Tag Archives: Quotes

Why’s This So Good?

Nieman Storyboard has an ongoing series called “Why’s This So Good?” in which they analyze writing to find out why it’s, you know, so good. When I read this short section of an article by Ed Ruscha describing his burning desire for white jeans, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. This is me trying to figure out why.

In 1951, when I was fourteen, I landed a job in an Oklahoma City laundromat. The pay was respectable–fifty cents an hour, up from forty-five. In a swampy, bunkerlike back room with a large concrete center drain, I had to mix bleach and water together in brown glass bottles for the customers to use. It was sweaty and dank, but I got to listen to a faraway radio, faint but distinct, playing music by the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, and Faron Young.

One day, I saw a news item about the murder of a nurse in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A photograph of one of the teenage killers showed him in handcuffs, being escorted by police. He was wearing what looked to me like white Levi’s. White Levi’s! What style! I was overcome by an immediate urge to get a pair for myself, but after looking around I was told that no such product existed–at least, not in Oklahoma.

Then it came to me: I would make my own. I brought a pair of bluejeans from home, doused them in undiluted Clorox bleach, and placed them in a washing machine. I let them sit for half an hour, the mystery and suspense building. When I finally opened the door, I found, to my astonishment, a pair of pure-white, radiantly glowing Levi’s. A triumph.

Or so I thought. Reaching in to grab them, I felt my hand sweep through a puffy lump of dead white fibres, softer than cotton candy. The rivets and the buttons were the only parts that survived.

At the time, I was banking on white Levi’s coming into fashion. I had to wait twenty years to buy a pair off the rack.”

Ed Ruscha via Put This On

If I were to tell this story to a friend, it would go something like this: “I wanted a pair of white jeans once. I couldn’t find them for sale anywhere, so I decided to bleach some normal blue jeans, but when I did, they melted.”

The strength of Ruscha’s writing here mainly comes from the specific details, obviously. Just to make sure, here it is with the specifics removed:

In 1951, I landed a job in a laundromat. The pay was respectable. In a back room, I had to mix bleach and water together in glass bottles for the customers to use. It was unpleasant, but I got to listen to a radio.

One day, I saw a photograph in a newspaper of a man wearing what looked to me like white Levi’s. I wanted a pair for myself, but after looking around I was told that no such product existed.

Then I decided I would make my own. I brought a pair of bluejeans from home, doused them in bleach, and placed them in a washing machine. When I finally opened the door, I found, to my astonishment, a pair of pure-white Levi’s.

Or so I thought. Reaching in to grab them, I discovered they had disintegrated in the bleach and were ruined.

Here’s what I removed:

  • his age (“fourteen”)
  • the location of the laundromat (“Oklahoma City”)
  • the pay (“fifty cents an hour, up from forty-five”)
  • the description of the room (“swampy, bunkerlike… with a large concrete center drain”)
  • the color of the glass bottles (“brown”)
  • what made the work unpleasant (“it was sweaty and dank”)
  • the sound of the radio and the music it played (“faraway… faint but distinct, playing music by the likes of Lefty Frizzell, Hank Williams, and Faron Young.”)

Et cetera.

A good sample to reference if your descriptions are falling flat.

In Case You Can’t Tell, I’m Clearing Out Old Drafts of Blog Posts

I suspect that the continual return of natural law is best explained as an indication that our “nature” seldom tells us what we ought to do but often tells us what we are doing is inappropriate. Thus natural law is primarily a test, as the “principles” of natural law are means to sensitize us to ways our nature can and may be distorted. The traditional claim that the Christian life is in harmony with natural law is a promissory note that Christian existence stands ready to be challenged by “nature.” It has been a mistake, however, to assume that Christian ethics can therefore begin on the basis of clearly articulated “principles” of natural law. For the “principles” of natural law are known only through the articulation of a positive tradition.

Stanley Hauerwas

In other words, natural law does not tell us what to do. It tells us what not to do. Let those in the so-called “manosphere” hear.

Informed Patriotism

Understandably, we’re interested in the economic well-being of our society and we want our kids to be able to get good jobs, but we’ve sidelined citizen formation in the process. We should aspire to make our students more than consumers and workers—we should strive to make them citizens, too.

In view of all of this, it is worth reminding ourselves why civics matters. Simply, the goal of a good civic education is to have thinking citizens. We’re all in charge in this self-governing society. We share the responsibility for this shared experiment in human freedom. We must learn how to talk about politics with one another, how to make sense of the Constitution, and why the American creed of equality and liberty is worth defending.

America is built on the radical notion that every citizen can and should be a good thinker—and the first step to developing the right habits of mind is a knowledge of our Constitution’s first principles. Civics is more than just teaching people that they should vote at election time. It is also more than just factual knowledge, like how many justices sit on the Supreme Court or the functions of the three branches of government. Civics is about reflective knowledge, or what Ronald Reagan called “informed patriotism.”

Hans Zeiger

While I don’t dispute that every citizen should be a good thinker, or that education should improve a person’s reflective knowledge, I do dispute the idea that the two ought to be grouped together. A good education will improve reflective knowledge. A knowing person will be an informed patriot. But it does not follow that the goal of education should be to create good citizens. That’s a side benefit.

In fact, creating “good citizens” has been the goal of American public education for almost two hundred years, and look where it’s gotten us.

As Chesterton said, the true patriot is not the one who says, “My country right or wrong.” No one who loves his country would say that. A true patriot wants his country to be right because he wants what’s best for his country. Of course, in order to believe that, the patriot must know what is right and what is wrong. And there we have the goal of a good education.

The Makers by Dorothy Sayers

The Architect stood forth and said:
“I am the master of the art:
I have a thought within my head,
I have a dream within my heart.

“Come now, good craftsman, ply your trade
With tool and stone obediently;
Behold the plan that I have made—
I am the master; serve you me.”

The Craftsman answered: “Sir, I will
Yet look to it that this your draft
Be of a sort to serve my skill—
You are not master of the craft.

“It is by me the towers grow tall,
I lay the course, I shape and hew;
You make a little inky scrawl,
And that is all that you can do.

“Account me, then, the master man,
Laying my rigid rule upon
The plan, and that which serves the plan—
The uncomplaining, helpless stone.”

The Stone made answer: “Masters mine,
Know this: that I can bless or damn
The thing that both of you design
By being but the thing I am;

“For I am granite and not gold,
For I am marble and not clay,
You may not hammer me nor mould—
I am the master of the way.

“Yet once that mastery bestowed
Then I will suffer patiently
The cleaving steel, the crushing load,
That make a calvary of me;

“And you may carve me with your hand
To arch and buttress, roof and wall,
Until the dream rise up and stand—
Serve but the stone, the stone serves all.

“Let each do well what each knows best,
Nothing refuse and nothing shirk,
Since none is master of the rest,
But all are servants of the work—

“The work no master may subject
Save He to whom the whole is known,
Being Himself the Architect,
The Craftsman and the Corner-stone.

“Then, when the greatest and the least
Have finished all their labouring
And sit together at the feast,
You shall behold a wonder thing:

“The Maker of the men that make
Will stoop between the cherubim,
The towel and the basin take,
And serve the servants who serve Him.”

The Architect and Craftsman both
Agreed, the Stone had spoken well;
Bound them to service by an oath
And each to his own labour fell.

(Discovered in Sayers’ The Man Born to be King)

Two Quotes on Dying

They, who in matters of war seek in all ways to save their lives, are just they who, as a rule, die dishonorably; whereas they who, recognizing that death is the common lot and destiny of all men, strive hard to die nobly: these more frequently, as I observe, do after all attain to old age, or, at any rate, while life lasts, they spend their days more happily. This lesson let all lay to heart this day, for we are just at such a crisis of our fate. Now is the season to be brave ourselves, and to stimulate the rest by our example.

Xenophon, Anabasis

A man’s thoughts [when death draws near] seem to be double-powered, and the memory becomes very sharp and clear. I don’t know what was in the others’ minds, but I know what filled my own… I fancy it isn’t the men who get most out of the world and are always buoyant and cheerful that most fear to die. Rather it is the weak-engined souls who go about with dull eyes, that cling most fiercely to life. They have not the joy of being alive which is a kind of earnest of immortality … I know that my thoughts were chiefly about the jolly things that I had seen and done; not regret, but gratitude.

Dick Hannay in John Buchan’s Greenmantle

At first glance, these two quotes express the same thing, that those who cling to life never really live at all, and those who are willing to risk everything enjoy it all the more. But Hannay is able to trace his sentiment to a source that Xenophon (apparently) knew nothing of: gratitude.

I also love that phrase, an “earnest of immortality,” meaning, of course, a pledge or promise of things to come. The real joy of life comes in knowing there’s more life to come.

When I was in the process of conversion, it was, as it often is, terrifying. One of the things that was terrifying was that there was so much that I loved about being human—good fiction and music and intellectual adventures and experiencing nature and careful thinking—and I didn’t know how of all those human things would look in light of the Gospel, with all its urgency.

Susannah Black Roberts

Preparing for the Apocalypse

I knew an old couple that sat many evenings out on their porch. Sometimes both, sometimes one. They’d sit longer into the night than seemed reasonable, as if they were waiting for something that never came. It wasn’t until after the disaster that I believed I understood why.

Every subsequent evening, almost the entire street went, and sat, and talked, and shared, and played, for hours, around THEIR porch. Stubborn habit? Or had they just never forgotten a normal that everyone else briefly remembered?

Source

I Love Me Some Ammo Against Encanto

[C]onsider that the only character in Encanto… who has experienced any significant real-life adventure is the heroine’s grandmother. And Abuela’s adventures, which happened long before the movie takes place, are portrayed as a traumatic backstory that results in her stifling her grandchildren’s self-actualisation. In effect, it’s a Disney princess adventure about the impossibility, under modern conditions, of making Disney princess adventures.

Mary Harrington

Using a Scythe

So great an art can only be learnt by continual practice; but this much is worth writing down, that, as in all good work, to know the thing with which you work is the core of the affair. Good verse is best written on good paper with an easy pen, not with a lump of coal on a whitewashed wall. The pen thinks for you; and so does the scythe mow for you if you treat it honourably and in a manner that makes it recognise its service.

Hilaire Belloc, Hills and the Sea

Before All Things Else

What distinguishes [the artist] here from the man who works to live is, I think, his desire to see the fulfilment of the work. Whether it is possible for a machine-worker to feel creatively about his routine job I do not know; but I suspect that it is, provided and so long as the worker eagerly desires that before all things else the work shall be done. What else causes the armaments worker to labour passionately when he knows that the existence of his country is threatened, but that his heart travels along the endless band with the machine parts and that his imagination beholds the fulfilment of the work in terms, not of money, but of the blazing gun itself, charged with his love and fear. As the author of Ecclesiasticus says, he “watches to finish the work”; for once, that is, he sees the end-product of his toil exactly as the artist always sees it, in a vision of Idea, Energy, and Power. It is unfortunate that so little effort should be made by Church or State to show him the works of peace in the same terms. Is the man, for example, engaged in the mass-production of lavatory cisterns encouraged to bring to his daily monotonous toil the vision splendid of an increasingly hygienic world? I doubt it; yet there is much merit in sanitary plumbing—more, if you come to think of it, than there is in warfare.

Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker