📖 Recent Quotes 📖

• There's not a man alive roday but time, like Wear, will carry him off too."
  
  I said, "It sounds a sad song then."
  
  "What? Are you daft!" she said. "Can't you hear him chuckle while he sings? And well he may. Who wants a life that never ends? Not me, that's sure. Who wants a sun that never shuts his eye? Death's like the night we need to rest our bones."
  
  "That we may wake refreshed in Paradise," I said.
  
  She said, "Or never wake at all. Who knows? I only know that life's like porridge. It's good to eat when eating's what you want, but the time comes when you've had your fill."

  an excerpt from Godric, written by Frederick Buechner in 1980

• The father with his square face and grey side whiskers, the daughter with her square face and golden fringe of hair, were both stronger than they know; stronger than anyone knew. The father believed in civilization, in the storied tower we have erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They neither of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness.

  an excerpt from The Ball and the Cross, written by G. K. Chesterton in 1906

• "But the cold fact remains: imprudent marriages do lead to long unhappiness and disappointment— you’ve got used to your drinks and things—I shan’t be pretty much longer—”
  
  “Imprudent marriages!” roared Michael. “And pray where in earth or heaven are there any prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides. You and I have dawdled round each other long enough, and are we any safer than Smith and Mary Gray, who met last night? You never know a husband till you marry him. Unhappy! of course you’ll be unhappy. Who the devil are you that you shouldn’t be unhappy, like the mother that bore you? Disappointed! of course we’ll be disappointed. I, for one, don’t expect till I die to be so good a man as I am at this minute— a tower with all the trumpets shouting.”
  
  “You see all this,” said Rosamund, with a grand sincerity in her solid face, “and do you really want to marry me?”
  
  “My darling, what else is there to do?” reasoned the Irishman. “What other occupation is there for an active man on this earth, except to marry you? What’s the alternative to marriage, barring sleep? It’s not liberty, Rosamund. Unless you marry God, as our nuns do in Ireland, you must marry Man—that is Me. The only third thing is to marry yourself— yourself, yourself, yourself—the only companion that is never satisfied— and never satisfactory.”
  
  “Michael,” said Miss Hunt, in a very soft voice, “if you won’t talk so much, I’ll marry you.”

  an excerpt from Manalive, written by G. K. Chesterton in 1912

📓 Recent Notes 📓

• Comic adventure that is very much in line with The Flying Inn and Man Who Was Thursday.

  an note about The Ball and the Cross, written by G. K. Chesterton in 1906

• Reads a bit like an LLM parody of a Chesterton, but I don't mind it! Our hero Innocent Smith takes a natural joy in being alive and infects others with the same.

  an note about Manalive, written by G. K. Chesterton in 1912

• I'm re-reading this now, and it's funny how my impression of it has changed so much since 2019. I think of it as a very impressive work, especially the second person stuff. And I loved the plotting of this, which is not always the highlight of a fantasy/scifi book. Also I'm reading it in paperback, and at the second approach I have none of that world-building fatigue at all, and am enjoying the specifics of it.

  an note about The Raven Tower, written by Ann Leckie in 2019

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