Simply elegant

"To my mind, simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."
-Coco Chanel, designer

Simply elegant

"To my mind, simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."
-Coco Chanel, designer

Snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow...

"Perhaps, I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke - a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace - perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us."
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

I'm not at all sure what to think of Waugh at the moment, but this passage stopped me short and I reread it several times. I'm still thinking about it, so I figured I'd post it here before I lost it... those bookmarks you leave behind halfway through the book always fall out, anyway.

Postmodernity

Pray for Christendom [Topic: Postmodernism]: "You want something to describe a full-throated rejection of modernity and all its idols? Do you want to reject modernity, and its cheap knock-offs, like postmodernity? Tired of rejecting the idol of Britney Spears in the name of Christine Aguilera? Tired of casting out the demons of Mammon with the devils of Money? Tired of rejecting this kind of secular neutrality for that kind of secular neutrality? Tired of banishing Howdy on the authority of Doody?

Then you don't want postmodernism; you want Christendom. And if you want Christendom, you should pray for Christendom, as the Lord taught us to pray, saying -- "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Sun Tzu quote

"32. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
33. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."

~ from "The Art of War", section 3, Offensive Strategy

To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent

by John Keats (1795-1821)

To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of Heaven,-- to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel, -- an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by,
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.