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)

Quote of the Day (Tori Amos, on Why ‘Being a Librarian is a Fantasy of Mine’)

 

“Being a librarian is a fantasy of mine. In my album Tales of a Librarian, I'm dressed in different imagined librarian costumes, and in the liner notes the tracks are organized by the Dewey Decimal System. My own little libraries don’t have a system, but I have dreams of one!”— Grammy-nominated American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, interviewed by Scott Heller for “By the Book: Tori Amos,” The New York Times Book Review, Mar. 16, 2025

The image accompanying this post, of Tori Amos performing in Helsinki, Finland, was taken June 9, 2015, by NeoMeesje.

Quote of the Day (Jessica Duchen, on Librettists as the Unsung Heroes of Opera)

“We tend to credit opera composers ahead of their librettists. But can you imagine Mozart without [Lorenzo] Da Ponte [pictured]? Verdi without Piave? Strauss without Hofmannsthal? Our favourite operas, such as Le nozze di Figaro, La traviata or Der Rosenkavalier would be nowhere without their words and their drama – provided by the writer. Composers might grumble, cajole or bully their wordsmiths, but they know on which side their bread is buttered.”— British journalist, music critic, novelist, playwright, and opera librettist Jessica Duchen, “A Way With Words,” BBC Music, February 2025

Tweet of the Day (Stephen Colbert, on a Selection for His Book Club)

“Join cOlbert's Book Club and read THE GREAT GATSBY by 5/9. I don't want to give too much away, but it's a book.”—Late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert, Apr. 26, 2013 tweet

I say read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic by 4/10, the centennial of its publication. It won’t take you long, and you definitely won’t regret it!

Quote of the Day (Donal Ryan, on How ‘We Never Stop Being Children’)

“We never stop being children. Or at least we never fully leave our childhood behind; we drag it with us and we stretch it out along our years and every now and then when we let our grip fail it snaps and reels us back.”—Irish novelist Donal Ryan, Heart, Be at Peace (2025)