A garland of quotations XCIV

Culled from the finest substances in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday

(Come see me ramble on about impossible history at the Stratford Library this Sunday!)

Among the Dalay River people of Australia…there is a belief in, and great terror of mamakpik, the stealing of a living man’s kidney fat with his resultant rapid decline and death.…In rare cases an attempt has actually been made to steal kidney fat in the prescribed fashion, but has naturally failed.
•Raymond Firth, Human Types: An Introduction to Social Anthropology (1956).

I have a gate toward all the four winds.
I have a golden gate toward the east—for the love
                            that never comes,
I have a gate for the day, and another one for
                            my sorrow,
I have a gate for death—it is always open.
•Edith Södergran, “Toward All the Four Winds” (1916) .

And they knocked, and called, and entreated,
    Whoever should be within;
But all to no purpose, for no one
    Would hearken to let them in.
•Kate Greenaway, “To the Sun Door” (1885).

To thirst after a comprehension of things as they really are was my habit and custom from a very early age.
•Al-Ghazali, Deliverance from Error and Attachment to The Lord of Might and Majesty (ca. 1107).

One of my Theories—my belief that the human psyche evolved in order to defend us against seeing the truth. To prevent us from catching sight of the mechanism. The psyche is our defense system—it makes sure we’ll never understand what’s goin on around us. Its main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brains are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of the knowledge. Because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.
•Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead (2009).

But if we let our tongues lose self possession,
Throwing off language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children’s day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad and no doubt die that way.
•Robert Graves, “The Cool Web” (1926).

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown—
Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole Experiment of Green—
As if it were his own!
•Dickinson, #1333. (c. 1875).

Sticks and stones may break my bones—but I doubt it!
•Dotti Primrose, “Dear Dotti,” Weekly World News 5/17/94.

“The effect of great dramatic artistry is, in fact, to impose upon the listener a willing suspension of disbelief.”
“I doubt it.”
•Sōseki, I Am a Cat II (1905).

When such readers find a gross mistake, it jolts them and they have what is called “the suspension of disbelief” [sic].
•Roberta Gellis, “Researching History” (1990).

Sources: Södergran: trans. Stina Katchadourian, Love and Solitude: Selected Poems 1916–1923 (Fjord, 1992); Greenaway: Marigold Garden; Al-Ghazali: trans. W. Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali (Kazi, 1982); Graves: Collected Poems (Doubleday, 1966); Dickinson: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Little Brown, 1976); Sōseki: trans. Aiko Ito & Graeme Wilson (Tuttle, 2002); Gellis: in Kathryn Falk, ed., How to Write a Romance (Signet, 1990); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.