John 3:30

He must increase, but I must decrease.

Ruskin, Unto This Last

To be “valuable,” therefore, is to “avail towards life.” A truly valuable or availing thing is that which leads to life with its whole strength. In proportion as it does not lead to life, or as its strength is broken, it is less valuable; in proportion as it leads away from life, it is unvaluable or malignant.

Hopkins, No Worst, There is None

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing–
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.

“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.

“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place–then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement–and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Dylan, Every Grain of Sand

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way I’ll always hear my name
Then onward in my journey I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

Tennyson, Idylls of the King

And Arthur, when Sir Balin sought him, said
“What wilt thou bear?” Balin was bold, and asked
To bear her own crown-royal upon shield,
Whereat she smiled and turned her to the King,
Who answered “Thou shalt put the crown to use.
The crown is but the shadow of the King,
And this a shadow’s shadow, let him have it,
So this will help him of his violences!”
“No shadow” said Sir Balin “O my Queen,
But light to me! no shadow, O my King,
But golden earnest of a gentler life!”

Herbert, The Pearl

I know the wayes of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the presse, and make it runne;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of it self, like a good huswife, spunne
In laws and policie; what the starres conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forc’d by fire;
Both th’ old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and historie:
All these stand open, or I have the keyes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the wayes of Honour, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesie and wit:
In vies of favours whether partie gains,
When glorie swells the heart, and moldeth it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love-knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe’re it goes:
How many drammes of spirit there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the wayes of Pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot bloud and brains;
What mirth and musick mean; what love and wit
Have done these twentie hundred yeares, and more:
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuffe is flesh, not brasse; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Then he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.

I know all these, and have them in my hand:
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I flie to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have thy love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through these labyrinths, not my groveling wit,
But thy silk twist let down from heav’n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how by it
To climbe to thee.

Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 109

Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most South-Sea-men’s cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck, exclaimed: “There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod.—On deck!”

For an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks, you would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of the levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: “Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware of Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.”

“He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!” murmured Ahab, as Starbuck disappeared. “What’s that he said—Ahab beware of Ahab—there’s something there!” Then unconsciously using the musket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little cabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and returning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.

“Thou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck,” he said lowly to the mate; then raising his voice to the crew: “Furl the t’gallant-sails, and close-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton, and break out in the main-hold.”

Tragically Hip, The Lookahead

You weigh a snowflake
The glamour of the sky
Descending
Past perfect eyes
And hearts leapt
To give me the lookahead
Come on, honey
Just give me that lookahead

McLuhan, Address at Vision 65

One overall consideration for our time and at a conference like this is to consider how, in the past, the environment was invisible in its operation upon us. Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally. New media are new environments. That is why the media are the message. One related consideration is that antienvironments, or counterenvironments created by the artist, are indispensable means of becoming aware of the environment in which we live and of the environments we create for ourselves technically.

Fish, Why Literary Criticism Is Like Virtue

It is because justification is internal and never starts from scratch that no one chooses a profession by surveying available options and settling on the one whose claims to moral and philosophical coherence seem most persuasive. (The scenario is the same one that imagines Montrose choosing to believe in his readings of Spenser and Shakespeare.) Choice of that kind is never the route by which you “discover” your life’s work; rather, one day, after many false starts, or in the wake of “starts” you do not recall attempting, you find yourself in the middle of doing something, enmeshed in its routines, extending in every action its assumptions. And when the request for justification comes, you respond from the middle, respond with phrases and platitudes of disciplinary self-congratulation, respond with a rehearsal of canonical achievements and ancient claims to universal benefit, respond, as Weinrib says, by ploughing over the same ground in ever deeper furrows. Justification is not a chain of inferences, but a circle, and it proceeds, if that is the word, by telling a story in which every detail is an instantiation of an informing spirit that is known only in the details but always exceeds them.

Heaney, Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
 
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
 
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
 
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
 
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
 
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
 
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
 
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

Dibnah, BBC’s Fred Dibnah: Steeplejack

Some days, it might be bloody awful on the floor, you know, and then you set off up the ladder and go through the fog and it’s like being in an aeroplane; you can see all the chimney stacks and towers and church steeples and hills outside of town sticking up through all this cloud and sun’s shining up above beautiful… you can see when the rain’s coming; you know half an hour before it comes it’s on its way.

You can see miles and miles. Summer’s best when sun’s shining, you know, and everybody down below is all sweating away inside and you are up there in the nice cool breeze blowing, you know, beautiful.

It’s somewhat strange, once you’ve started, you get like addicted to it; you just live it, you know, like day and night think about it, talk about it…

But once you’ve got cracking, I always feel, you know, when I’m really putting a big pile of stagings up round top of a chimney – when I’ve got it all up, you know, it’s a work of art, you know, a masterpiece.

Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

Nietzsche, What I Owe to the Ancients

My sense of style, of the epigram as style, was awoken almost instantaneously on coming into contact with Sallust. I have not forgotten the astonishment of my honoured teacher Corssen when he had to give top marks to his worst Latin scholar—I had done all in a single blow. Compact, severe, with as much substance as possible, a cold malice towards ‘fine words,’ also towards ‘fine feelings’—in that I knew myself. One will recognize in my writings, even in my Zarathustra a very serious ambition for Roman style, for the ‘aera perennius’ in style. I had the same experience on first coming into contact with Horace. From that day to this no poet has given me the same artistic delight as I derived from the very first from an Horatian ode. In certain languages what is achieved here is not even desirable. This mosaic of words in which every word, as sound, as locus, as concept, pours forth its power to left and right and over the whole, this minimum in the range and number of signs which achieves a maximum of energy of these signs—all this is Roman and, if one will believe me, noble par excellence. All other poetry becomes by comparison somewhat too popular—a mere emotional garrulousness….

Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1

OLIVIA: Open ’t and read it.
FOOL: Look then to be well edified, when the Fool
delivers the madman. [He reads]. By the Lord,
madam—
OLIVIA: How now, art thou mad?
FOOL: No, madam, I do but read madness. An your
Ladyship will have it as it ought to be, you must
allow vox.
OLIVIA: Prithee, read i’ thy right wits.
FOOL: So I do, madonna. But to read his right wits is to
read thus. Therefore, perpend, my princess, and
give ear.

Homer, Odyssey, Book IX, 407-411

τοὺς δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἐξ ἄντρου προσέφη κρατερὸς Πολύφημος:
‘ὦ φίλοι, Οὖτίς με κτείνει δόλῳ οὐδὲ βίηφιν.
οἱ δ᾽ ἀπαμειβόμενοι ἔπεα πτερόεντ᾽ ἀγόρευον:
‘εἰ μὲν δὴ μή τίς σε βιάζεται οἶον ἐόντα,
νοῦσον γ᾽ οὔ πως ἔστι Διὸς μεγάλου ἀλέασθαι,

Then from his cave replied mighty Polyphemus:
“O friends, No one slays me by guile not force.”
But replying with winged words they spoke:
“If no one assaults you, being alone,
Truly, you can’t avoid such distress from Zeus,”

Mullins, Introduction to Creed

I hope I would leave a legacy of joy, a legacy of [uh] real compassion, [of] because I think there is a great joy in real compassion.  I don’t think that you can know joy apart from caring deeply about people, caring enough about people that you actually do something [uh].  But I [I] have a feeling, like, if my life is motivated by my ambition to leave a legacy, what I’ll probably leave is a legacy as ambition.  But if my life is [is] motivated by the power of the Spirit in me, if I live in the awareness of the indwelling Christ, if I allow his presence to [uh] guide my actions, to guide my motives – those sorts of things – that’s the only time I think that we really leave a great legacy.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.  My ambition to be [uh] a good guy is a fleshly ambition.  And when Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow him, a lot of us think that what that means is we’re supposed to lay down our vices and we’re supposed to cling to virtues.  But I think that, unless Christ is Lord of our virtues, our virtues become dangerous to us and dangerous to the people around us.  I think that when Christ calls us to take up our cross, what he means is you must die not only to whatever vices are in your life – which he will eventually kill out – you must also die to whatever virtues are in your life.  Your life is [no] is not valuable because you’re an articulate speaker; your life is not valuable because you are a generous person; your life is not valuable because of any of that.  That, if we empty ourselves of everything and allow God to be present, then it’s no longer us, it’s him; then it becomes a spiritual thing.  And that which is born of the spirit is spirit and [uh] that’s when I think Christianity really begins to make sense.

Plato, Ion

ION: That is good, Socrates; and yet I doubt whether you will ever have eloquence enough to persuade me that I praise Homer only when I am mad and possessed; and if you could hear me speak of him I am sure you would never think this to be the case.

SOCRATES: I should like very much to hear you, but not until you have answered a question which I have to ask. On what part of Homer do you speak well?—not surely about every part.

ION: There is no part, Socrates, about which I do not speak well: of that I can assure you.

SOCRATES: Surely not about things in Homer of which you have no knowledge?

ION: And what is there in Homer of which I have no knowledge?

Joel, And So It Goes

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense
 
And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon, I suppose

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IX

Wonder not, sovran Mistress, if perhaps
Thou canst, who art sole wonder! much less arm
Thy looks, the Heaven of mildness, with disdain,
Displeased that I approach thee thus, and gaze
Insatiate; I thus single; nor have feared
Thy awful brow, more awful thus retired.
Fairest resemblance of thy Maker fair,
Thee all things living gaze on, all things thine
By gift, and thy celestial beauty adore
With ravishment beheld! there best beheld,
Where universally admired; but here
In this enclosure wild, these beasts among,
Beholders rude, and shallow to discern
Half what in thee is fair, one man except,
Who sees thee? and what is one? who should be seen
A Goddess among Gods, adored and served
By Angels numberless, thy daily train.

Macdonald, The Tonight Show, 2009

“A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office, and the podiatrist says, “What seems to be the problem, moth?”

The moth says “What’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don’t know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that’s on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn’t such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, “Moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?”

And the moth says, “‘Cause the light was on.”

Lewis, Till We Have Faces

The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.” A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?