November 30, 2008: Ariosto would have issues with the Second Amendment - 0 Comments

"Unhappy soldier, turn in your weapons to be melted down, even to your very sword: carry a musket on your shoulder or an arquebus--else you will go without wages! / Wicked, ugly invention, how did you find a place in human hearts? You have destroyed military glory, and dishonoured the profession of arms; valour and martial skill are now discredited, so that often the miscreant will appear a better man than the valiant. Because of you no longer may boldness and courage go into the field to match their strength. / Many a baron, many a knight now lies in the earth, and so shall many more on your account, before this war is ended which has brought tears to all the world but most of all to Italy. I have said it, and I speak no lie: the man who invented such abominable contraptions was crueller by far than all the most evil of evil geniuses the world has known."

- Ariosto, Orlando Furioso (prose trans Guido Waldman), 1516.

November 29, 2008: The author of the Dissoi Logoi on relativity - 0 Comments

"I think that if one were to order all mankind to bring together into a single pile all that each individual considered shameful, and then again to take from this mass what each thought seemly, nothing would be left, but they would all, severally, take away everything."

- Anon, Dissoi Logoi (Contrasting Arguments), circa 450BC

November 28, 2008: Gumilev on the Demon of Curiosity - 0 Comments

"When your interest is aroused in some subject, when you want to know all about it - what it represents, how it is linked with its surroundings and what significance it has for me and my contemporaries - you look first of all for a suitable book where all this might be described. You hope that, reading it, you will find peace and be able to pass to other matters until the demon of curiosity again seizes your heart."

November 25, 2008: Turin & Sanchez on Unsmelly Times - 0 Comments

"We also live in such unsmelly times, with most everyone bathing and washing clothes regularly, and public sanitation working invisibly and reliably to sweep away the foul detritus of the day, that the ordinary person may find herself sensitive to fragrance the way you might find yourself sensitive to noise after spending a week at a spiritual retreat where everyone talks in whispers and walks in cotton socks. If you'd like to overcome a general oversensitivity about perfumes, the best cure is to find perfumes you like and to let them teach you to enjoy smelling beautiful things. If instead you'd rather demand that the world be utterly scent-free, you're a drag."

- Luca Turin & Tania Sanchez, Perfumes: The Guide, 2008.

November 20, 2008: Patton - 0 Comments

"You magnificent bastard; I read your book!"

- George C. Scott, Patton, 1970

November 20, 2008: Le Guin on Politicians - 0 Comments

"He was a hard shrewd politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell."

- Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969.