“An overstrained sense of manliness is the characteristic of seafaring men, or, rather, of life on board ship. This often gives an appearance of want of feeling, and even of cruelty. From this, if a man comes within an ace of breaking his neck and escapes, it is made a joke of; and no notice must be taken of a bruise or cut; and any expression of pity, or any show of attention, would look sisterly, and unbecoming a man who has to face the rough and tumble of such a life. From this, too, the sick are neglected at sea, and whatever sailors may be ashore, a sick man finds little sympathy or attention, forward or aft. A man, too, can have nothing peculiar or sacred on board ship; for all the nicer feelings they take pride in disregarding, both in themselves and others. A thin-skinned man could not live an hour on ship-board. One would be torn raw unless he had the hide of an ox. A moment of natural feeling for home and friends, and then the frigid routine of sea-life returned.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
Category: Lit & Crit
“It has been said, that the greatest curse to each of the South Sea islands, was the first man who discovered it; and every one who knows anything of the history of our commerce in those parts, knows how much truth there is in this; and that the white men, with their vices, have brought in diseases before unknown to the islanders, and which are now sweeping off the native population of the Sandwich Islands, at the rate of one fortieth of the entire population annually. They seem to be a doomed people. The curse of a people calling themselves Christian, seems to follow them everywhere.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“The American has no national religion, and likes to show his independence of priestcraft by doing as he chooses on the Lord’s day.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“When did she give up on escape? She was a lady—a wife, a daughter, a sister—a lady never need open a door. Patience is power, her mother had taught her. To be a lady is to be patient.” – Jennifer Blackman, “Lady Dorothy Townshend Is Descending the Stairs”
“Revolutions are matters of constant occurrence in California. They are got up by men who are at the foot of the ladder and in desperate circumstances, just as a new political party is started by such men in our own country. The only object, of course, is the loaves and fishes; and instead of caucusing, paragraphing, libelling, feasting, promising, and lying, as with us, they take muskets and bayonets, and seizing upon the presidio and custom-house, divide the spoils, and declare a new dynasty. As for justice, they know no law but will and fear. A Yankee, who had been naturalized, and become a Catholic, and had married in the country, was sitting in his house at the Pueblo de los Angelos, with his wife and children, when a Spaniard, with whom he had had a difficulty, entered the house, and stabbed him to the heart before them all. The murderer was seized by some Yankees who had settled there, and kept in confinement until a statement of the whole affair could be sent to the governor-general. He refused to do anything about it, and the countrymen of the murdered man, seeing no prospect of justice being administered, made known that if nothing was done, they should try the man themselves. It chanced that, at this time, there was a company of forty trappers and hunters from Kentucky, with their rifles, who had made their head-quarters at the Pueblo; and these, together with the Americans and Englishmen in the place, who were between twenty and thirty in number, took possession of the town, and waiting a reasonable time, proceeded to try the man according to the forms in their own country. A judge and jury were appointed, and he was tried, convicted, sentenced to be shot, and carried out before the town, with his eyes blindfolded. The names of all the men were then put into a hat and each one pledging himself to perform his duty, twelve names were drawn out, and the men took their stations with their rifles, and, firing at the word, laid him dead. He was decently buried, and the place was restored quietly to the proper authorities.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“No one has ever been on distant voyages, and after a long absence received a newspaper from home, who cannot understand the delight that they give one. I read every part of them—the houses to let; things lost or stolen; auction sales, and all. Nothing carries you so entirely to a place, and makes you feel so perfectly at home, as a newspaper.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“Some of the first vessels brought dogs out with them, who, for convenience, were left ashore, and there multiplied, until they came to be a great people.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“On Monday morning, as an offset to our day’s sport, we were all set to work ‘tarring down’ the rigging. Some got girt-lines up for riding down the stays and back-stays, and others tarred the shrouds, lifts, etc., laying out on the yards, and coming down the rigging. We overhauled our bags and took out our old tarry trowsers and frocks, which we had used when we tarred down before, and were all at work in the rigging by sunrise. After breakfast, we had the satisfaction of seeing the Italian ship’s boat go ashore, filled with men, gaily dressed, as on the day before, and singing their barcarollas. The Easter holydays are kept up on shore during three days; and being a Catholic vessel, the crew had the advantage of them. For two successive days, while perched up in the rigging, covered with tar and engaged in our disagreeable work, we saw these fellows going ashore in the morning, and coming off again at night, in high spirits. So much for being Protestants. There’s no danger of Catholicism’s spreading in New England; Yankees can’t afford the time to be Catholics. American shipmasters get nearly three weeks more labor out of their crews, in the course of a year, than the masters of vessels from Catholic countries. Yankees don’t keep Christmas, and ship-masters at sea never know when Thanksgiving comes, so Jack has no festival at all.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“The more you drive a man, the less he will do.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“The American, even in the early eighteenth century, already showed many of the characteristics that were to set him off from the Englishman later on—his bold and somewhat grotesque imagination, his contempt for authority, his lack of aesthetic sensitiveness, his extravagant humor. Among the first colonists there were many men of education, culture and gentle birth, but they were soon swamped by hordes of the ignorant and illiterate, and the latter, cut off from the corrective influence of books, soon laid their hands upon the language. It is impossible to imagine the austere Puritan divines of Massachusetts inventing such verbs as to cowhide and to logroll, or such adjectives as no-account and stumped, or such adverbs as no-how and lickety-split, or such substantives as bull-frog, hog-wallow and hoe-cake; but under their eyes there arose a contumacious proletariat which was quite capable of the business, and very eager for it. In Boston, so early as 1628, there was a definite class of blackguard roisterers, chiefly made up of sailors and artisans; in Virginia, nearly a decade earlier, John Pory, secretary to Governor Yeardley, lamented that “in these five moneths of my continuance here there have come at one time or another eleven sails of ships into this river, but fraighted more with ignorance than with any other marchansize.” In particular, the generation born in the New World was uncouth and iconoclastic; the only world it knew was a rough world, and the virtues that environment engendered were not those of niceness, but those of enterprise and resourcefulness.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language (emphases and spellings in original)
“If there is anything that irritates sailors and makes them feel hardly used, it is being deprived of their Sabbath. Not that they would always, or indeed generally, spend it religiously, but it is their only day of rest.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“The American is not, in truth, lacking in a capacity for discipline; he has it highly developed; he submits to leadership readily, and even to tyranny. But, by a curious twist, it is not the leadership that is old and decorous that fetches him, but the leadership that is new and extravagant. He will resist dictation out of the past, but he will follow a new messiah with almost Russian willingness, and into the wildest vagaries of economics, religion, morals and speech. A new fallacy in politics spreads faster in the United States than anywhere else on earth, and so does a new fashion in hats, or a new revelation of God, or a new means of killing time, or a new metaphor or piece of slang. Thus the American, on his linguistic side, likes to make his language as he goes along, and not all the hard work of his grammar teachers can hold the business back. A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
“Radio means freedom. You have the radio on, and you can paint the garage. With television, it’s a commitment. Radio is your associate—you have it with you, and you’re listening while you’re doing something else.” – Vin Scully (quoted by Bill Chuck, “Drop the Mic,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 22, 2023)
“Monday, Nov. 10th. During a part of this day we were hove to, but the rest of the time were driving on, under close-reefed sails, with a heavy sea, a strong gale, and frequent squalls of hail and snow.
Tuesday, Nov. 11th. The same.
Wednesday, Nov. 12th. The same.
Thursday, Nov. 13th. The same.
We had now got hardened to Cape weather, the vessel was under reduced sail, and everything secured on deck and below, so that we had little to do but steer and to stand our watch. Our clothes were all wet through, and the only change was from wet to more wet. It was in vain to think of reading or working below, for we were too tired, the hatchways were closed down, and everything was wet and uncomfortable, black and dirty, heaving and pitching. We had only to come below when the watch was out, wring out our wet clothes, hang them up, and turn in and sleep as soundly as we could, until the watch was called again. A sailor can sleep anywhere—no sound of wind, water, wood or iron can keep him awake—and we were always fast asleep when three blows on the hatchway, and the unwelcome cry of ‘All starbowlines ahoy! eight bells there below! do you hear the news?’ (the usual formula of calling the watch), roused us up from our berths upon the cold, wet decks. The only time when we could be said to take any pleasure was at night and morning, when we were allowed a tin pot full of hot tea, (or, as the sailors significantly call it, ‘water bewitched,’) sweetened with molasses. This, bad as it was, was still warm and comforting, and, together with our sea biscuit and cold salt beef, made quite a meal. Yet even this meal was attended with some uncertainty. We had to go ourselves to the galley and take our kid of beef and tin pots of tea, and run the risk of losing them before we could get below. Many a kid of beef have I seen rolling in the scuppers, and the bearer lying at his length on the decks. I remember an English lad who was always the life of the crew, but whom we afterwards lost overboard, standing for nearly ten minutes at the galley, with this pot of tea in his hand, waiting for a chance to get down into the forecastle; and seeing what he thought was a ‘smooth spell,’ started to go forward. He had just got to the end of the windlass, when a great sea broke over the bows, and for a moment I saw nothing of him but his head and shoulders; and at the next instant, being taken off of his legs, he was carried aft with the sea, until her stern lifting up and sending the water forward, he was left high and dry at the side of the long-boat, still holding on to his tin pot, which had now nothing in it but salt water. But nothing could ever daunt him, or overcome, for a moment, his habitual good humor. Regaining his legs, and shaking his fist at the man at the wheel, he rolled below, saying, as he passed, ‘A man’s no sailor, if he can’t take a joke.’ The ducking was not the worst of such an affair, for, as there was an allowance of tea, you could get no more from the galley; and though sailors would never suffer a man to go without, but would always turn in a little from their own pots to fill up his, yet this was at best but dividing the loss among all hands.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“To enhance the value of the Sabbath to the crew, they are allowed on that day a pudding, or, as it is called, a ‘duff.’ This is nothing more than flour boiled with water, and eaten with molasses. It is very heavy, dark, and clammy, yet it is looked upon as a luxury, and really forms an agreeable variety with salt beef and pork. Many a rascally captain has made friends of his crew by allowing them duff twice a week on the passage home.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“There is nothing more beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface, on a bright day. It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest fish, in salt water; and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look like a stray beam from a rainbow.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“When you pass the age of ten and go to Disney World, nobody rides the teacups. The teacups were cool then, but now—no! As an adult, you want to ride the Screaming Eagle Death Drop with the Double Loop-de-Loops. As adults, for some reason, we want the thing that might kill us and dismember us and spread us all over hell and creation.” – David Koon, Close-up: Characterization
“Fiction ultimately is the art form of human yearning, and that is essential to the work of fictional narrative art. A character who yearns is not the same as a character who simply has problems. A lot of characters have problems, but the problems have not yet resolved themselves into the dynamics of yearning for this writer and this character. That yearning is at the heart of all temporal art forms.” – Robert Olen Butler (interviewed by Heather Iarusso in Close-up: Characterization)
“I think of all suicide bombers as children, though most of them are considerably past the age of twelve. Terrorism implies, to me, a childlike singularity, a capacity for dividing the world into good and evil, and a disregard for other lives—an almost conceptual inability to fully acknowledge the lives of other people. Children are cruel—or, more accurately, unempathic—in a way most adults are not. Just spend an hour on a crowded playground.” – Michael Cunningham (interviewed by Sarah Anne Johnson in Close-up: Characterization)
“If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses.” – D.H. Lawrence, St. Mawr
“I must confess that I do not understand why things are so arranged, that women should seize us by the nose as deftly as they do the handle of a teapot. Either their hands are so constructed or else our noses are good for nothing else.” Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “How the Two Ivans Quarreled,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)
“There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “The Cloak,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)
“There is no power stronger than faith. It is threatening and invincible like a rock, and rising amidst the stormy, ever-changing sea. From the very bottom of the sea it rears to heaven its jagged sides of firm, impenetrable stone. It is visible from everywhere, and looks the waves straight in the face as they roll past. And woe to the ship which is dashed against it! Its frame flies into splinters, everything in it is split and crushed, and the startled air re-echoes the piteous cries of the drowning.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Taras Bulba,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)
“The future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping wings, never recognising each other, the dove seeing not the vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he may be flying from destruction.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Taras Bulba,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)
“He is not a good warrior who loses heart in an important enterprise; but he who is not tired even of inactivity, who endures all, and who even if he likes a thing can give it up.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Taras Bulba,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)
“Ostap and Andrii [the sons of Taras Bulba] flung themselves into this sea of dissipation with all the ardour of youth, forgot in a trice their father’s house, the seminary, and all which had hitherto exercised their minds, and gave themselves wholly up to their new life. Everything interested them—the jovial habits of the Setch [the fortified capital of the Zaporozhian Cossacks], and its chaotic morals and laws, which even seemed to them too strict for such a free republic. If a Cossack stole the smallest trifle, it was considered a disgrace to the whole Cossack community. He was bound to the pillar of shame, and a club was laid beside him, with which each passer-by was bound to deal him a blow until in this manner he was beaten to death. He who did not pay his debts was chained to a cannon, until some one of his comrades should decide to ransom him by paying his debts for him. But what made the deepest impression on Andrii was the terrible punishment decreed for murder. A hole was dug in his presence, the murderer was lowered alive into it, and over him was placed a coffin containing the body of the man he had killed, after which the earth was thrown upon both. Long afterwards the fearful ceremony of this horrible execution haunted his mind, and the man who had been buried alive appeared to him with his terrible coffin.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Taras Bulba,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)
“In the absence of reliable extensional rheology data, we can only point to the fact that when cats are deformed along their principal axis, they tend to relax more easily, suggesting that the extensional time is smaller than the shear time. Transient strain‑hardening can nonetheless occur. Second, because, flows of cats are usually free surface flows, the surface tension between the cat and its surrounding medium can be important and even dominant in the rheology, especially in CATBER (Capillary thinning and breakup extensional rheometer) experiments.” – M. A. Fardin, “On the Rheology of Cats”
“I have seen a man cremated on a funeral pile, and it has given me a wish to disappear in the same manner. In this way everything ends at once. Man expedites the slow work of nature, instead of delaying it by the hideous coffin in which one decomposes for months. The flesh is dead, the spirit has fled. Fire which purifies disperses in a few hours all that was a human being; it casts it to the winds, converting it into air and ashes, and not into ignominious corruption. This is clean and hygienic. Putrefaction beneath the ground in a closed box where the body becomes like pap, a blackened, stinking pap, has about it something repugnant and disgusting. The sight of the coffin as it descends into this muddy hole wrings one’s heart with anguish. But the funeral pyre which flames up beneath the sky has about it something grand, beautiful and solemn.” – Guy de Maupassant, “A Cremation” (trans. McMaster, et al.)
“The artist rules. Nothing else matters.” – Sissy Spacek (interview by Richard Grant in The Guardian, January 26, 2002)
“When Death enters a house it seems as if he were hurrying to do his utmost, so as not to have to return for a long time after that.” – Guy de Maupassant, “A Humble Drama” (trans. McMaster, et al.)