“Fighter pilot or bomber crewman, the Japanese naval flyer who fought at Rabaul was aware that he was waging a losing battle. The plane he flew was a torch, waiting only an incendiary bullet to set it alight. The gaping holes in his unit left by the death of veterans were filled by young, inexperienced replacements, more a liability than an asset in combat air operations. Despite the handicaps under which he fought—out-numbered, out-gunned, and out-flown—the enemy flyers fought, tenaciously right up to the day when Rabaul was abandoned to its ground defenders.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
Category: Lit & Crit
“The [Japanese] pilots who began the war averaged 800 hours of flying time, and many of them had combat experience in China. Relatively few of these men survived until the end of 1943; a great many died at Coral Sea and Midway and in air battles over Guadalcanal.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“There was no [Japanese] plane that flew from Rabaul that was not a potential flaming death trap to its crew. To meet the specifications outlined by the Japanese Navy, aircraft designers sacrificed safety to achieve maneuverability in fighters and long range in bombers.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“Much of the plane [Mitsubishi ‘Betty’] was built of lightweight magnesium, a very inflammable metal, and in the wing roots and body between were poorly protected fuel and oil tanks. The result was a highly vulnerable aircraft so prone to burst into flames when hit that Japanese aircrews nicknamed it ‘Type 1 Lighter.’” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part V, Marine Air Against Rabaul”
“Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor; for ‘tis the mind that makes the body rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honour peereth in the meanest habit.” – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, 4.3
“Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.” – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, 1.2
“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en.” – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, 1.1
“Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.” – William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Induction.2
“Lambs go to slaughter. A man, he learns when to walk away.” – David Simon and Ed Burns, “Port in a Storm, The Wire
“No one need know what I do in my dreams, and nothing’s wrong with little secret pleasures.” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“If one does fail, there’s a touch of glory in having tried at all.” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“An idiot holds his bauble for a god, and keeps the oath which by that god he swears.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 5.1
“The eagle suffers little birds to sing, and is not careful what they mean thereby, knowing that with the shadow of his wing he can at pleasure stint their melody.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 4.4
“Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp’d, doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus 2.4
“To ask a novelist to talk about his novels is like asking somebody to cook about their dancing. All you get is a bad omelette and a worse tango.” – Jim Crace (interviewed by Adam Begley), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Vocabulary is the Trojan horse that smuggles the lie. Facts don’t help. If you’re not a persuasive talker at a party, no one’s going to believe you, even if everything you say is true. But if you’re a persuasive liar then everyone is fooled.” – Jim Crace (interviewed by Adam Begley), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“It easeth some, though none it ever cur’d, to think their dolour others have endur’d.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining. Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps; and they that watch see time how slow it creeps.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Princes are the glass, the school, the book, where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight; and every one to rest themselves betake, save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“By our ears our hearts oft tainted be.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.” – Joan Didion (interviewed by Linda Kuehl), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Of Perseus’ company, Melaneus was killed, and Dorylas, millionaire of Nasamonia, no one as rich as he in land or spices, heaped up in mountains over his estates. Thrust from one side, a spear pierced through his groin—a deadly spot. When Halcyoneus, who threw the spear, heard Dorylas sigh and saw his eyes roll up, he said, ‘Here where you lie are all the lands you own.’” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“The one irredeemable error of a supply program is not too much, but too little.” – “Report of War Department Procurement Review Board” (quoted in Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945)
“Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXL”
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips’ red; if snow be white, why then her breast are dun; if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks; and in some perfumes there is more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak,—yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go,—my mistress when she walks, treads on the ground; and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXXX”
“Those lines that I before have writ, do lie; even those that said I could not love you dearer; yet then my judgment knew no reason why my most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. But reckoning time, whose million’d accidents creep in ‘twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things; alas! why, fearing Time’s tyranny, might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best,’ when I was certain o’er incertainty, crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe; then might I not say so, to give full growth to that which still doth grow?” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CV”
“One of the items asked for by [Colonel] Puller in an urgent dispatch, several hundred bottles of mosquito lotion, raised a few eyebrows at division headquarters, but the request was filled promptly. The Gilnit Group commander’s well-known disdain for the luxuries of campaigning caused the wonder, but the explanation was simple and a lesson in jungle existence. As a patrol member later remarked: ‘Hell, the colonel knew what he was about. We were always soaked and everything we owned was likewise, and that lotion made the best damn stuff to start a fire with that you ever saw.’” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part IV, The New Britain Campaign”
“Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CV”