Words&Dirt

“Having some kind of System, even a flawed and doomed one, is better than to live forever in the poisonous storm-tide of quicksilver that gave birth to all of this.” ––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 886

When Milan Kundera defined kitsch as “the absolute denial of shit,” he highlighted humanity’s all too common tendency to minimize the less than savory aspects of our existence.  Modern American homes are designed to accommodate our kitschy predilections: we announce our intentions to defecate using a broad palette of euphemisms, complete (or at least attempt) […]

“To be hanged by the neck until dead is one thing; but to be forced to listen to a reading from the Old Testament twice, why, that is not only Unusual but Cruel.” ––The System of the World, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 834

“‘The law is,’ he bellowed, ‘that thou shalt return from hence, to the Place whence thou camest, and from thence to Tyburn Cross, where thou shalt hang by the neck, but not unto Death; that thou shalt thereafter be drawn and quartered, till the body be Dead!  Dead!  Dead!  And the Lord have Mercy upon […]

“‘I shall see you, Daniel, on Parnassus, or wherever it is that Philosophers end up!’ ‘I think they end up in old books,’ said Daniel, ‘and so I shall look for you, sir, in a Library.’ ‘That is what I am building,’ said Leibniz, ‘and that is where you shall find me.  Good-bye, Daniel!’ ‘Good-bye, […]

“‘My Stupidity and my Skepticism are two sides of the same coin, and are of a very particular kind, which is carefully thought out.  John Locke was of the same mind, and set it down in words better than I ever could.  To go into it here would be half an hour’s digression; suffice it […]

“‘It has been my view for some years that a new System of the World is being created around us.  I used to suppose that it would drive out and annihilate any older Systems.  But things I have seen recently, in the subterranean places beneath the Bank, have convinced me that new Systems never replace […]

“It happened sometimes in the practice of physics that the student, having wrestled with a recalcitrant equation, would suddenly find a way to wreak some drastic simplification upon it.  Of a sudden, two terms, which he had copied out time and again, and which had become as familiar to him as his own signature, would, […]

“It was given to us to understand that the Triangle Trade would deliver to our shores Civilization, Christianity, Enlightenment, and other vertues.  Instead of Civilization, we are receiving daily ship-loads of white Sauvages who pillage our shores like so many Vikings having their way in a Nunnery.  Instead of Christianity, we are the recipients of […]

“We all love to phant’sy that we live in some sort of Liberty––if not of the Clink, then of the City of London or some other Jurisdiction where men are proud to style themselves Free.  But under close inspection, how often do we find those Freedoms to be Chimaeras, and our cherished Liberties to be […]