As you can see, [the bishop of Digne] had a strange, idiosyncratic way of looking at things. I suspect he got it from the Gospel.

Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables

Sleep is good … and books are better.

George R. R. Martin

“In Science we have been reading only the notes to a poem; in Christianity we find the poem itself.”

C. S. Lewis

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom

Robert Frost

As we grow old … the beauty steals inward.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In short, the beauty and poetry of many of the common things and daily events of life in its humblest aspect does not seem to me sufficiently appreciated.

Elizabeth Gaskell

What Literature Does

I’m currently reading The Educated Imagination by Northrop Frye. I don’t think I’m giving it quite enough of my brain power to follow all the nuances of his arguments, but overall it’s not hard to follow and is an excellent read. I found another kindred spirit as regards literature! Anyway, I thought I would share my favourite quote so far, about the difference between historians (and other fields like science etc) and literature:

The historian makes specific and particular statements, such as: “The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.” Consequently he’s judged by the truth or falsehood of what he says – either there was such a battle or there wasn’t, and if there was he’s got the date either right or wrong. But the poet, Aristotle says, never makes any real statements at all, certainly no particular or specific ones. The poet’s job is not to tell you what happened, but what happens: not what did take place, but the kind of thing that always does take place. He gives you the typical, recurring, or what Aristotle calls universal event. You wouldn’t go to Macbeth to learn about the history of Scotland – you go to it to learn what a man feels like after he’s gained a kingdom and lost his soul. When you meet such a character as Micawber in Dickens, you don’t feel that there must have been a man Dickens knew who was exactly like this; you feel that there’s  bit a Micawber in almost everybody you know, including yourself.

Great Christian Writers

I recently found this quote over at Agent Intellect, which comes from Lewis’ Surprised by Joy.

All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been as blind as a bat not to have seen, long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete — Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire — all seemed a little thin; what as boys we called “tinny”. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books.