This is a sample of my Rhetoric Professor's words of wisdom. Just pray that he never finds them...
(Speaking of some girls) They seem to think: "I don't really have to do well in my classes. I'm just here to find a mate".
and: "If you watch stupid movies, listen to stupid music, write a stupid blog, congratulations, you are stupid."
The last time I laughed in class as hard as I do in rhetoric class every week, I was bodily escorted from the room.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
More from my commonplace book
If you haven't read "The Importance of Being Earnest" in the past week or so, your life is truly being wasted. Live a little. The movie is great too, save the momentary glimpse of the female nether regions being tattooed.
Here are a few snippets from the book. Enjoy!
I believe it (marriage) is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.
I don't really see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. The excitement is then over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
For Heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.
"Your brother Ernest is dead?"
"Quite dead."
"What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it."
Here are a few snippets from the book. Enjoy!
I believe it (marriage) is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.
I don't really see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. The excitement is then over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
For Heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical.
"Your brother Ernest is dead?"
"Quite dead."
"What a lesson for him! I trust he will profit by it."
A couple from Augustin(e)
You stir us up to take delight in your praise; for you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you.
...seeking to gain nothing through my disgrace but disgrace alone.
Through my desires I suffered the most bitter struggles, and you looked mercifully upon me--all the more so in that you did not allow me to find sweetness in anything that was not you.
Woe to my reckless soul, which hoped, if it departed from you, to gain something better! It tossed and turned on to its back, its sides, its stomach, but the bed was hard throughout, and you alone are rest.
Free will (is) the reason why we commit evil, and your righteous judgment the reason why we suffer it.
Let no man say to him, "What is this?" or "Why is this?" Let him not say it. Let him not say it. He is a man.
All that is, then, is good. As for evil, whose origin I was seeking, it is not a substance, since if it were a substance, it would be good.
Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes the gold shine makes the chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press...the wicked, under pressure of affliction, execrate God and blaspheme; the good, in the same affliction, offer up prayers and praises.
I am certain of this, that no one has died who was not going to die at some time, and the end of life reduces the longest life to the same condition as the shortest...The only thing that makes death an evil is what comes after death. Those who must inevitably die ought not to worry overmuch about what accident will cause their death, but about their destination after dying.
Thus you refuse to be held responsible for the evil that you do, while you hold the Christian era responsible for the evil which you suffer!...Prosperity depraved you, and adversity could not reform you...you have become the most wretched, and you have remained the most worthless, of mankind.
Stupidity glories in never yielding to the force of truth.
"Grant me chastity and continence", I had said, "but please, not yet."
How sweet it suddenly was to me to be deprived of all the sweets of frivolity, and what a joy to throw away what I had feared to lose.
And woe even to men who live a praiseworthy life, if you should sift them without mercy! But as you do not enquire relentlessly into our sins, we hope and trust to have some place in you. Bit if one should enumerate before you his true good deeds, what is he enumerating but your gifts to him? Would that men would learn that they are men, and that "he who boasts would boast in the Lord!"
We may pass over the speculations about the nature and origin of the human race that have been put forward by men who do not know what they are talking about.
No one therefore must try to get to know from me what I know that I do not know, unless, it may be, in order to learn not to know what must be known to be incapable of being known.
...seeking to gain nothing through my disgrace but disgrace alone.
Through my desires I suffered the most bitter struggles, and you looked mercifully upon me--all the more so in that you did not allow me to find sweetness in anything that was not you.
Woe to my reckless soul, which hoped, if it departed from you, to gain something better! It tossed and turned on to its back, its sides, its stomach, but the bed was hard throughout, and you alone are rest.
Free will (is) the reason why we commit evil, and your righteous judgment the reason why we suffer it.
Let no man say to him, "What is this?" or "Why is this?" Let him not say it. Let him not say it. He is a man.
All that is, then, is good. As for evil, whose origin I was seeking, it is not a substance, since if it were a substance, it would be good.
Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment. The fire which makes the gold shine makes the chaff smoke; the same flail breaks up the straw, and clears the grain; and oil is not mistaken for lees because both are forced out by the same press...the wicked, under pressure of affliction, execrate God and blaspheme; the good, in the same affliction, offer up prayers and praises.
I am certain of this, that no one has died who was not going to die at some time, and the end of life reduces the longest life to the same condition as the shortest...The only thing that makes death an evil is what comes after death. Those who must inevitably die ought not to worry overmuch about what accident will cause their death, but about their destination after dying.
Thus you refuse to be held responsible for the evil that you do, while you hold the Christian era responsible for the evil which you suffer!...Prosperity depraved you, and adversity could not reform you...you have become the most wretched, and you have remained the most worthless, of mankind.
Stupidity glories in never yielding to the force of truth.
"Grant me chastity and continence", I had said, "but please, not yet."
How sweet it suddenly was to me to be deprived of all the sweets of frivolity, and what a joy to throw away what I had feared to lose.
And woe even to men who live a praiseworthy life, if you should sift them without mercy! But as you do not enquire relentlessly into our sins, we hope and trust to have some place in you. Bit if one should enumerate before you his true good deeds, what is he enumerating but your gifts to him? Would that men would learn that they are men, and that "he who boasts would boast in the Lord!"
We may pass over the speculations about the nature and origin of the human race that have been put forward by men who do not know what they are talking about.
No one therefore must try to get to know from me what I know that I do not know, unless, it may be, in order to learn not to know what must be known to be incapable of being known.
Couple racist jokes
Please forward these to Jonathan Ashbach. They are from the Foucachon family here at NSA.
"You've never heard of a French Army Knife? It has a dinner fork, a dessert fork, a cheese knife, and a napkin that doubles as a really small white flag."
--David Foucachon (he's 1st gen. French, so complain to him)
And a comment to the aforementioned Frenchman:
"You can't give blood. What if they gave it to a person who caught a cold? Every cell in their body would give up and die as soon as your blood touched them."
"You've never heard of a French Army Knife? It has a dinner fork, a dessert fork, a cheese knife, and a napkin that doubles as a really small white flag."
--David Foucachon (he's 1st gen. French, so complain to him)
And a comment to the aforementioned Frenchman:
"You can't give blood. What if they gave it to a person who caught a cold? Every cell in their body would give up and die as soon as your blood touched them."
Abstractish thingy.
Jesse Broussard
Lordship
Jerusalem Term
Augustine Gen. 1:1, 2 Abstract
Augustine’s doctrine of the first two verses of Genesis seems to be as follows: for verse 1, he believes that God (Father, Son, and Spirit) eternally existed, and created all that is ("creatio ex nihilo" was coined by him). He holds the “heaven” in v.1 to be the spiritual heaven while holding the “earth” to be the earth of Gen. 1:2a (which he refers to as “raw matter”), and he states that the Son is the medium of the Father’s creation.
Regarding verse 2b, he is very cautious and fears to cause division, confessing the difficulty of the text, but seems to hold to the literal truth of the text while not dwelling on it extensively, but rather focusing on the analogous work of the Holy Spirit in the human life: brooding over that which is formless and dark (the LXX “skotos” also has a connotation of evil or sin which the Hebrew equivalent does not seem to have) in preparation for its transformation into that which is beautiful and wholly good.
Lordship
Jerusalem Term
Augustine Gen. 1:1, 2 Abstract
Augustine’s doctrine of the first two verses of Genesis seems to be as follows: for verse 1, he believes that God (Father, Son, and Spirit) eternally existed, and created all that is ("creatio ex nihilo" was coined by him). He holds the “heaven” in v.1 to be the spiritual heaven while holding the “earth” to be the earth of Gen. 1:2a (which he refers to as “raw matter”), and he states that the Son is the medium of the Father’s creation.
Regarding verse 2b, he is very cautious and fears to cause division, confessing the difficulty of the text, but seems to hold to the literal truth of the text while not dwelling on it extensively, but rather focusing on the analogous work of the Holy Spirit in the human life: brooding over that which is formless and dark (the LXX “skotos” also has a connotation of evil or sin which the Hebrew equivalent does not seem to have) in preparation for its transformation into that which is beautiful and wholly good.
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