Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk. The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else. At least that was the view that the men of his generation had taken. The trenchant divisions between right and wrong, honest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so little scope for the unforeseen. There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long windings of destiny. Archer hung there and wondered. . . .
What was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose standards had bent and bound him?
I heard last night a little child go singing
'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church,
O bella liberta, O bella!--stringing
The same words still on notes he went in search
So high for, you concluded the upspringing
Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch
Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green,
And that the heart of Italy must beat,
While such a voice had leave to rise serene
'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street:
A little child, too, who not long had been
By mother's finger steadied on his feet,
And still O bella liberta he sang.
- Elzabeth Barrett Browning, Casa Guidi Windows
“The government can catch a hare with an oxcart!”
Every passion or wicked thought, every affliction or crime, every rebellion or catastrophe necessarily casts its shadow before it long before it manifests itself in real life.
“Who can say it’s not what we see with our eyes open that is distorted, and that what’s described here isn’t the true essence of things?” He slowed down outside a door. “Haven’t you ever heard old men sigh that life’s a dream?”
“This is where they keep the dreams about the end of the world, according to the inhabitants of places where the winters are very windy.”
“Some people,” the Vizier went on, “think it’s the world of anxieties and dreams – your world, in short – that governs this one. I myself think it’s from this world that everything is governed. I think it’s this world that chooses the dreams and anxieties and imaginings that ought to be brought to the surface, as a bucket draws water from a well. Do you see what I mean? It’s this world that selects what it wants from the abyss.”
Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.
Some people ask: "Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?" Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general - but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that.
Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes, I think, from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not "naturally" in charge as men.
We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.
We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak—a hard man.
In secondary school, a boy and a girl go out, both of them teenagers with meager pocket money. Yet the boy is expected to pay the bills, always, to prove his masculinity. (And we wonder why boys are more likely to steal money from their parents.)
What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity and money? What if their attitude was not "the boy has to pay," but rather, "whoever has more should pay." Of course, because of their historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today. But if we start raising children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred years, boys will no longer have the pressure of proving their masculinity by material means.
But by far the worst thing we do to males—by making them feel they have to be hard—is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.
And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males.
We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.
We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.
Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
Industrial man—a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement.
“Millions and Millions," he whispered to himself: and the enormity of the evil seemed to grow with every repetition of the word. All over the world, millions of men and women lying in pain; millions dying, at this very moment; millions more grieving over them, their faces distorted, like that poor old hag's,the tears running down their cheeks. And millions starving, millions frightened, and sick and anxious. Millions being cursed and kicked and beaten by other brutal millions. And everywhere the stink of garbage and drink and unwashed bodies, everywhere the blight of stupidity and ugliness. The horror was always there, even when one happened to be feeling well and happy - always there, just around the corner and behind almost every door.
“My mind is so busy thinking about values that I don't have time to experience them.”
The Black Death was a faithful visitor to Florence. It arrived, on average, once every ten years, always in the summer.
Perspective is the method of representing three-dimensional objects in recession on a two-dimensional surface in order to give the same impression of relative position, size, or distance as the actual objects do when viewed from a particular point. Filippo is generally regarded as its inventor, the one who discovered (or rediscovered) its mathematical laws. For example, he worked out the principle of the vanishing point, which was known to the Greeks and Romans but, like so much other knowledge, had long since been lost.
Freshly cut from a quarry, limestone and sandstone smell of rotten eggs, and the stronger this sulfurous stench, the better the quality of the stone.
In 1492, Filippo Maria captured both Brescia and Genoa, and a year later seized the town of Forli, only 50 miles from Florence. The following year, as plague raged through Tuscany, his forces defeated the Florentines at Zagonara, in Romagna. There were only three casualties, all Florentine soldiers who fell from their horses and drowned on the battlefield in their heavy plate armor (it had rained heavily in Zagonara the night before). This lack of bloodshed shows that warfare in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, contrary to popular conceptions, could be reasonably civilized. Most battles resembled chess matches in which opposing commanders sought to outmaneuver each other, the loser being the one who conceded that his position was technically vulnerable. These engagements were fought by mercenaries who settled the terms of warfare in advance, rather like sportsmen deciding the rules of the game.
Death cancels all engagements.
“She did not look like an orphan," said the wife of the Oriel don, subsequently, on the way home. The criticism was a just one. ... Tall and lissom, she was sheathed from the bosom downwards in flamingo silk, and she was liberally festooned with emeralds. Her dark hair was not even strained back from her forehead and behind her ears, as an orphan's should be. Parted somewhere at the side, it fell in an avalanche of curls upon one eyebrow. From her right ear drooped heavily a black pearl, from her left a pink; and their difference gave an odd, bewildering witchery to the little face between.
The unforgettable thing in his life is usually not a thing he has done or left undone, but a thing done to him—some insolence or cruelty for which he could not, or did not, avenge himself.
You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her.
Few cities have been much more loved, loathed, and celebrated than Oxford.
Sometimes as I walk through Oxford, cursing at her traffic, marvelling at her obscurity, and wondering when on earth they are going to bring her up to date, this old magic momentarily dazes me, and I lean against some gold-grey stone beneath the ragwort, and think how lucky I am to be grumbling there at all.
