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. . . SUFFERING see "UNHAPPINESS" for related links To repel one's cross is to make it heavier. --Henri Frιdιrick Amiel (18211881) Swiss critic. In James Wood _Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 493 [1895]. Some people like being burdened. It gives them an interest. --Beryl Bainbridge (1934 ) English novelist. _An Awfully Big Adventure_ [1989] Some people suffer in silence louder than others. --Morrie Brickman (19171994) American cartoonist. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. --Fyodor Dostoyevsky (18211881), Russian novelist, journalist, and short story writer. _Crime and Punishment_ [1866], ch. V, pt. III We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other. --Sigmund Freud (18561939) Austrian psychiatrist. _Civilization and Its Discontents_ [1930], ch. 2 If Afflictions refine some, they consume others. --Thomas Fuller (16541734) English writer and physician. Comp., _Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs_, #2666 [1732] Happiness is not a reward it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment it is a result. --Robert Green Ingersoll (18331899) American politician and orator know as "the great agnostic." Let us, my dear, pray for one another, and consider our sufferings as notices mercifully given us to prepare ourselves for another state. I live now in a melancholy way. My old friend Mr. Levet is dead, who lived with me in the house, and was useful and companionable; Mrs. Desmoulins is gone away; and Mrs. Williams is so much decayed, that she can add little to another's gratifications. The world passes away, and we are passing with it; but there is, doubtless, another world, which will endure for ever. Let us fit ourselves for it. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. Letter to Lucy Porter. The more one suffers, the more, I believe, one has a sense of the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires the authority in the art of the comic. --Sφren Kierkegaard (18131855) Danish philosopher. If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. _Driftwood_ [1857] Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121180) Roman emperor [161180] and Stoic philosopher. _Meditations_ It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Moon and Sixpence_ [1919], ch. 17 - What does not kill me make me stronger. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. _Twilight of the Idols_ [1889] If you have a suffering friend, be a resting-place for his suffering, but a resting-place like a hard bed, a camp-bed: thus you will serve him best. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. "Of the Compassionate" in _Thus Spoke Zarathustra_ [1892] It is not so much the suffering as the senselessness of it that is unendurable. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. As paraphrased by Nicholas Berdyaev _The Destiny of Man_ [1931] tr. Natalie Duddington [1955]. - - He jests at scars, that never felt a wound. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Romeo and Juliet_ [15951596] The worst is not, So long as we can say, "This is the worst.' --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Lear_ [16051606] -  ;void(0)) SUICIDE . . see "DEATH" for related links see "UNHAPPINESS" for related links There are some vile and contemptible men who, allowing themselves to be conquered by misfortune, seek a refuge in death. --Agathon (c. 448400 BC) Athenian tragic poet. I would have killed myself but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian and you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you missed. --Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (1935 ) American actor, screenwriter, and director. To die, and thus avoid poverty or love, or anything painful, is not the part of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is cowardice to avoid trouble, and the suicide does not undergo death because it is honorable, but in order to avoid evil. --Aristotle (384322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. Mr___, who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself; and then he ate three buttered muffins for breakfast, before shooting himself, knowing that he would not be troubled with indigestion. --Topham Beauclerk (17391780) in Boswell's _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791] (16 April 1779) There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. --Albert Camus (19131960) French novelist, dramatist, and essayist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature. I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself. --Johnny Carson (19252005) American comedian and host of The Tonight Show [19621992]. (On NBC's The Tonight Show [20 November 1984]) In January 1952, [...] Mao ordered [a] campaign [...] called "the Five-Antis." The offences were bribery, tax evasion, pilfering state property, cheating and stealing economic information. It was aimed at private businessmen, whose property had not been confiscated, to force them to disgorge money, as well as to frighten them out of acts like bribery and tax evasion. One person involved at a high level put the number of suicides [...] as at least 200,000-300,000. In Shanghai so many people jumped from skyscrapers that they acquired the nickname "parachutes." One eyewitness wondered why people jumped into the street rather than into the river. The reason, he discovered, was that they wanted to safeguard their families: "If you jumped into the Huangpu River and were swept away so the Communists didn't have a corpse, they would accuse you of having escaped to Hong Kong, and your family would suffer. So the best way was to leap down to the street." --Jung Chang and Dan Halliday, _Mao: The Unknown Story_ [2005] It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late. --E. M. Cioran (19111995) Romanian-born French philosopher. Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words; Addressed to Those Who Think_ [1820] - ...Survivors often regret their decision in midair, if not before. Ken Baldwin and Kevin Hines both say they hurdled over the railing, afraid that if they stood on the chord they might lose their courage. Baldwin was twenty-eight and severely depressed on the August day in 1985 when he told his wife not to expect him home till late. "I wanted to disappear," he said. "So the Golden Gate was the spot. I'd heard that the water just sweeps you under." On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. "I still see my hands coming off the railing," he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, "I instantly realized that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable except for having just jumped." Kevin Hines was eighteen when he took a municipal bus to the bridge one day in September, 2000. After treating himself to a last meal of Starbursts and Skittles, he paced back and forth and sobbed on the bridge walkway for half an hour. No one asked him what was wrong. A beautiful German tourist approached, handed him her camera, and asked him to take her picture, which he did. "I was like, 'Fuck this, nobody cares,' " he told me. "So I jumped." But after he crossed the chord, he recalls, "My first thought was What the hell did I just do? I don't want to die." [. . . ] Every two weeks, on average, someone jumps off the Golden Gate Bridge. It is the world's leading suicide location. In the eighties, workers at a local lumberyard formed "the Golden Gate Leapers Association" a sports pool in which bets were placed on which day of the week someone would jump. At least twelve hundred people have been seen jumping or have been found in the water since the bridge opened, in 1937, including Roy Raymond, the founder of Victoria's Secret, in 1993, and Duane Garrett, a Democratic fund- raiser and a friend of Al Gore's, in 1995. The actual toll is probably considerably higher, swelled by legions of the stealthy, who sneak onto the bridge after the walkway closes at sundown and are carried to sea with the neap tide. Many jumpers wrap suicide notes in plastic and tuck them into their pockets. "Survival of the fittest. Adios-unfit," one seventy-year-old man said in his valedictory; another wrote, "Absolutely no reason except I have a toothache." [...] --Tad Friend, "The fatal grandeur of the Golden Gate Bridge" in the _New Yorker_ [13 October 2003] - Suicide is what the death certificate says when one dies of depression. --Peter D. Kramer, psychiatrist, in "What Ivanov Needs in the 90s Is an Anti-Depressant" _New York Times_ [21 December 1997]. My advice to any young Australian writer whose talents have been recognised would be to go steerage, stow away, swim, and seek London, Yankeeland or Timbucktoo rather than stay in Australia till his genius turned to gall or beer. Or failing this and still in the interests of human nature and literature to study elementary anatomy, especially as applies to the cranium, and then shoot himself carefully with the aid of a looking glass. --Henry Lawson (18671922) Australian writer and poet. He That kills himself to avoid misery, fears it, And, at the best, shows but a bastard valor. This life's a fort committed to my trust, Which I must not yield up, till it be forced: Nor will I. He's not valiant that dares die, But he that boldly bears calamity. --Philip Massinger (15831640) English Jacobean and Caroline playwright. _Maid of Honour_, act IV, sc. 3 - ...during my late teens, with the enlightenment gradually dawning within me, I more than once concluded that death was preferable to life. At that age the sense of humor is in a low state. Later on, by the mysterious working of God's providence, it usually recovers. What keeps a reflective and skeptical man alive? In large part, I suspect, it is this sense of humor. But in addition there is curiosity. Human existence is always irrational and often painful, but in the last analysis it remains interesting. One wants to know what is going to happen tomorrow. Will the lady in the mauve frock be more amiable than she is today? Such questions keep human beings alive. If the future were known, every intelligent man would kill himself at once, and the Republic would be peopled wholly by morons.... --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. "Under the Elms" - The relatives of a suicide resent him for not having stayed alive out of consideration for their reputation. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (18441900) German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture. _Human, All Too Human_ [1878], tr. Marion Faber [1984] - Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you: And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. --Dorothy Parker (18931967) American critic and humorist. _Enough Rope_ [1927] "Rιsumι" - Whenever Richard Cory went downtown, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean-favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, "Good morning," and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich yes, richer than a king And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head. --Edwin Arlington Robinson (18691935) American poet. "Richard Cory" in _The Children of the Night_ [1897] - It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to make yourself wake up one more time. It's harder to stay where you are than to get out. --Judith Rossner (19352005) American novelist. _Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid_ [1969] Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool good luck. (His suicide note.) --George Sanders (19061972) Russian-born British actor. Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. _Letters to Lucilius_ (1st c.) Those men who destroy a healthful constitution of body by intemperance and an irregular life do as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang or poison or drown themselves. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. Suicide is no more than a trick played on the calendar. --Tom Stoppard [Tomas Straussler] (1937 ) Czech-born British playwright. _The Dog It Was That Died_ [1983] Nor at all can tell Whether I mean this day to end myself, Or lend an ear to Plato where he says, That men like soldiers may not quit the post Allotted by the Gods. --Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892) English poet. "Lucretius" [1868] Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide. --Henry David Thoreau (18171862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. _Thoreau on Man and Nature_ [1960] ^ When Vera Czermak learned that her husband had betrayed her, she decided she would end it all by jumping out of her third-story window. Some time later she awoke in the hospital to discover that she was still alive, having landed upon her husband. Mr. Czermak, however, was dead. -- in John Train _True Remarkable Occurrences_ ^ I wonder if anybody ever reached the age of thirty-five in New England without wanting to kill himself. --Barrett Wendell (18551921) American educator and author. _Barrett Wendell and his Letters_ [1924] . . see "TIME" for related links Memory can glean, but never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone. --Henry Ward Beecher (18131887) American Congregational minister; [brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher.] - The picture faded in the autumn, but it came back at night when the bed was warm and the lights were out. The little boy could pull the bedclothes over his head and make the vacation happen all over again . . . His father, perspiring under a straw hat and a pale Palm Beach suit, carried the suitcases to the train and ordered his mother to keep ahead with the three children. The train was exciting and frightening. It clanked and roared and whistled and sighed when it stopped. It hurried through the hot sunshine shaking and shivering and the little boy pressed his knuckles between clenched knees to keep from being afraid. The train always went to the far side of the world 30 miles from the Jersey Central ferry to Clinton Avenue, Plainfield, New Jersey. Uncle Marty Knight was a lean, taciturn man who spoke when he was spoken to. He sat in a four-seat rig at the station behind a placid horse named Dick. The little boy was afraid of Uncle Marty, but he loved the gray velvet muzzle of the horse. The drive was over red clay roads with deep rain gullies and large round white stones. The horse pulled the rig over a hill, swishing his tail, and the sweet smell was in the boy's nostrils. The farm was in Piscataway Township and it ran along the left down the long hill to a creek. The boy drove himself crazy with nervous thrills. Each summer, the farm looked as he remembered it, with the big two-story house, hung with escalloped gingerbread. His mother had warned him to obey everything that Aunt Katie said. She was waiting out on the lawn, a woman with long gathered skirts, high-laced shoes, and a bun half brown, half gray. She had small humorless eyes and she and Uncle Marty ran the farm in chronic desperation. They did not like relatives who sponged a vacation, but they made their own conditions: "Keep out of our way." Behind the big house were beehives with bricks on top, and the summer sound of insects who worked themselves to death. There was a little summer house with long tables where early breakfast was served by Bessie Cullen. She has a small, childish figure, the face of an Indian, and long black shiny braids. No one knew where she came from. She was an indentured servant who loved children but could not understand adults. The corn flakes were served in big bowls with fresh milk. Down in the bottom land there was a faded barn. Dick lived there, but it was difficult to see him or talk to him because a massive dog named Reilly was on a link chain and he growled at children. The days were endless. The children ate green apples and pears from the orchard and became sick. Their father pressed some bills into Uncle Marty's hands and he put them in his pocket without counting. At night, in the bed, the late sun was hot through the eaves, and the youngsters slept in their underwear. Far off, they could hear the Lehigh Valley trains whistling a lonesome sound and sometimes Reilly would bay at the late hours. The bees were quiet, thinking of the clover and flowers to be worked tomorrow. The best part of the vacation was that it was something that could be relived through the autumn and the winter. All he had to do was to go to bed and pull the bed covers high. Then he made the train ride all over again and Uncle Marty and Dick were waiting at the station. Someday, when he grew up, he was going to own a farm. He would not permit Uncle Marty and Aunt Katie on it, but that sweet Bessie Cullen well, she would manage the whole place and be paid for it. When he grew up, he knew that he would never own a farm. The dream had expired. He wondered if, someday when he was older, he might write about it and make it happen again . . . --Jim Bishop _Days of Summer Past_ - The summer of '28 was a vintage summer for a growing boy. A summer of green apple trees, mowed lawns and new sneakers. Of half-burnt firecrackers, of gathering dandelions, of Grandma's belly-busting dinner. It was a summer of sorrows and marvels and gold-fuzzed bees. A magical, timeless summer in the life of a twelve- year-old boy named Douglas Spaulding. --Ray Bradbury (1920 ) American science fiction author. _Dandelion Wine_ [1957] June is bustin' out all over. --Oscar Hammerstein II (18951960) American songwriter. Title of song [1945]. Summer time an' the livin' is easy, Fish are jumpin' an' the cotten is high. --DuBose Heyward (18851940) & Ira Gershwin (18961983), American songwriters, "Summertime" [1935 song] Summer afternoon summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. --Henry James (18431916) American novelist. In Edith Wharton _A Backward Glance_ [1934]. My girlfriend's gone off with my car, And gone back to her ma and pa; Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty. And now I'm sitting here, Sipping on my ice cold beer, Lazin' on a sunny afternoon. --The Kinks _Sunny Afternoon_ [1966 song] Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum. --Harper Lee (1926 ) American novelist. _To Kill a Mockingbird_ [1960] 'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone. --Thomas Moore (17791852) Irish poet, satirist, composer, and musician. _Irish Melodies_ [1807-1834], "The Last Rose of Summer" Winter is cold-hearted. Spring is yea and nay, Autumn is a weather-cock, Blown every way. Summer days for me. When every leaf is on its tree. --Christina Rossetti [pseud. Ellen Alleyne] (18301894) English poet. Thy eternal summer shall not fade. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Sonnets_ [1609], Sonnet 18, line 9 In the good old summer time, In the good old summer time, Strolling thro' the shady lanes, With your baby mine; You hold her hand and she holds yours, And that's a very good sign, That she's your tootsie-wootsie In the good, old summer time. --Ren Shields (18681913) American songwriter. "Heat, ma'am!" I said; "it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones." --Sydney Smith (17711845) English clergyman and essayist, in 1802 cofounded "The Edinburgh Review." _Lady Holland's Memoir_ [1855] "There is no word for end-of-summer sadness," wrote E. B. White, "but the human spirit picks up the first of its approach." We see it in the slant of the sunlight, in the autumnal blue of Cape Cod Bay. We hear it in the drone of the cricket chorus from the salt meadows: "Six weeks till frost, six weeks till frost." Suddenly each day becomes precious, something to be hoarded like candy in a child's pocket. --Arthur T. Vanderbilt II (1950 ) _Golden Days_ [1998] The Long Hot Summer. --title of 1958 film. - CUCKOO SONG --anon [c. 1250] SUMMER is y-comen in, Loude` sing, cuckoo! Groweth seed and bloweth weed And spring'th the woode` now-- Sing cuckoo! Ewe` bleateth after lamb, Low'th after calfe` cow; Bullock starteth, bucke` farteth. Merry sing, cuckoo! Cuckoo, Cuckoo! Well sing'st thou, cuckoo: Ne swike thou never now! Sing cuckoo, now! Sing, cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo! Sing, cuckoo, now! ----- aestivate (or estivate) (verb) ['es-tκ-veyt] Spend the summer, especially in a dormant state (antonym of hibernate). . . see: "UNIVERSE" - A long history of sun worship is catching up with Australians.... While Australia's 20 million people only make up about 0.3 per cent of the world population, 6 per cent of all lethal forms of skin cancer are diagnosed here. Each year about 1,200 Australians die as a result of skin cancer. About 10,000 others are diagnosed with melanomas the most dangerous form of skin cancer and 270,000 others are treated for non-melanoma skin cancers with 1,200 people dying as a result of skin cancer each year. --Sun worshippers warned, ABC News [4 December 2002] - . . see "EMOTIONS & FEELINGS" for related links A simple rule in dealing with those who are hard to get along with is to remember that this person is striving to assert his superiority; and you must deal with him from that point of view. --Alfred Adler (18701937) Austrian psychologist. Puttin' on the Ritz. --Irving Berlin (18881989) American songwriter. [1928 song from the film of the same name] One is not superior merely because one sees the world in an odious light. --Franηois-Renι de Chateaubriand (17681848) French writer and diplomat. There is nothing noble about being superior to some other men. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self. --Hindustani Proverb In _A Conspectus of American Biography_, p. 726 [1906], compiled by George Derby. - WE AND THEY "A Friend of the Family" By Rudyard Kipling (18651936) English writer and poet Father, Mother, and Me, Sister and Auntie say All the people like us are We, And every one else is They. And They live over the sea, While We live over the way. But-would you believe it?- They look upon We As only a sort of They! We eat pork and beef With cow-horn-handled knives. They who gobble Their rice off a leaf, Are horrified out of Their lives; While They who live up a tree, And feast on grubs and clay, (Isn't it scandalous?) look upon We As a simply disgusting They! We shoot birds with a gun. They stick lions with spears. Their full-dress is un-. We dress up to Our ears. They like Their friends for tea. We like Our friends to stay; And, after all that, They look upon We As an utterly ignorant They! We eat kitcheny food. We have doors that latch. They drink milk or blood, Under an open thatch. We have doctors to fee. They have Wizards to pay. And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We As a quite impossible They! All good people agree, And all good people say, All nice people, like Us, are We And every one else is They: But if you cross over the sea, Instead of over the way, You may end by (think of it!) Looking on We As only a sort of They! - A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you're looking down, you can't see something that's above you. --C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (18981963) British scholar and novelist. _Mere Christianity_ [1952] The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [1901-1909]. ----- nonpareil [non-puh-REL], adjective: 1. Having no equal; peerless. 2. Something of unequaled excellence; a peerless thing or person. patronize (verb) ['pey-trκ-nIz ] (1) To serve as a benefactor (patron) or sponsor of; (2) To visit regularly as a customer; (3) To address in a condescending, superior manner. ;void(0)) SUPERNATURAL . . CURSE ELVES FABLE FANTASY GHOSTS IMAGINATION MIRACLES MYTHOLOGY SUPERSTITION (below) UNICORNS As any honest magician knows, true magic inheres in the ordinary, the commonplace, the everyday, the mystery of the obvious. Only petty minds and trivial souls yearn for supernatural events, incapable of perceiving that everything everything! within and around them is pure miracle. --Edward Abbey (19271989) American author. _Abbey's Road_ [1979] Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting, For fear of little men. --William Allingham (18241899) Irish man of letters and poet. "The Fairies" [1850] - Every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead. --Sir James Matthew Barrie (18601937) Scottish writer and dramatist. _Peter Pan_ [1928] 'You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.' --Sir James Matthew Barrie (18601937) Scottish writer and dramatist. _Peter Pan_ [1928] - Superstition is the poetry of life. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832) German poet, novelist, and playwright. "Maximen und Reflexionen" [1819] - In England, during the first eighty years of the seventeenth century . . . about fourty-two thousand witches were burnt in the presence of a delighted audience numbering thousands of people. In the blindness and stubbornness of belief in witchcraft, the wisest and highest in the land were as ecstatically bigoted as the masses of the people. --Theo. B. Hyslop (18631933) Chief of Bethlehem Hospital, the London mental asylum. - All argument is against it; but all belief is for it. (Of the existence of ghosts.) --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791] "31 March 1778]. It is not children only that one feeds with fairy tales. --Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (17291781) German dramatist. _Nathan der Weise_, III, 6 [1779] Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Macbeth_ [1606] - From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggity beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! --anon. "The Cornish or West Country litany", in Francis T. Nettleinghame _Polperro Proverbs and Others_ [1926]. ----- conjure (verb) ['kahn-jκ(r)] (1) To swear by oath or something sacred; (2) To entreat or beg someone by some secret or sacred power; (3) To call upon some spirit; (4) To accomplish with the help of unseen spirits or powers. theurgy (noun) ['thee-κr-jee] White magic, the conjuring of beneficent gods or supernatural powers to do one's bidding; divine intervention. . . see: "CURSES" see: "SUPERNATURAL" (above) see "THE MIND" for other related links Of course I don't believe in it. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not. --Niels Bohr (18851962) Danish physicist. Explaining why he had a horseshoe on his wall; attributed. Superstition is the religion of feeble minds. --Edmund Burke (17291797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ [1790] Henry Hoiges of Bodmin of the county of Cornwall, gentleman [certifies] how John Harvey of the said town of Bodmin, priest ... of his malice and evil will, imagining by subtle crafts of enchantment, witchcraft and sorcery ... broke my leg ... through which I was in despair of my life ... and moreover in open place he said that by the same subtle craft of enchantment, witchcraft and sorcery he would make me break my neck. --_Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery_ [14301439] Introduction. in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 200. Cohan & Major explain: This rare case of medieval witchcraft appears in an appeal for help to the lord chancellor. Although resort to superstitious magic was probably widespread ... few cases of actual witchcraft are reported until the 16th and 17th centuries when persecution of witches was common in England and also in New England. Dreams ought to produce no conviction whatever on philosophical minds. If we consider how many dreams are dreamt every night, and how many events occur every day, we shall no longer wonder at those accidental coincidences which ignorance mistakes for verifications. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. In Edmund Clarence Stedman _A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present_ [1888], p. 160. In this age of enlightenment, the soothsayer and astrologer flourish. As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth. --Philip Jose Farmer, "Riders of the Purple Wage" in Harlan Ellison's _Dangerous Visions_ [1968]. Superstition is the weakness of the human mind; it is inherent in that mind; it has always been, and always will be. --Frederick II [Frederick the Great] (17121786) King of Prussia [17401786]. We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (18091894) American physician, poet, and essayist. The superstition in which we were brought up never loses its power over us, even after we understand it. --Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (17291781) German dramatist. Soothsayer: Beware the ides (15th) of March ... Caesar: The ides of March are come. Soothsayer: Ay, Caesar; but not gone. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Julius Caesar_ [1599] act I, sc. 2 & act 3, sc. 2, (Based on Suetonius _Julius Caesar_ [c. 120].) Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. --R. E. Shay No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. [...] Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread. --Harriet Beecher Stowe (18111896) American writer and philanthropist. [Sister of Henry Ward Beecher, daughter of Lyman Beecher.] _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ [1852], Chapter 39 Superstition is foolish, childish and irrational but how much does it cost you to knock on wood? --Judith Viorst (1931 ) American author. - If a deformed newborn baby has a cropped and inflated right ear crazed women will seize the land. --anon., quoted in A Leo Oppenheim {ed.} _Texts From Cuneiform Sources_ v. 4. - If on the first day of the month of nisan [April] the sun looks sprinkled with blood and the light is cool: the king will die and there will be mourning in the country. --Babylonian tablet (BM40085) in M.J. Cohan and John Major {ed.} _History in Quotations_ [2004], citing Wilfred H. van Soldt _Omens of Enuma Anu Enlil [1995], p.94. Cohan & Major explain: The Babylonians were interested in natural phenomena, particularly eclipses. Close observations were made of the movements of the sun and moon and, of course, the stars. This is an omen based on observation of the sun at a certain time of year. . . see "CRIME & PUNISHMENT" for related links see "POLITICS" for related links [The makers of the Constitution] conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized man. --Louis Brandeis (18561941) American lawyer and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court [19161939]. In "Olmstead et al. vs. United States," 277 U.S. 438, 478 [1928]. We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. --Henry B. Brown (18361913) American jurist; associate justice of the Supreme Court [18901906]. Stating the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson [1896]; in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 642. Cohan & Major explain: The court pronounced on the constitutionality of an 1890 act by the Louisiana state legislature providing for 'equal but separate' railway carriages for whites and non-whites. The facilities in question were certainly separate but by no means equal, yet the judgement prevailed for nearly 60 years. Biggest damnfool mistake I ever made. --Dwight D. Eisenhower (18901969), American Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII, NATO commander, American President [19531961]. Recalling his 1953 appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. ^^ [Roosevelt] was reelected in 1936, in a landslide even greater than that of 1932. Now he was at the height of his power idolized by the public, and with huge majorities in both houses of Congress. He decided to do something about the problem of the Supreme Court. What he came up with was the infamous court-packing plan, which he unleashed in 1937. He denounced the old justices men whose view of the world was "blurred" by "old glasses fitted ... for the needs of another generation." He proposed adding one new justice for each justice who was six months past the age of seventy. That would have given him six new justices, and would have effectively neutralized the anti-New Deal bias of the Court. But it was not to be. His proposal "generated an intensity of response unmatched by any legislative controversy" in the century. He had, somehow, profaned the holy of holies. Of course, fervent New Dealers were in favor of the plan (or said they were); but the opposition was even more powerful. The plan was denounced and condemned as a threat to the integrity of the courts. The tide ran strongly against the plan, which died with a feeble whimper. --Lawrence M. Friedman (1930 ) _American Law in the 20th Century_ [2002] Ch. 6 "The Roosevelt Revolution" pp. 159-160 ^^ The attacks upon the [Supreme] Court are merely an expression of the unrest that seems to wonder vaguely whether law and order pay. When the ignorant are taught to doubt, they do not know what they safely may believe. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) Justice of the United States Supreme Court, legal historian, and philosopher. _Law and the Court_ [1913] How amazing it is that, in the midst of controversies on every conceivable subject, one should expect uninamity of opinion upon difficult legal questions! . . . The history of scholarship is a record of disagreements. And when we deal with questions relating to principles of law and their applications, we do not suddenly rise into a stratosphere of icy certainty. --Charles Evans Hughes (18621948) American professor of law, politician, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [19301941]. Speech to the American Law Institute [7 May 1936]. - When the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted ... [negroes] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings ... altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit ... The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution ... It is the opinion of the court that the Act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void. --Roger B. Taney (17771864) Fifth Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Decision in the Dred Scott case [7 March 1857], in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 585. Cohan & Major add: This momentous judgement annulled the Missouri Compromise of 1820, whereby slavery was barred north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes, and widened the gulf between North and South. - ^ One day John Marshall and his fellow Supreme Court justices, having heard disturbing rumors of their own excessive drinking, jointly agreed to abstain on their weekly consultation day unless it was raining. The following consultation day, Marshall (the Chief Justice) instructed Joseph Story to go to the window and check for signs of inclement weather. Story soon reported back: "Mr. Chief Justice, I have very carefully examined this case," he declared, "and I have to give it as my opinion that there is not the slightest sign of rain." "Justice Story," Marshall replied, "I think that is the shallowest and most illogical opinion I have ever heard you deliver. You forget that our jurisdiction is as broad as the Republic, and by the laws of nature it must be raining some place in our jurisdiction. Waiter, bring on the rum!" http://www.anecdotage.com/ ^ http://www.supremecourtus.gov/ end page | SACRED - SANTA CLAUS | SARCASM - SCHOOL | SCIENCE - SCULPTURE | SEA (THE) - SEEING | SELF - SELF-ESTEEM | SELF-EXAMINATION - SEMANTICS | SENATE (THE U.S.) - SERIOUSNESS | SEX | SEX SYMBOLS - SHEEP | SHIPS - SILENCE | SILLINESS - SINGING | SINGLE-MINDEDNESS - SKY | SLANDER - SMILES | SMOKING - SOCIETY | SOLDIERS - SOPHISTICATION | SORROW - SOUTH SEA | SPACE - SPEAKING | SPEECH - SPENDTHRIFTS | SPIDERS - SPY | SPORTS & SPORTSMANSHIP | STAGE (THE) - STERILIZATION | STOCK MARKET - STRANGERS | STRENGTH - SUBURBS | SUCCESS | SUFFERING - SUPREME COURT | SURPRISE - SYSTEM (THE) | | R | S | T | U - END | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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