Perspectives on Ideas March 6, 2007

Camp (Life Style)
Camp 118 …Susan Sontag’s famed definition of camp as “failed seriousness.”… Pierpont, Claudia Roth. “A Critic at Large: The Strong Woman.” The New Yorker (Nov. 11, 1996), pp. 106-118.

Camp Fire
Camp fire 551 …camp-fire…around which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and profoundly entertaining. Twain, Roughing It

Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment 214 He wakes, cold and wretched…dull gray light of morning is stealing into the cell…confused by his dreams, he starts from his uneasy bed in momentary uncertainty… every object in the narrow cell is too frightfully real to admit of doubt or mistake…condemned felon again, guilty and despairing; and in two hours more he will be dead. Dickens, Sketches by Boz.

Capital Punishment 31 As things stand, the spread between [conviction, sentencing and execution] is so great that by the time the criminal comes to the chair the crime is forgotten and all we see is a poor fish making a tremendous (and sometimes even gallant) effort to save his life, with all sorts of shyster lawyers and do-gooders as assistant-heroes. Mencken, Minority Report.

Capital Punishment 53 It is impossible to hang the average murderer until he has killed at least a dozen people. Mencken, Minority Report.

Cares
Cares 209 Leader: Future cares have future cures/ And we must mind today. Sophocles. Antigone.

Carousel
Carousel 76 Riding on one of the outside horses on the carousel, the ground spinning faster and faster, the tinny organ music racing, people, buildings, trees in that other world out there would break apart, flying all over the place in a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds, images. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.

Catholicism
Catholicism 41 The medieval pilgrim really believed that by contemplating a reliquary containing the head or even the fingers of a saint he would persuade that particular saint to intercede on his behalf with God...can one hope to share this belief which played so great a part in medieval civilization? Clark, Civilization.

Catholicism 1140 Hilda saw peasants, citizens, soldiers, nobles, women with bare heads, ladies in their silks, entering the churches, individually, kneeling for moments or for hours and directing their inaudible devotions to the shrine of some saint…felt themselves possessed of an own friend in Heaven. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Catholicism 167 [Catholicism] …gave ordinary people a means of satisfying, through ritual, images and symbols, their deepest impulses, so that their minds were at peace. Clark, Civilization.

Catholicism 175 The great achievements of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, humanizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people. Clark, Civilization.

Catholicism 210 Voltaire’s L’ingenu: A Huron Indian comes to France with some returning explorers…when he has trouble over confession, he asks where in the Gospel this is commanded and is directed to a passage in the Epistle of St. James: “Confess your sins to one another”…confesses, but when he had done he dragged the Abbé from the confessional chair, placed himself in the seat, and bade the Abbé confess in turn… “it is said, ‘We must confess our sins to one another’; I have related my sins to you, and you shall not stir till you recount yours.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire.

Catholicism 280 Kant: … “pious nonsense” is inculcated as “a sort of heavenly court service by means of which one may win through flattery the favor of the ruler of heaven.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Kant.

Catholicism 496 Sainte-Beauve remarked of his countrymen that they would continue to be Catholics long after they ceased to be Christians. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Santayana.

Catholicism 17 The Catholic is fortunate in the fact that the sinner can go to a priest and get rid of his sense of guilt. Mencken, Minority Report.

Catholicism 19075 …nor does it occur to him [the Catholic] that there are fitter modes of propitiating heaven than by penances, pilgrimages, and offerings at shrines. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Catholicism 1138 [Of Catholicism]: …the attractions of a faith, which so marvelously adapts itself to every human need. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Catholicism 1158 The more I see of this worship [Catholicism], the more I wonder at the exuberance with which it adapts itself to all the demands of human infirmity. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.