Here are the quotations for this week (Jan 28 – 3 Feb)
1. '…The magic of Literature lies in the words, and not in any man. Witness,
a thousand excellent, strenuous words can leave us quite cold or put us to
sleep, whereas a bare half-hundred words breathed upon by some man in his
agony, or in his exaltation, or in his idleness, ten generations ago, can
still lead whole nations into and out of captivity, can open to us the doors
of the three worlds, or stir us so intolerably that we can scarcely abide to
look at our own souls. It is a miracle - one that happens very seldom. But
secretly each one of the masterless men with the words has hope, or has had
hope, that the miracle may be wrought again through him…'
2. '…The Elizabethans … stood on the edge of a new and wonderful world
filled with happy possibilities. Their descendants, 350 years later, have
been shot into a world as new and as wonderful, but not quite as happy. And
in both ages you can see writers raking the dumps of the English language
for words that shall range harder, hit harder, and explode over a wider area
than the service-pattern words in common use.
This merciless search, trial, and scrapping of material is one with the
continuity of life which, we all know, is as a tale that is told, and which
writers feel should be well told…'
3. …'They say youth is the season of hope, ambition, and uplift - that the
last word youth needs is an exhortation to be cheerful. Some of you here
know - and I remember - that youth can be a season of great depression,
despondencies, doubts, waverings, the worse because they seem to be peculiar
to ourselves and incommunicable to our fellows. There is a certain darkness
into which the soul of the young man sometimes descends - a horror of
desolation, abandonment, and realised worthlessness, which is one of the
most real of the hells in which we are compelled to walk.'
'I know of what I speak…'
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The sources of last week’s quotations (Jan 21-27) were as follows:
1. ‘The Last Term’ in ‘Stalky & Co’
2. ‘A Matter of Fact’ in ‘Many Inventions’
3. ‘The Man who Would be King’ in ‘Wee Willie Winkie’
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Good wishes to all, John R
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