The Troy of history was a dirty little town in Asia Minor, full of quarrelsome and small people living in mean and dark and inconvenient houses. But the Troy of poetry is a city of topless walls, of splendid men and women doing splendid deeds of strength and tenderness, a shining city that has actually built better cities over the face of the earth. The geographic Troy is not the real one. The Troy of literature is the real one. That is what literature means.

From “General aspects of literature” in this monolithic single-volume library I just got.

Vocabulary: Lean Horse Edition

From the last hundred pages or so of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:

obtruncate: to deprive of a limb (makes sense).
indissoluble: perpetual or incapable of being dissolved or destroyed. I love double negatives within words.
oedematous: of or pertaining to the edema (obviously). Edema: interstitial cellular fluid.
sententious: given to pithy or moralizing sayings.
ratiocination: the process of logical reasoning.
aposiopetic: (aposiopesis) breaking off a sentence in the middle, as if unable to proceed
parallelogramical: parallelogram-shaped (clearly; I just liked the word).
radix: the base of a numerical system, or the root of a plant (interesting).
jactitation: a boast that causes harm to another, also extreme restlessness in bed?
delectation: enjoyment (knew it).
saturnine: sluggish, melancholy, or bitter in temperament.
farthingal: hoops used to expand women’s skirts at the time of the book.
palfry: (palfrey) a woman’s saddle, smaller and softer.
placket-hole: the hole that goes into a pocket (!).
concupiscence: sexual lust, or more generally, passion.
windlass: a sort of crank-based lifting machine (no idea).
geniture: birth.
costive: constipated, slow to act, or stingy (very versatile word!).
impuissance: (impuissant) weak, feeble.
captious: of a disposition to point out faults, or ensnaring and perplexing when referring to argument.
farrago: a mixture or medley.
pannier: a basket or bag (i.e. breadbasket), or again hoops to expand skirts.
basilicon: an ointment made of wax, pitch, resin, and oil or lard.
ecliptic, trine, and sextil: all terms to do with astrological positions.
argute: shrewd or subtle (I assume it has roots in the hundred-eyed god Argus).

Every thing in this world is big with jest,–and has wit in it, and instruction too,–if we can but find it out.

Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

I’m so controversial!

This “Catholic Resources” site has every single illustration Gustave Doré did for the Bible. In high resolution! I’m gonna get some of these printed.

My watch. Took a picture to show some people. Isn’t it a beautiful little object?

The 11 most disturbingly adult scenarios in 90s cartoons

This is great. All those episodes of cartoons where, as an adult, you look back and think, “really?” That was a show for kids?

A winner is you!

To suggest that the first cause, the great unknown which is responsible for something existing rather than nothing, is a being capable of designing the universe and talking to a million people simultaneously, is a total abdication of the responsibility to find an explanation. It is a dreadful exhibition of self-indulgent, thought-denying skyhookery.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion