The Saunterer

Diana Wynne Jones on keeping in touch with the seasons

    Want profounder living? Always sense the changing seasons was Diana Wynne Jones’ solution:        
    At the start of the war we were hurried away first to Wales and then -– after my mother had quarreled with her in-laws -– to the Lake District, where, coincidentally, we were lodged in the house that belonged to the Arthur Ransome children. One of the things I gained from this, which I have only recently realized, was a very strong sense of the changing seasons of the year, and the effect the season has on the way you think and act. With the increasing urbanization of children’s lives, I found this more important every year. Children need to be kept in touch with the cycle of the seasons.

    (Quoted from page 223 of Reflections on the Magic of Writing, by Diana Wynne Jones. Greenwillow Books, 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Diana Wynne Jones, click here. For images of or relating to Diana Wynne Jones, click here.

Simone Signoret on what makes a marriage last

    A third of the marriages in Germany, we heard the other night, break up. Simone Signoret knew why:

    Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. That is what makes a marriage last –- more than passion or even sex.

    (Simone Signoret quoted from the July 4, 1978, issue of the Daily Mail (London).)
    For a brief biography of Simone Signoret, click here. For images of or relating to Simone Signoret, click here.

Humpty Dumpty is civilization and climate

    To see this is so, each time you come to “Humpty Dumpty” below replace it with “civilization and climate”:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall:
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

    (Quoted from Mother Goose, arranged and edited by Eulalie Osgood Grover, illustrated by Frederick Richardson. P. F. Volland & Co., 1915; unpaged.)
    For a brief biography of Eulalie Osgood Grover, click here. For images of or relating to Eulalie Osgood Grover, click here. For a brief biography of Frederick Richardson, click here. For images of or relating to Frederick Richardson, click here.

Max Beckmann on what art is for

    Many are the reasons for art, with Max Beckmann singling out this especially:

    Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement; for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make.

    (Quoted from page 248 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Max Beckmann, click here. For images of or relating to Max Beckman, click here.                            

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney on an essential ingredient of a strong marriage

    The couple must want to do things together. In 1913 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney explained this essential ingredient in an unmailed letter to her husband Harry:

    It seems very obvious that we are drifting further and further apart and that the chances of our coming together are growing remote. I say this for several reasons –- there is no inclination on your part to have explanations which might lead to understanding. Also our mutual indifference to the pursuits and pleasures of the other is leading us constantly to have less even to talk of and forms no bond on which we might try to bridge our difficult moments. Of course for a very long time we have done absolutely nothing together because we wanted to. . . . I am not going to throw the rest of my life away. I am going to face things and understand as much as I can, and then build on a solid foundation for I am tired of the sand that crumbles and will not hold my poor little house.

    (Quoted from page 35 of The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made, by Flora Miller Biddle. Arcade Publishing, 1999.)
    For a brief biography of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, click here. For images of or relating to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, click here.
    For a brief biography of Flora Miller Biddle, click here. For images of or relating to Flora Miller Biddle, click here.

Stephen Marche on adolescence

    To those once mixed up as teens, Stephen Marche might have the reason:

    Young love is the world’s most intoxicating stuff. The teen idol of the moment, Justin Bieber, uses up 3 percent of Twitter’s entire server capacity. Youth sells perfume, clothes, movies, music, drinks, everything. The world’s most expensive and popular models are just barely pubescent –- the sexiest women’s clothes look best on girls with whom it would be illegal to have sex. Teenagers live in a state of maximum desirability as well as maximum contempt. They are in an impossible position –- impossible to others and to themselves.

    (Quoted from page 59 of How Shakespeare Changed Everything, by Stephen Marche. HarperCollins Publishers, 2011.)
    For a bibliographic note on Stephen Marche, click here. For images of or relating to Stephen Marche, click here.
    For a brief biography of Justin Bieber, click here. For images of or relating to Justin Bieber, click here.

Rhoda M. Wilkie on killing animals

    If killing animals were OK, there would be no guilt. Rhoda M. Wilkie quotes a farmer:

    So long as the slaughter process is humane, the actual slaughter is not a welfare issue. What happens before that point is, but the actual slaughter, I think –- once it’s happened, that’s that. So I don’t think the animal really is suffering from that, providing it’s had a valid life and it’s had a reasonable time. . . . [I]f it wasn’t going to be eaten, it wouldn’t have had that. So I can justify it that way. But actually, . . . it is me causing this animal to have a shorter life than it would otherwise [have], and yeah, I feel guilty.

    (Quoted from page 151 of Livestock/Deadstock, by Rhoda M. Wilkie. Temple University Press, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Rhoda M. Wilkie, click here. For images of or relating to Rhoda M. Wilkie, click here.

Rudyard Kipling on finding one’s own meaning of life

    Rudyard Kipling, in his poem The Explorer, put these lines of encouragement:

    Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges-–
    Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!

    (Quoted from page 7 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Rudyard Kipling, click here. For images of or relating to Rudyard Kipling, click here.

Arnold J. Toynbee on how to reach a goal

    Arnold Toynbee tells how:

    It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself, but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

    (Quoted from Cities and Churches, by Robert Lee. Westminister Press, 1962.)
    For a brief biography of Arnold J. Toynbee, click here. For images of or relating to Arnold J. Toynbee, click here.

Buzz Aldrin on the sublime

    Samuel Taylor Coleridge viewed the sublime as categorical, without degree, that which suspends comparison. The Grand Canyon is sublime, Victoria Falls is sublime, and it is impossible to distinguish a difference in their sublimeness. Awe inspiring is awe inspiring, and that’s all there is to it. But for some experiences, there is degree, a sublimest of the sublime, for which we turn to Buzz Aldrin:

    I slowly allowed my eyes to drink in the unusual majesty of the moon. . . . I managed to direct my view homeward, and there in the black, starless sky I could see our marble-sized planet, no bigger than my thumb. . . . In a strange way there was an indescribable feeling of proximity and connection between us and everyone back on Earth. Yet we were physically separated and farther away from home than any two human beings had ever been. The irony was paradoxical, even overwhelming, but I dared not dwell on it for long.

    (Quoted from page 34 of Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, by Buzz Aldrin and K. Abraham. Crown Books, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Buzz Aldrin, click here. For images of or relating to Buzz Aldrin, click here.
    For a brief biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here. For images of or relating to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here.