Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, Noticing How ‘Cruel Are the Times’)

“Cruel are the times when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea
Each way and move.”—English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Macbeth (1603)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Clive James, on the Scriptures as a Standard Against ‘The Language of Illusion’)

“For me, the scriptures provided a standard of authenticity against the pervasive falsehoods of advertising, social engineering, moral uplift, demagogic politics—all the verbal corruptions of democracy, the language of illusion.”—Australian-born TV personality, critic and poet Clive James (1939-2019), “Czeslaw Milosz,” in Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts (2007)

Quote of the Day (James Russell Lowell, on the ‘Strife of Truth With Falsehood’)

“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,         

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;       

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,  

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,     

And the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light.”—American poet James Russell Lowell (1819–1891). “The Present Crisis” (1844)

Quote of the Day (James Russell Lowell, on ‘The Strife of Truth With Falsehood’)

“Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.”— James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), “The Present Crisis,” Boston Courier, December 11, 1845

Quote of the Day (Margaret Fuller, on Avoiding Falsehoods)

“It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.”—Author, journalist, critic, and pioneering feminist Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Notes from Cambridge, Massachusetts (July 1842) published in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), Vol. II

(Copy by Southworth and Hawes of an 1846 daguerreotype by Albert Sands Southworth-- the only known surviving photo of Fuller.)

 

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on Falsehood and Truth)

“Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.”—George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859)

I think, if at all possible, that people should be seen at their best. And so, I prefer this illustration of George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880) to another, more commonly known painting I’ve seen because it softens the appearance of this British novelist, whose appearance has so often been described as homely.