Thoreau quote

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  • #25127
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. H.D. Thoreau
    https://zcomm.org/zquotes/as-for-the-pyramids-there-is-nothing-to-wonder-at-in-them-so-much-as-the-fact-that-so-many-men-could-by-henry-david-thoreau/

    #25128
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    “Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.”
    William Lloyd Garrison
    https://zcomm.org/recent-quotes/page/7/

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    #25143
    bnw
    Blocked

    I don’t get it.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25148
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    William Lloyd Garrison

    ….
    .

    I don’t get it.

    Garrison was a 19th century abolitionist.

    If that’s what you were referring to.

    #25178
    bnw
    Blocked

    I don’t get his tell them to use moderation but not him.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25182
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    I don’t get his tell them to use moderation but not him.

    That there can be no moderation about abolishing slavery. There are no half-measures or compromises. You abolish slavery or you don’t, it’s one or the other, no half-steps. He’s reacting to people who called abolitionists “extremists.” There is no moderation in demanding slavery be abolished.

    #25183
    bnw
    Blocked

    I don’t get his tell them to use moderation but not him.

    That there can be no moderation about abolishing slavery. There are no half-measures or compromises. You abolish slavery or you don’t, it’s one or the other, no half-steps. He’s reacting to people who called abolitionists “extremists.” There is no moderation in demanding slavery be abolished.

    OK though why use the moderation line regarding situations in which it will not be observed? He should have gotten out more.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25191
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    I don’t get his tell them to use moderation but not him.

    That there can be no moderation about abolishing slavery. There are no half-measures or compromises. You abolish slavery or you don’t, it’s one or the other, no half-steps. He’s reacting to people who called abolitionists “extremists.” There is no moderation in demanding slavery be abolished.

    OK though why use the moderation line regarding situations in which it will not be observed? He should have gotten out more.

    He;s being figurative not literal. Translated into literal-ese, he’s saying those situations (fire, etc.) do not admit of moderation and neither does abolition.

    Putting out a fire is urgent, you can’t “moderate” that. So is abolition, so don’t ask us to be “moderate.” He just uses irony to say it.

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    #25201
    bnw
    Blocked

    He should have used brevity too.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25206
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    He should have used brevity too.

    That was the 19th century.

    The invention of “be brief, concise, and laconic” hadn’t happened yet.

    That’s like saying he should have microwaved his coffee when reheating it.

    #25219
    bnw
    Blocked

    He should have used brevity too.

    That was the 19th century.

    The invention of “be brief, concise, and laconic” hadn’t happened yet.

    That’s like saying he should have microwaved his coffee when reheating it.

    Don’t have to be laconic. Impassioned is fine. Droning on and on to hear ones own voice is bad form in any century.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25223
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    He should have used brevity too.

    That was the 19th century.

    The invention of “be brief, concise, and laconic” hadn’t happened yet.

    That’s like saying he should have microwaved his coffee when reheating it.

    Don’t have to be laconic. Impassioned is fine. Droning on and on to hear ones own voice is bad form in any century.

    That’s not what he was doing though. That’s 20th century standards you;re using there. The 19th century prized eloquence. In fact, the great american Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, made a name for himself because he was such a great orator—without any training, just spontaneously.

    For example what’s the difference between

    Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    and

    87 years ago the United States became an independent democracy founded on ideas of equality.

    The difference is just the difference between the 19th and 20th centuries.

    Naturally people from the 20th century prefer their own way and can’t hear the virtues of the other way.

    #25228
    bnw
    Blocked

    There wasn’t any eloquence in his quote. It was over the top. A drama king.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25229
    Avatar photozn
    Moderator

    There wasn’t any eloquence in his quote. It was over the top. A drama king.

    They loved that stuff. In the 20th century, we invented the idea that if you draw attention to the artificiality of your language, you’re insincere and a show off. Before the 20th century, it was like top hit radio music. They ate it up. Sounding “artificial” meant displaying much-loved skills.

    But…we just see it different. N thatz kewl. In fact…not sure why I got off on this. Century or no century in the end it’s a matter of taste. b

    #25232
    bnw
    Blocked

    http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~duchan/new_history/ancient_history/Aphthonius.html

    Well Apthonius had it figured out 1600 years ago.

    A History of Speech – Language Pathology
    Ancient History: 3500 BC – 500 AD

    Speech-Language Dictionary
    Aphthonius of Antioch
    4th C AD

    Aphthonius of Antioch was a Greek philosopher, teacher of rhetoric and an orator, who worked and wrote during the second half of the 4th century AD. He was known for his skill as an orator, performing in a simple style, like the Attic style of the ancient Greeks.

    He also became well known for his instructional textbook, called Progymnasmata. The book contained exercises to use with students in schools specializing in rhetoric. The exercises, drawn from those developed in ancient times allowed students to understand, analyze, and produce both oral and written rhetoric.

    Aphthonius’ teaching program, as presented in his book, included fourteen progymnasmata, beginning with the fable. Students learned to define the fable, to classify it into types, to situate the moral either at the beginning or the end. They were asked to analyze a particular fable.

    The second progymnasma is the narrative, which, like the fable, is defined and classified into subtypes. The students are instructed on the elements of a narrative (who, what, when, where, how, and why) and its qualities (clarity, brevity, and plausibility). As with a fable, students are provided with a model narrative for analysis.

    The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

    Sprinkles are for winners.

    #25257
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    Another random quote,
    i came across. I do not know
    who this ‘Carpentier’ is, btw :

    “…I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute. I discovered it reading novels by Carpentier and poems by Neruda. I discovered it listening to stories over coffee about some old, very old, warrior on the Uruguayan plains who kept his tired eyelids open with orangewood twigs while he speared enemy horsemen on the point of his lance. Asking and wondering, from where did this planet that we inabit come? This planet that spends a million dollars on arms every minute, so that every minute thirty children can die of disease or hunger and no one is accused. Asking and wondering: This world, this slaughterhouse, this nuthouse, is this the work of God or man? What past time gave birth to this present? Why have some countries become owners of other countries, and some men owners of other men, and men owners of women, and women of children, and things owners of people?
    I am not a historian. I am a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America above all, and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.”

    Eduardo Galeano, We Say No 1992

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by Avatar photowv.
    #25267
    Avatar photowv
    Participant

    A Karl Marx quote, fwiw:

    “there is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary. Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labor, we behold starving and overworking it. The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.”
    https://zcomm.org/recent-quotes/page/26/

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