Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on Knowing All Nature’s ‘Moods and Manners’)

“I seek acquaintance with nature to know all her moods and manners. Primitive nature is the most interesting to me. I take infinitive pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and, then, to my chagrin I hear that is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know the entire heaven and an entire earth. All the great trees, and beasts, fishes and fowls are gone.” —American essayist, naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), journal entry for Mar. 23, 1856, in The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861 (2009)

PBS is giving Thoreau the same treatment it gave a few years ago: a three-part documentary by Ken Burns, starting tonight. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this Transcendentalist as naturalist and protest figure.

Hailed by youth in the 1960s, Thoreau may be experiencing an even greater groundswell of interest now. Let’s hope so.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Bank Dick,’ With W.C. Fields on a Car Chase)

Egbert Souse [played by W.C. Fields]: [to bank robber, after narrowly missing the police during a car chase] “Seems to be a great deal of traffic here for a country road. Don't you think?”—The Bank Dick (1940), screenplay by "Mahatma Kane Jeeves" (pseudonym used by W.C. Fields), directed by Edward F. Cline

Quote of the Day (John Kenneth Galbraith, on an Ironclad Rule of Diplomacy)

“There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy, but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.”—Canadian-American economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), “The American Ambassador,” Foreign Service Journal (June 1969)

In December 1960, President-elect John F. Kennedy sounded out John Kenneth Galbraith on chairing the Council of Economic Advisors in the new administration. The Harvard professor rejected that offer ("I didn't wish to come every day to the same discussion of the same questions around the same table mostly with the same people, not all of whom I wish to see").

But another position intrigued him: US Ambassador to India, where he could see firsthand how the principles of international development he had taught for the past decade might work in an emerging nation. And so, 65 years ago today, the economist was appointed to the post.

I was all set to include a quote from Galbraith’s 1969 book Ambassador’s Journal about the embassy staff in India, as well as the Nehru government’s suspicions of the U.S. assistance program.

In addition to the diary entries and letters to JFK published in that volume, he was still passing on what he learned in his two years on the subcontinent in The Nature of Mass Poverty (1979), which cautioned that the international economy could inadvertently maintain large populations in conditions of want.

But as soon as I saw the above quote, it resonated with me, as I think it might with so many other Americans today.

Over the last month, the public has grown accustomed to the White House offering assessments of the Iranian War that—how shall I say this?—may be prematurely optimistic, including President Trump’s claim that “very good and productive” talks have been held with Tehran over at least ending the regime’s stoppage at the Strait of Hormuz, and maybe even bringing the conflict as a whole to a close.

More and more people are experiencing nightmares of long, inconclusive conflicts that drain American money and lives—the kind associated with Iraq, the kind that candidate Trump vowed never to begin.

Ambassador Galbraith was a caustic critic of such adventurism. Within a month of his appointment, he was explaining to JFK how the Bay of Pigs fiasco appeared to his Indian hosts (not good), and before long he was warning, in no uncertain terms, that conditions in Vietnam were "far more complex, far less controllable, far more varied in the factors involved, far more susceptible to misunderstanding" than his military advisers were saying.

It’s nice to think of a time when a President had the patience to read an adviser’s memos on matters like improving the US Information Service rather than emasculating it; why it would be a good idea to avoid military involvement in a land that posed no security threat to America; and how an administration would be more inclined to cajole and persuade other countries to our positions rather than bullying them, springing from what the Declaration of Independence called “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. John Henry Newman, on the ‘First Shadowy Triumph’ of Palm Sunday)

“All that is bright and beautiful, even on the surface of this world, though it has no substance, and may not suitably be enjoyed for its own sake, yet is a figure and promise of that true joy which issues out of the Atonement. It is a promise beforehand of what is to be: it is a shadow, raising hope because the substance is to follow, but not to be rashly taken instead of the substance. And it is God's usual mode of dealing with us, in mercy to send the shadow before the substance, that we may take comfort in what is to be, before it comes. Thus our Lord before His Passion rode into Jerusalem in triumph, with the multitudes crying Hosanna, and strewing His road with palm branches and their garments. This was but a vain and hollow pageant, nor did our Lord take pleasure in it. It was a shadow which stayed not, but flitted away. It could not be more than a shadow, for the Passion had not been undergone by which His true triumph was wrought out. He could not enter into His glory before He had first suffered. He could not take pleasure in this semblance of it, knowing that it was unreal. Yet that first shadowy triumph was the omen and presage of the true victory to come, when He had overcome the sharpness of death. And we commemorate this figurative triumph on the last Sunday in Lent, to cheer us in the sorrow of the week that follows, and to remind us of the true joy which comes with Easter-Day.”—English theologian, educator, memoirist, and Roman Catholic convert St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), “The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World,” sermon preached Apr. 9, 1841, in Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 6

The image accompanying this post, The Entry Into Jerusalem (ca. 1305), was created by the Italian painter and architect Giotto (c. 1267-1337).

Quote of the Day (Daniel Radcliffe, on Being Quoted Harry Potter Lines)

“The bad thing about Harry Potter being quoted to me is that it has now been long enough [i.e., 15 years this July since the last movie in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2] that unless it is a really easy quote to remember, I’ve probably forgotten the context or who said it. So sometimes Harry Potter fans will come up to me and say something, and I will look at them blankly. I can see them look disappointed, and I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry.’”—English film and stage actor Daniel Radcliffe quoted by Lane Florsheim, “My Monday Morning: Daniel Radcliffe,” WSJ. Magazine (the magazine of The Wall Street Journal), Issue 170 (Spring 2026)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Friends,’ on Joey’s Value as ‘Ministertainer’)

Joey Tribbiani [played by Matt LeBlanc]: [explaining why he’d be particularly great in performing the Chandler-Monica wedding] “...'Cause in Joey Tribbiani, you get a minister, and you get an entertainer. I'm a ‘ministainer!’ There's no one better, there's no one greater!”—Friends, Season 7, Episode 20, “The One with Rachel's Big Kiss,” original air date Apr. 26, 2001, teleplay by Shana Goldberg-Meehan and Scott Silveri, directed by Gary Halvorson 

Quote of the Day (Roger Kahn, on Pitchers and ‘Competitive Intelligence’)

"Pitchers, of all ball players, profit most from competitive intelligence. It is a simple, probably natural thing to throw. A child casts stones. But between the casting child and the pitching major leaguer lies the difference between a boy plunking the piano and an artist performing." —American sportswriter Roger Kahn (1927-2020), The Boys of Summer (1972)

Thank God the baseball season is upon us now and we can be (temporarily) diverted from polarizing issues.

Today isn’t the first time I’ve pondered the question of pitchers’ intelligence. Late last summer, some readers might recall, I analyzed it briefly in the case of Hall of Fame hurler Greg Maddux.

But today, I’d like to nominate another pitcher as having keen intelligence, along with a fierce integrity that fully matched his fierce competitiveness: New York Giant hurler Christy Mathewson.

“Matty” (dead a century ago now) wasn’t content to overpower hitters with speed; he unsettled them, with pinpoint control of a variety of pitches. He might not have been the first pitcher to analyze batters’ tendencies and tailor his approach to exploit these, but he made it an art form and passed his wisdom down in a book, Baseball in a Pinch.

You couldn’t ask for more different people than the gentlemanly, college-educated Mathewson and the fiery John McGraw, but the Giants skipper knew he could rely on his ace when the game was on the line.

As for integrity? Much was and still is made of the deeply religious Mathewson not pitching on Sundays. But, as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, he also suspended Hal Chase for intentionally throwing games and correctly sized up that that the Chicago White Sox were doing the same thing in the infamous “Black Sox” scandal of 1919.

Surviving footage of this mound master is scant and grainy, but his legend endures, as does his place in the baseball pantheon, with his 373 career victories still ranking third all time.