Friday, March 16, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas March 16, 2007

Character (continued)
890 “My lady Teresa says more than she thinks,” said the page. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615.

311 [About Dean Rusk]: You played by the rules of the game and the rules were very strict, you did not indulge the whim of your own personality, you served at the whim and will of those above you. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

314 [About Dean Rusk]: There were always difficulties and hardships, but they were the kind that could be dealt with, so that there would develop in the grown man a belief that any obstacle could be overcome, that hard work made no challenge insurmountable. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

321 When Commander Albrecht concluded his presentation of the case against Goering with a line from Byron, “He was the mildest mannered man who ever slit a throat or scuttled a boat,” Lawrence ruled him out of order and directed the comment stricken from the record. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

511 Wilhelm Scheidt: You have to consider that Hitler was really an actor, and an actor with many variations, and he really tried to deceive people about his intentions. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

590 He [Bulstrode] was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

670 Our deeds still travel with us from afar,/ And what we have been makes us what we are. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

677 Who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections? George Eliot, Middlemarch.

730 Lydgate on Dorothea: This young creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

549 To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; we must learn that we are nothing but fools, a much more extensive and important lesson. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

906 Miriam to Hilda: Your judgments are often terribly severe, though you seem all made up of gentleness and mercy. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

932 You mistake your own will for an iron necessity.... Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

946 ...a kind of cage, the iron bars of which are made of her own thoughts. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

949 ...some nameless machine in human shape. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

958 …as implacable as stone, and cruel as fire. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

1025 Miriam to Hilda: As an angel, you are not amiss; but, as a human creature, and a woman among earthy men and women, you need a sin to soften you. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

1180 …the mystery which they bear about with them, and the sense that there is an acknowledged sinfulness as the nucleus of it. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

653 …if ever I did deserve to be soundly cuffed by a fellow mortal…it must have been while I was striving to prove myself ostentatiously his equal…. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.

693 Of Hollingsworth: …those men who have surrendered themselves to an over-ruling purpose…have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.

721 I detested this kind of man, and all the more, because a part of my own nature showed itself responsive to him. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.

750 Coverdale to Hollingsworth: “And will you cast off a friend, for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right, as an individual human being, and looks at matters through his own optics, instead of yours?” Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.

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