Tag Archives: quote

Quoth The Raven: Arthur Conan Doyle

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Jeremy-Brett-as-Sherlock-Holmes

The opening two paragraphs from the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Priory School” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

We have had some dramatic entrances and exits upon our small stage at Baker Street, but I cannot recollect anything more sudden and startling than the first appearance of Thorneycroft Huxtable, M.A., Ph.D., etc. His card, which seemed too small to carry the weight of his academic distinctions, preceded him by a few seconds, and then he entered himself–so large, so pompous, and so dignified that he was the very embodiment of self-possession and solidity. And yet his first action, when the door had closed behind him, was to stagger against the table, whence he slipped down upon the floor, and there was that majestic figure prostrate and insensible upon our bearskin hearthrug.

“We had sprung to our feet, and for a few moments we stared in silent amazement at this ponderous piece of wreckage, which told of some sudden and fatal storm far out on the ocean of life. Then Holmes hurried with a cushion for his head, and I with brandy for his lips. The heavy, white face was seamed with lines of trouble, the hanging pouches under the closed eyes were leaden in colour [sic], the loose mouth drooped dolorously at the corners, the rolling chins were unshaven. Collar and shirt bore the grime of a long journey, and the hair bristled unkempt from the well-shaped head. It was a sorely stricken man who lay before us.

So brilliantly descriptive, and so hysterically fun at the same time. I’m not sure if the humor was intentional, or if it’s just a modern interpretation of the Victorian writing sensibilities… perhaps a bit of both… but it’s the best opening to all the Sherlock Holmes stories… in my opinion at least.

(A note about the photo:  Jeremy Brett portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the Grenada TV series, shown in the US on PBS; there were 41 episodes, all based on the Conan Doyle stores, filmed between 1984-1994.  For many of us Holmes fans, Brett is the definitive Holmes.  As much as I’ve enjoyed the BBC Sherlock series, staring Benedict Cumberbatch in the title role (a show I was prepared to hate, but find to be a brilliant new look at the famous detective), I think that no one will ever capture Holmes in the way Brett did.  I’m sorry that he died young, and was unable to film more of the Conan Doyle stories.)

Quoth The Raven: Lucy Grealy

As someone who’s never been big on daytime television talk shows, I read this part of Lucy Grealy’s essay, As Seen On TV: Provocations, and wished I’d been the one to have said it:

.

But daytime talk shows; no, I’m sorry, I just can’t watch those no matter how desperate for TV I may get. The level of reality channeled there is just too depressing, the reality of what a big bunch of losers we all are.  But my disdain of daytime talk shows doesn’t mean I don’t know about the various daytime talk shows.  Stephen, for instance, watches them with great relish, and sometimes I am, well, sort of forced (my word) into watching them.  And James, this guy I used to go out with, he loved them too, and I kept finding myself, on dates, having to discuss issues that had been aired on these shows.  All of the issues, it seems, concern interpersonal relationships, and are about the various ways in which we cheat on, are turned on by, don’t understand, are misunderstood by, and generally don’t get on with but are willing to be, after being lost from, reunited with each other.  Though I’ve heard rumors that some of the ‘better’ talk shows tackle (their word) important issues, I have yet to actually see this happen.  Or maybe the issues are important; just because I don’t want to sleep with obese people and have hurt my mother’s feelings because I don’t want to sleep with obese people doesn’t mean that, if I were to parse the situation carefully enough, there isn’t an important issue being presented.

Quoth The Raven: Edmund Wilson

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Quoth the Raven is a semi-regular series that I started long ago, on a former blog (back in the days when Live Journal was where all us Cool Folk hung out).  For many people, a quote is made up of one or two sentences of sage wisdom, pithy advice, or scathing wit.

For example:

“A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the word you first thought of.”  – Burt Bacharach

“To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.” — Benjamin Franklin

“The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.” — W. Somerset Maugham

I appreciate the brief conciseness of the quotes above, but, I look at quotes as something much more.  Quotes don’t always have to be inspirational, motivational, provocative, or funny.  Quotes can simply be a passage of writing that brings great pleasure.  A great quotation is that passage, brief or long, in a novel, an essay, a movie or television script that makes you stop and take notice.  The words sing to you, call out to you to reread them again, and again, or to play the scene in the movie over and over. Sometimes the words move you because they remind you of something in your life, and other times the words grab you because they create such a vivid image in your mind.

My goal, with this series of quotes is not to provide you with pithy sentences, but, rather, to share words that bring me pleasure.  One of the greatest things in life is being able to share good things, in hope that others will find as much enjoyment as we do.

I’ve been reading the anthology The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan.  I ran across this passage, by Edmund Wilson, from his 1933 essay “The Old Stone House”:

Only one of them was left in the house at the time when I first remember Talcottville: my great-aunt Rosalind, a more or less professional invalid and a figure of romantic melancholy, whose fiancé had been lost at sea.  When I knew her, she was very old.  It was impressive and rather frightening to call on her–you did it only by special arrangement, since she had to prepare herself to be seen.  She would be beautifully dressed in a lace cap, a lavender dress and a white crocheted shawl, but she had become so bloodless and shrunken as dreadfully to resemble a mummy and remind one uncomfortably of Miss Havisham in Dicken’s Great Expectations. She had a certain high and formal coquetry and was the only person I ever knew who really talked like the characters in old novels.  When she had been able to get about, she had habitually treated the townspeople with a condescension almost baronial.

They just don’t make ‘em like Great-Aunt Rosalind anymore.

Quoth The Raven: Edwidge Danticat

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“Through recent experiences with both birth and death, I have discovered that we enter and leave life as, among other things, words.  Though we might later become daughters and sons, many of us start out as whispers or rumors before ending up with our names scrawled next to our parents’ on birth certificates.  We also struggle to find, both throughout our lives and at the end, words to pin down how we see and talk about ourselves.”  — Edwidge Danticat

Quoth The Raven: Don Delillo

“Religion has not been a major element in my work, and for some years now I think the true American religion has been “the American People.”  The term quickly developed an aura of sanctity and inviolability.  First used mainly by politicians at nominating conventions and in inaugural speeches, the phrase became a mainstay of news broadcasts and other more or less nonpartisan occasions.  All the reverence once invested in the names of God was transferred to an entity safely defined as you and me.”

Quoth The Raven

“Men must die because they cannot join the beginning to the end.

Yes, that is indeed wise.  A man’s life can be drawn as a straight and descending line.  But when the soul or the fragment of the divine fire in each of us rejoins the original source of life, then the perfect form has been achieved, and what was a straight line is now a circle and the beginning has joined the end.”

—Gore Vidal, from his novel “Creation“

Quoth The Raven

“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect…Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystalized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others…Truth is narrowd down and made a plaything for thosse who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain the mountaintop you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb toward the Truth, it cannot be ‘stepped down’ or organized for you.”  __ J. Krishnamurti

Quoth The Raven …

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at
the sun. If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god.
To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my
cathedrals. — Mikhail Gorbachev