Christmas Every Day

The adjective “modern”’, when applied to any branch of art, means “designed to evoke incomprehension, anger, boredom or laughter”. – Philip Larkin, All That Jazz, 1985

I don’t know what art is, but I do know what it isn’t. And it isn’t someone walking around with a salmon over his shoulder, or embroidering the name of everyone they have slept with on the inside of a tent. – Brian Sewell, Independent, 26 April, 1999

A cow and calf are cut in half/ And placed in separate cases/ To call it art, however smart/ Casts doubt on art’s whole basis. – Anonymous, in Spectator, 5 July 2003

The existence of St Sophia is atmospheric; that of St Peter’s, overpoweringly, imminently substantial. One is a church to God: the other a salon for his agents. – Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, 2007

After all they were a democracy; and, as Thucydides fully recognizes, a great mass of men, if it does commit infamies, likes first to be drugged and stimulated with lies: it seldom, like the wicked man in Aristotle’s Ethics, “calmly sins.” – Gilbert Murray, Euripides and His Age, 1946

Any nineteen-year-old can make love without Wordsworth. Like sexual enhancement drugs, poetry is necessary only after fifty. – Will Willimon, Accidental Preacher, 2019

The parable of Pythagoras is dark, but true: Cor ne edito – Eat not the heart. Certainly if a man would give it a hard phrase, those that lack friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of a man’s self to his friend, works two contrary effects; for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there is no man, that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less. – Francis Bacon, “Friendship”, Essays, 1625

Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business. – Mr. Burns, “The Old Man and the Lisa”, The Simpsons, 1997

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. – George Orwell, 1984

Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy. – John Derbyshire, National Review, 2000

Thank you for stopping. You have obviously found me unconscious by the side of the road, or at a party, or possibly propped up against a wall someplace, and you have wisely reached into my pocket and found this medical advisory. If you found other things in my pockets, kindly do not read or keep them. They are none of your business and/or do not belong to you. And remember that, even though I am unconscious now, when I wake up I will remember the things I had. If I am wearing a tie, please loosen it. But, again, do not take it off and keep it. It is not yours and is probably more expensive than you can afford. If I am not wearing a tie, look around at the other people who have gathered to look at me and see if any of them is wearing a tie that might belong to me. If so, please approach that individual and ask for my tie back. If he says it is his, say you do not think so. If he insists, give him one of the cards (in the same pocket where you found this note) of my attorney, and tell the person he will be hearing from him soon.  

– Jack Handey, “Thank You for Stopping”, 1999

Since so many [Mao] badges were made illegally, accurate estimates are impossible to reach, but at the height of the revolution some 2 to 5 billion badges had been produced across the country. The amount of aluminium diverted away from other industrial activities was so excessive that in 1969 Mao intervened: Give me back my aeroplanes. – Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976, 2016

The flowers bloomed, the schools of thought contended, and Mao’s executioners went to work. The slogan had the same function as the Constitution of the Soviet Union, which Aleksandr Zinoviev tellingly defined as a document published in order to find out who agreed with it, so that they could be dealt with. – Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, 2007

One evening about six months later, there was a knock at my door. It was the Chairman, cheerful on rice wine. With his famous economy of expression, he embraced me and taught me the Ten Right Rules of Lovemaking: Reconnoitre, Recruit, Relax, Recline, Relate, Reciprocate, Rejoice, Recover, Reflect, and Retire. I was surprised by his ardor, for I knew the talk that he had been incapacitated by a back injury in the Great Leap Forward. In truth, his spine was supple as a peony stalk. The only difficulty was that it was sensitive to certain kinds of pressure. A few times he was moved to remind me, “Please, don’t squeeze the Chairman.” – Veronica Geng, “My Mao”, Fierce Pajamas, 2002

Loudspeakers blasted revolutionary songs, one of them with lyrics from the Chairman’s Little Red Book: “The world is yours, and also ours. But it is, in the final analysis, yours. You young people are full of vigour and vitality like the eight or nine o’clock sun in the morning. You are our hope”. Zhai Zhenhua had heard the excerpt a hundred times before. It had filled her with pride. But on the day of her departure to Yan’an the words rang hollow. “The world is ours?” she asked herself. “Bullshit!” – Frank Dikötter, The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962-1976, 2016

But perhaps the veil that time draws between us and the distant past in some sense protects us from the burden of too much memory. It often proves debilitating to dwell too entirely in the shadows of vanished epochs, and our capacity to forget is (as Friedrich Nietzsche noted) very much a part of our capacity to live in the present. That said, every natural strength can become also an innate weakness; to live entirely in the present, without any of the wisdom that a broad perspective upon the past provides, is to live a life of idiocy and vapid distraction and ingratitude. – David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, 2010