by Michael Caine]: “What about the contract?”

Danny Dravot [played by Sean Connery]: “The contract only lasted until such time as we was kings, and king I've been these months past! The first king here since Alexander, the first to wear his crown in twenty-two hundred and...”

Peachy: “Fourteen.”

Danny: “Fourteen years! Him... and now me! They call me his son and I am... in spirit anyway. It's a hugeous responsibility. The bridge we're building, it's only the first of many. They'll tie the country together. A nation I shall make of it, with an anthem and a flag. I shall treat on equal terms the viceroy and other kings and princes. When I've accomplished what I set out to do, I'll stand one day before the queen. Not kneel, mind you, but stand like an equal. And she'll say: ‘I'd like you to accept the Order of the Garter as a mark of my esteem, cousin.’ She'll pin it on me herself. It's big. I tell you, it's big!”

Peachy: “And I tell you, you need a physic!”— The Man Who Would Be King (1975), screenplay by John Huston and Gladys Hill, based on the short story by Rudyard Kipling, directed by John Huston

Decades after seeing the film for the first time, I caught up again with this great adventure tale early last night on TCM. Once again, it did not disappoint.

The tales and poetry of Rudyard Kipling have rightfully been criticized for their racism, but in this story he warned of the dangers facing the greatest empire in the world in the Victorian Era: power and the loss of moral authority over distant subjects (what political scientist Joseph Nye calls “soft power”).

I don’t know how many Americans watching this magnificent buddy-movie adaptation by John Huston applied these themes to their own country in 1975, the year they lost Vietnam. But Kipling’s cautionary horror story should resound even more loudly in our contemporary moment.

If power can intoxicate the likes of Danny Dravot—a vagabond still trying to live up to the moral code of a soldier—think how much more it can affect the judgment of a leader with a lifetime of defying laws and mores, but now with increasingly fewer institutional checks on his authority and ambition to expand his imperial reach.

And how much greater will be the downfall of the current successors to Danny and Peachy, the comrade-in-arms who realizes too late the madness of the man he had unstintingly supported?

Quote of the Day (Victor Hugo, on the Upper and Lower Classes)

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”—French novelist-poet Victor Hugo (1802-1885), Les Miserables (1862)

The image accompanying this post shows Fredric March as Jean Valjean, sentenced to prison for stealing bread to feed his starving children, in the 1935 film adaptation of Hugo’s novel.

Quote of the Day (Desiderius Erasmus, on the ‘Incredible Delight’ Fools Take in Statements)

“A remarkable thing happens in the experience of my fools: from them not only true things, but even sharp reproaches, will be listened to; so that a statement which, if it came from a wise man's mouth, might be a capital offense, coming from a fool gives rise to incredible delight. Veracity, you know, has a certain authentic power of giving pleasure, if nothing offensive goes with it; but this the gods have granted only to fools.” — Dutch monk and scholar Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536), In Praise of Folly (1509)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Christina Rossetti, on Hope Awakening in Mid-Lent)

“At night wake hope. Poor soul, in such sore need
Of wakening and of girding up anew,
Hast thou that hope which fainting doth pursue?
No saint but hath pursued and hath been faint;
Bid love wake hope, for both thy steps shall speed,
Still faint yet still pursuing, O thou saint.”— English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “Mid-Lent,” originally published in Verses (1893), republished in The Complete Poems, edited by R.W. Crump (2001)