Works and Days

But her husband, my maternal grandfather whom I never saw, must have been an interesting person too; and something of an historical type, if not an historical character. He had been one of the old Wesleyan lay-preachers and was thus involved in public controversy, a characteristic which has descended to his grandchild. He was also one of the leaders of the early Teetotal movement; a characteristic which has not. But I am quite sure there was a great deal in him, beyond anything that is implied in mere public speaking or teetotalism. I am quite sure of it, because of two casual remarks he made; which are indeed the only two remarks I ever heard of him making. Once, when his sons were declaiming against mode and convention in the manner of all liberal youth, he said abruptly, “Ah, they talk a lot about fashion; but fashion is civilisation.” And in the other case, the same rising generation was lightly tossing about that pessimism which is only possible in the happy time of youth. They were criticising the General Thanksgiving in the Prayer-Book, and remarking that a good many people have very little reason to be thankful for their creation. And the old man, who was then so old that he hardly ever spoke at all, said suddenly out of his silence. “I should thank God for my creation if I knew I was a lost soul.”

–Chesterton, Autobiography

eis aidehn itheia katehlysis, eit’ ap’ Athehnohn
steikhois, eite nekys niseai ek Meroehs.
meh se g’ aniatoh patrehs apotehle thanonta;
pantothen eis ho pherohn eis aidehn anemos.

The way down to Hades is straight, whether you start from Athens or whether you betake yourself there, when dead, from Meroe. Let it not vex thee to die far from thy country. One fair wind to Hades blows from all lands.

Epigram 3 (Anonymous)
from The Greek Anthology, Volume IV, trans. W. R. Paton

Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of Public Thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth — for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives — and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man’s faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; — that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.

–Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross, 1936

Non usitata nec tenui ferar
pinna biformis per liquidum aethera
vates neque in terris morabor
longius invidiaque maior

I will be borne, a two-formed poet, not by a slight
or common wing through the liquid airs,
nor will I linger too long in lands
and greater than envy

urbis relinquam. Non ego, pauperum
sanguis parentum, non ego, quem vocas,
dilecte Maecenas, obibo
nec Stygia cohibebor unda:

I will leave cities behind. Not I, the blood
of poor parents, not I, whom you call,
beloved Maecenas, I shall not die,
nor shall I be confined by the Stygian wave.

iam iam resident cruribus asperae;
pelles et album mutor in alitem
superne nascunturque leves
per digitos umerosque plumae.

already now rough skin grows on my legs
and I am changed into a white bird
and above smooth feathers grow
between my fingers and shoulders.

Iam Daedaleo notior Icaro
visam gementis litora Bosphori
Syrtisque Gaetulas canorus
ales Hyperboreasque campos;

Already better known than Icarus son of Daedalus,
I the melodious bird shall see the shores
of the groaning Bosphorus, the Syrtis and Gaetulians
and the Hyperborean fields;

me Colchus et qui dissimulate metum
Marsae cohortis Dacus et ultimi
noscent Geloni, me peritus
discet Hiber Rhodanique potor.

Colchis will know me and the Dacians
who check their fear of the Marsian cohort
and the remotest Geloni; the learned Spaniard
and the Rhone-drinker will learn of me.

Absint inani funere neniae
luctusque turpes et querimoniae;
conpesce clamorem ac sepulcri
mitte supervacuas honores

Let there be no dirges for the empty funeral
nor unseemly grief and lamentation;
restrain the clamor and omit
the superfluous honors of the tomb.

Quintus Horatius “Horace” Flaccus, December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC

cum divus Augustus sibi atque urbi Romae templum apud Pergamum sisti no prohibuisset, qui omnia facta dictaque eius vice lege observem, placitum iam exemplum promptius secutus sum, quia cultui meo veneratio senatus adiungebatur. ceterum ut semel recepisse veniam habuerit, ita per omnes provincias effigie numinum sacrari ambitiosum, superbum; et vanescet Augusti honor, si promiscis adulationibus vulgatur.

When the deified Augustus did not prohibit a temple to be set up at Pergamum to himself and to the city of Rome, I–who will observe all his words and deeds as if in the place of the law–followed more readily a pleasing example, since to my cult the worship of the senate was added. But though this may be considered to have received pardon on one occasion, to be thus worshipped through all the provinces in the form of a god would be over-ambitious and arrogant; and the honor of Augustus fades, it it is spread with such common flattery.

ego me, patres conscripti, mortalem esse et hominum officia fungi satisque habere si locum principem impleam et vos testor et meminisse posteros volo; qui satis superque memoriae meae tribuent, ut maioribus meis dignum, rerum vestrarum providum, constantem in periculis, offensionum pro utilitate publica non pavidum credant.

For myself, gentlemen of the Senate, I know that I am mortal and perform the duties of men. I consider it enough if I occupy the first place, and I call you to witness and I wish future generations to remember; they will render enough and more than enough to my memory, if they will believe me worthy of my ancestors, provident of your concerns, steadfast in dangers, and not fearful of injury for the public welfare.

haec mihi in animis vestris templa, hae pulcherrimae effigies et mansurae. nam quae saxo struuntur, si iudicium posterorum in odium vertit, pro sepulchris spernuntur. proinde socios civis et deos ipsos precor, hos ut mihi ad finem usque vitae quietam et intellegentem humani divinique iuris mentem duint, illos ut, quandoque concessero, cum laude et bonis recordationibus facta atque famam nominis mei prosequantur.’

These are my temples in your hearts, my most beautiful and lasting images. For things built of stone, if the judgment of posterity turns to hatred, are scorned as tombs. Accordingly I request these things from allies, citizens, and the gods themselves: from the gods, that they may give me until the end of my life a mind peaceful and understanding of the law of men and of gods; from men, when I cease to be, that my deeds and the report of my name may be remembered with praise and with favorable recollections.

perstititque posthac secretis etiam sermonibus aspernari talem sui cultum. quod alii modestiam, multi, quia diffideret, quidam ut degeneris animi interpretabantur. optumos quippe mortalium altissima cupere: sic Herculem et Liberum apud Graecos, Quirinum apud nos deum numero additos: melius Augustum, qui speraverit. cetera principibus statim adesse: unum insatiabiliter parandum, prosperam sui memoriam; nam contemptu famae contemni virtutes.

He persisted hereafter even in private conversations to reject such veneration of his cult. Some understood this as modesty, others thought him diffident, certain ones concluded he was of a degenerate mind: for indeed the best of mortals desired the highest things: thus Hercules and Liber among the Greeks, Quirinus among us were added to the gods; Augustus had done better, who had hoped; all else comes immediately to sovereigns; one thing must be insatiably acquired, a favorable memory: for virtues are scorned by contempt for fame.

–Tacitus, Annals IV.37-38

“If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am here as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be a very wicked thing indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”

“It’s a short-sighted view, Scott-King.”

“There, headmaster, with all respect, I differ from you profoundly. I think it is the most long-sighted view it is possible to take.”

–Evelyn Waugh, Scott-King’s Modern Europe

A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.

“All Things Considered.”

from “Jane Austen”, in Selected Essays:

[Jane Austen] says of one of the men in her books that one of the women in her books who came across him paid no attention to what a certain gentleman thought on any matter, because she did not care enough about him–not in the sense of affection, but in the sense of attention. So speaks this ambassadress from her own sex to mine, and I will not be so ungenerous as to leave her without a corresponding reply.

My dear Jane Austen, we also do not care a dump what any woman thinks about our actions or our thoughts or our manners unless they have inspired us to–what shall I call it? It need not be affection, but at any rate attraction, or, at least, attention. Once that link is established, we care enormously; indeed, I am afraid, too much.

from “The Death of Wandering Peter”, in Selected Essays:

Look you, good people all, in your little passage through the daylight, get to see as many hills and buildings and rivers, fields, books, men, horses, ships, and precious stones as you can possibly manage to do. Or else stay in one village and marry in it and die there. For one of those two fates is the best fate for every man. Either to be what I have been, a wanderer with all the bitterness of it, or to stay at home and hear in one’s garden the voice of God.

Quoted in James V. Schall, S.J., Another Sort of Learning (Selected Contrary Essays on How to Finally Acquire an Education While Still in College or Anywhere Else: Containing Some Belated Advice about How to Employ Your Leisure Time When Ultimate Questions Remain Perplexing in Spite of Your Highest Earned Academic Degree, Together with Sundry Book Lists Nowhere Else in Captivity to Be Found)

What is ultimately questioned is the other even as a subject, a “guarantor” authorizing the relationship; the possibility for believing subjects is articulated on the existence of the subject. This question takes the form of what we must suppose. It plays on the relationship between a necessity and a supposition. Embodied in the necessary fictions that are the fiction of the other, this relationship is the vanishing point towards which belief tends in a society that has repressed the question of subject or which at least has isolated it from the practices cast in the form of objective techniques. By a series of referrals which multiply its initial deferred, belief continually carried forward towards the still other the unpossessable limit at which its status of possibility can be fixed.

–Michel De Certeau

If King Midas sits on gold, who sits on silver?

What is red, blue, orange, brown, black, and purple on the inside, and white on the outside?