josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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11 Sep '12 08:40:52 PM

Routines are worn-in ways, roads; rituals are sacred ones.

11 Sep '12 04:04:18 PM

Level of comment-box discourse provoked by the Chicago teacher's union strike:

'Too bad, so sad'

10 Sep '12 12:15:49 PM

'I can help you with that! My view is…'

9 Sep '12 02:42:30 AM

'Crusoe / We say was / "Rescued".'

8 Sep '12 04:59:44 PM

'The sun shines to-day also.'

8 Sep '12 04:32:38 PM

'Convince me that you have a seed there…'

7 Sep '12 09:28:59 PM

Emerson, 'Self-Reliance': 'Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state…'

7 Sep '12 09:27:03 PM

In Walden ii, 1-6, Thoreau makes his attitude toward settlement, toward settling, clear: 'I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted' (ii, 5).

ii, 8: 'When first I took up my abode in the woods…'

Abode, per OED, 'apparently an alteration of BODE n by association with ABIDE v'; bode, 'biding, tarrying, waiting, delay; but bode: without delay'; abide runs through senses involving waiting, expecting, remaining ready, staying, remaining, residing, dwelling, staying habitually in a place, continuing, persisting.

ii, 1: 'The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated'.

7 Sep '12 06:01:58 PM

A teacher who feels called to a vocation will feel all the more unhappy at inviting any student freely to leave what education is to be had rather than take it; like a priest who says, sorry, my child, if you can be saved, it's not by me.