THE WAY OF ALL FLESH

"On a tragedy of that kind [preparing for the wrong things] our national morality is duly silent.  It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed.  The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks.  Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe.  It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle.  It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty"--Howards End

"Perhaps his main strength lay in the fact that though his capacity was a little above the average, it was not too much so.  It is on this rock that so many clever people split. The successful man will see just so much more than his neighbours as they will be able to see too when it is shown them, but not enough to puzzle them.  It is far safer to know too little than too much.  People will condemn the one, though they will resent being called upon to exert themselves to follow the other"--The Way of All Flesh

After reading just over 100 pages of Howards End, I switched to Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh (which arrived in the mail Tuesday). So far, it's about a nouveau riche publisher's son in early 19th-century England being pressured into becoming an Anglican priest.

Wednesday night my History Discussion Group discussed Haiti.

I've been going through some ebooks finding quotes to include in Miriam's The Silver Fox magazine.  They're books about Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True debut, conversations with Joni Mitchell, musical engineer Mark Howard's memoir, and a book about Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip.