📖 Recent Quotes 📖

• The insolence with which they boasted of their victory, and astonishment at having put up so long with their outrages, pointed to the same conclusion. For it was the wont of the immortal gods sometimes to grant prosperity and long impunity to men who’s crimes they were minded to punish, in order that a complete reversal of fortune might make them suffer more bitterly.

  an excerpt from Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, written by Gaius Julius Caesar in -44

• [The people of Denmark are equal. But here in England....]
  With us, you see, the case is quite different; — we are all ups and downs in this matter;— you are a great genius;- - or 'tis fifty to one, Sir, you are a great dunce and a blockhead;---not that there is a total want of intermediate steps,— no, we are not so irregular as that comes to;— but the two extremes are more common, and in a greater degree in this unsettled island, where nature, in her gifts and dispositions of this kind, is most whimsical and capricious; fortune herself not being more so in the bequest of her goods and chattels than she.

  an excerpt from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, written by Laurence Sterne in 1769

• But I must here, once for all, inform you, that all this will be more exactly delineated and explain’d in a map, now in the hands of the engraver, which, with many other pieces and developements of this work, will be added to the end of the twentieth volume,—not to swell the work,—I detest the thought of such a thing;—but by way of commentary, scholium, illustration, and key to such passages, incidents, or innuendos as shall be thought to be either of private interpretation, or of dark or doubtful meaning, after my life and my opinions shall have been read over (now don’t forget the meaning of the word) by all the 28 world;——which, betwixt you and me, and in spite of all the gentlemen-reviewers in Great Britain, and of all that their worships shall undertake to write or say to the contrary,—I am determined shall be the case.

  an excerpt from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, written by Laurence Sterne in 1769

📓 Recent Notes 📓

• The W. A. McDevitte translation has, from Book 2 Chapter 1:
  … others of them, from a natural instability and fickleness of disposition, were anxious for a revolution
  
  But the LibriVox recording I’m listening to is translated by Thomas Rice Holmes (1855 - 1933) has
  And it has “… while others, from instability and fickleness of temperament, hankered after a change of masters.”
  
  Like: what a turn of phrase. How condescending! Those servile people, hankering after a change of masters! I feel like it’s describing a presidential election year.

  an note about Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, written by Gaius Julius Caesar in -44

• Here's a YA book I wouldn't have taken the chance to read - but I met the author at a party and realized: shoot! Fiction author in my neighborhood? I'm sure as hell reading his books. This was great; at first a kind of 'moody teenager with too many feelings' YA school story, that was definitely just not my lane. But it takes a much weirder and more serious turn, and I was absolutely into it in the back half.

  an note about The Great Big One, written by J. C. Geiger in 2021

• I didn't love this but I definitely listened to like, twenty four hours of audiobook here. It really does mature and build on what happened in the first book.

  an note about Royal Assassin, written by Robin Hobb in 1996

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