Maids have been milked by cads from time immemorial

Good Counsel To A Young Maid

When you the sun-burnt Pilgrim see,

Fainting with thirst, haste to the springs;

Mark how at first with bended knee

He courts the crystal Nymphs, and flings

His body to the earth, where he,

Prostrate, adores the flowing Deitie.

But, when his sweaty face is drencht

In her cool waves, when from her sweet

Bosom his burning thirst is quencht;

Then mark how with disdainful feet

He kicks her banks, and from the place

That thus refresh'd him, moves with sullen pace.

So shalt thou be despis'd, fair Maid,

When by the sated Lover tasted;

What first he did with tears invade,

Shall afterwards with scorn be wasted;

When all thy Virgin springs go dry,

When no streams shall be left, but in thine eye.

-- Thomas Carew (1595-1640)

Behavior, not books?

Infinite shall be made cold in religion, by your example, that never were hurt by reading books.

-- Roger Ascham (1515-1568)

The human body averages 310 degrees Kelvin, the whole universe just 2.73

 

 

You are no surer, no,

Than is the coal of fire upon the ice,

Or hailstone in the sun.

-- William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act I, Scene 1

Why was the sight . . .

 

 

Why was the sight

To such a tender ball as th' eye confin'd;

So obvious and so easy to be quench'd,

And not, as feeling, through all parts diffus'd,

That she might look at will through every pore?

-- John Milton

O cruel death!

 

 

 O cruel death! to those you are more kind

Than to the wretched mortals left behind.

-- Edmund Waller

Interrupted retreat

Clamours our privacies uneasy make,

Birds leave their nests disturb'd,

and beasts their haunts forsake.

-- John Dryden

Imagination misleads

Love is by fancy led about,

From hope to fear, from joy to doubt:

Whom we now a goddess call,

Divinely grac'd in every feature,

Strait's a deform'd, a perjur'd creature;

Love and hate are fancy all.

-- George Granville

A hermit without repose

 

 

I all the livelong day

Consume in meditation deep, recluse

From human converse; nor at shut of eve

Enjoy repose.

-- John Philips (1676-1709)

Fear makes us untrue to our better selves

 

 

The wise man doth so say of fear, that it is a betrayer of the forces of reasonable understanding.

-- Richard Hooker (1554-1600)

The tyranny of hope and fear

 

My heart is your's; but oh! you left it here

Abandon'd to those tyrants hope and fear:

If they forc'd from me one kind look or word,

Could you not that, nor that small part afford?

-- John Dryden

In defense of the critic

 

Such parts of writings as are stupid or silly, false or mistaken, should become subjects of occasional criticism.

-- Isaac Watts (1674-1748), godfather of English hymnody

Socially liberal mainline Protestant denominations hemorrhage members in Minnesota since 2000

The table is from the story here.

Learn of me . . . my burden is light

Engraving by Jan Luyken of the narrow gate which leads to life

 

 

 

 

In days of poverty his heart was light;

He sung his hymns at morning, noon, and night.

-- Walter Harte

A stylistic sign of the Fourth Gospel's claim to superiority over the Synoptics

Jesus' statements in the Fourth Gospel are never simply "Verily", but "Verily, verily" (25 times).

But the Synoptics (and the rest of the NT) do not know this double use of "Verily", only the single use:

Matthew (32 instances, including prayers)

Mark (15 instances, including long ending of Mark KJV)

Luke (8 instances).

John has a 26th use, his only instance of the single use category, the concluding line of John 21 which is also the conclusion of the Fourth Gospel, a devotional benediction to the work as in prayer. 

We are the monsters who devour the babes

Minoan Snake Goddess 1600 BC

He sends a monster, horrible and fell,
Begot by furies in the depths of hell.
The pest a virgin's face and bosom bears,

High on her crown a rising snake appears,

Guards her black front, and hisses in her hairs.
About the realm she walks her dreadful round,
When night with sable wings o'erspreads the ground,
Devours young babes before their parents' eyes,
And feeds and thrives on public miseries.

-- Alexander Pope

Athena Parthenos 2nd Century AD

Virtue needs no defence

Virtue, dear friend, needs no defence, 

The surest guard is innocence,

Quivers and bows and poison'd darts

Are only us'd by guilty hearts.

-- 4th Earl of Roscommon

A lesser man than Trump would have succumbed to paranoia by now

 

 

The press, the pulpit and the stage,

Conspire to censure and expose our age.

-- 4th Earl of Roscommon

Even mathematical computation has its limits for preserving sanity

When the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it uses the ideas and repetition of numbers, which are so many distinct ideas, kept best by number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself.

-- John Locke

Archaeology confirms that Spanish conquerors of Mexico had told the truth about the enormity of Aztec inhumanity

But no one wants to say so because it's politically incorrect to suggest that the Christian invaders told the truth and justly put an end to the incredibly barbaric Aztecs.

Here's the story, where the reference to "previously thought" refers only to thinking sanitized of contamination by Christian prejudice, which now turns out to have been unprejudiced, and correct:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5893933/The-horror-Aztec-tower-skulls-revealed.html

The full horror of the Aztec 'skull tower' revealed: Archaeologists say THOUSANDS of human sacrifices had their still-beating hearts cut out before their heads were severed and added to a monument the size of a basketball court

• Archaeologists previously found 650 skulls in Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City
• New research shows find was just a small part of massive array of what was once thousands of skulls
• New details of the gory rituals have also been revealed, which include turning skulls into masks

Aztec human sacrifices were far more widespread and grisly that [sic] previously thought, archaeologists have revealed. ... Some Spanish conquistadors wrote about the tzompantli and its towers, estimating that the rack alone contained 130,000 skulls. The skull edifices were mentioned by Andres de Tapia, a Spanish soldier who accompanied Cortes in the 1521 conquest of Mexico. In his account of the campaign, de Tapia said he counted tens of thousands of skulls at what became known as the Huey Tzompantli.

Jesus was no "internationalist": His affirmation of neighbor love conformed to the narrow scope imagined in Leviticus

Leviticus explicitly defines the neighbor as one of "the children of thy people", thus excluding outsiders (who are enslaveable in perpetuity):

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

 

-- Leviticus 19:18

Jesus believed similarly, including about Samaritans (contra Luke 10:36):

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

 

-- Matthew 10:5f.

This is in keeping also with the narrow scope of Jesus' conception of enemy love:

For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; And a man's enemies will be those of his own household.

 

-- Matthew 10:35f.

For son dishonors father,
Daughter rises against her mother,
Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
A man's enemies are the men of his own household.

 

-- Micah 7:6