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 (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, on ‘A Steady Purpose’)

“Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose—a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.”— English novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)

Quote of the Day (William Cullen Bryant, on Difficulty, ‘The Nurse of Greatness’)

“Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness—a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster-children into strength and athletic proportion. The mind grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty ingredients, grows, by certain necessity, to their stature. Scarce anything so convinces me of the capacity of the human intellect for indefinite expansion in the different stages of its being, as this power of enlarging itself to the compass of surrounding emergencies.”—American poet-journalist William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), “His Welcome to Kossuth” (1851), in The World’s Famous Orations: America: II. (1818–1865). (1906)

Quote of the Day (Jazzman Sonny Rollins, With Good Life Advice)

“No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.”—Retired jazz saxophone master Sonny Rollins, The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, edited by Sam V.H. Reese (2024)

(The accompanying photo of Sonny Rollins was taken July 17, 2009, by Bengt Nyman from Vaxholm, Sweden.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Stephen Schwartz and Leonard Bernstein, on ‘When My Courage Crumbles’)

“When my courage crumbles,
When I feel confused and frail,
When my spirit falters on decaying altars
And my illusions fail --
I go on right then.
I go on again.”—American lyricist Stephen Schwartz and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), “I Go On,” from Mass (1971)
 
More than many people, Leonard Bernstein, for all his worldly success and acclaim, must have felt “confused and frail” in his private life. But I can’t think offhand of another American musical figure who excelled in so many ways: composer, conductor, pianist, educator, author.
 
All of that makes me anxious to see the upcoming biopic Maestro about him starring Bradley Cooper. I’m not going to get into the controversy surrounding the actor’s use of a prosthetic nose to simulate his subject. (In "The Well-Tempered Ear," blogger Jacob Stockinger has a thought or two on the subject.)
 
But, if the whole hullabaloo exposes more viewers to his life’s work (yes, including the much-debated Mass), all to the good.

Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on Perseverance and Honor)

“Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery." —English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Troilus and Cressida (1609)

Quote of the Day (Plutarch, on the Power of Perseverance)

“Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.” — Greek historian, biographer, and essayist Plutarch (c. 46-120), Parallel Lives

Quote of the Day (St. James, on Faith and Perseverance)

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”—James 1:2-4 (New International Version)

The image accompanying this post is the painting St. James the Apostle, by Albrecht Durer (1516).