STEINBECK, John - East of Eden

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 1, section 1

And that was the long Salinas Valley. Its history was like that of the rest of the state. First there were Indians, an inferior breed without energy, inventiveness, or culture, a people that lived on grubs and grasshoppers and shellfish, too lazy to hunt or fish. They ate what they could pick up and planted nothing. They pounded bitter acorns for flour. Even their warfare was a weary pantomime.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 1, section 2

Samuel had a great black book on an available shelf and it had gold letters on the cover – Dr Gunn’s Family Medicine. Some pages were bent and beat up from us, and others were never opened to the light. To look through Dr Gunn is to know the Hamiltons’ medical history.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 2, section 1

Liza had a finely dev eloped sense of sin. Idleness was a sin, and card playing, which was a kind of idleness to her. She was suspicious of fun, whether it involved dancing or singing or even laughter. She felt that people having a good time were wide open to the devil.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 3, section 1

Cyrus soon solved the problem. He dipped a rag in whisky and gave it to the baby to suck, and after three or four dippings young Adam went to sleep. Several times during the mourning period he awakened and complained and got the dipped rag again and went to sleep. The baby was drunk for two days and a half.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 3, section 2

When a child first catches adults out – when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgements are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just – his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods; they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 3, section 2

Towards Alice Trask, Adam concealed a feeling that was akin to a warm shame. She was not his mother – that he knew because he had been told many times. Not from things said but from the tone in which other things were said. And he knew that he and once had a mother and she had done some shameful things, such a forgetting the chickens or missing the target on the rage in the wood-lot. As a result of her fault she was not here.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 3, section 2

Cyrus stumped over to him and grasped him by the arm so fiercely that he winced and tried to pull away. ‘Don’t lie to me! Why did he do it? Did you have an argument?’
“No.”
Cyrus wrench at him, ’Tell me! I want to know. Tell me! You’ll have to tell me. I’ll make you tell me! … you’re always protecting him! Don’t you think I know that? Did you think you were fooling me? …’
Adam cast about for an answer. ‘He doesn’t think you love him.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 3, section 4

When Cyrus stumped out into the night he was filled with a kind of despairing anger at Charles. He looked on the road for his son, and he went to the inn to look for him, but Charles was gone. It is probably that if he had found him that night he would have killed him, or tried to. The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or a breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a finger-nail nicked in the garden soil.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 4, section 1

During the five years of soldiering Adam did more detail work than any man in the squadron, but if he killed an enemy it was an accident of ricochet. Being a marksman and sharpshooter, he was peculiarly fitted to miss. By this time the Indian fighting had become like dangerous cattle-drives; the tribes were forced into revolt, driven and decimated, and the sad, sullen remnants settled on starvation lands. It was not nice wok, but given the pattern of the country’s development, it had to be done.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 4, section 2

When he fired his carbine to miss he was committing treason against his unit, and he didn’t care. The emotion of non-violence was building in him until it became a prejudice like any other thought-stultifying prejudiced. To inflict any hurt on anything for any purpose became inimical to him.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 4, section 2

Charles wrote to his brother regularly… As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
During the time Adam was away he knew his brother better than ever before or afterwards. In the exchange of letters there grew a closeness neither of them could have imagined.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 4, section 2

If Samuel had been a rich man like the Thornes or the Delmars, with their big houses and wide flat lands, he would have had a great library.
The Delmars had a library – nothing but book in it and paneled in oak. Samuel, by borrowing, had read many more of the Delmar’s books than the Delmars had. In that day and educated rich man was acceptable.  … But a poor man- what need had he for poetry or for painting or for music not fit for singing or dancing. Such things did not help him bring in a crop or keep a scrap of cloth on his children’s back.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 5

Certain individuals, not by any means always deserving, are truly beloved of the gods. Things come to them without their effort or planning. Will Hamilton was one of these. And the gifts he received were the one she could appreciate. As a growing boy Will was lucky. Just as his father could not make money, Will could not help making it.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 5

Adam felt that he was sleep-walking. It is a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it. In the morning he awakened on a split second and lay awaiting reveille.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 6, section 2

He didn’t want to go home and he put it off as long as possible. Home was not a pleasant place in his mind. The kind of feelings he had had there were dead in him, and he had reluctance to bring them to life.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 6, section 2

She was a clean, mean old woman. She looked at the dust-grey rotting curtains, threw them out, and made new ones. She dug grease out of the stove that had been there since Charles’s mother died. And she leached the walls of a brown shiny nastiness deposited by cooking-fat and kerosene lamps. She pickled the floors with lye, soaked the blankets in sal soda, complaining the whole time to herself, ‘Men- dirty animals. Pigs is clean compared. Rot in their own juice. Don’t see how no woman ever marries them. Stink like measles. Look at oven – pie juice from Methusaleah.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 6, section 3

He learned Spanish words for food and pleasure, and he learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it. He developed a love for poor people he could not have conceived if he had not been poor himself. And by now he was an expert tramp, using humility as a working principle. Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 7, section 1

There hadn’t been anyone to send him a telegram. They were sorry – offered their condolences. And they were pretty excited too. When they had made Trask’s will they thought he might have a few hundred dollars to leave his sons. That is what he looked to be worth. When they inspected his bank-books they found that he had over ninety-three thousand dollars in the bank and ten thousand dollars in good securities. They felt very different about Mr. Task then. People with that much money were rich.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 7, section 2

Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 12

What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 13, section 1

Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but he group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 13, section 1

He’s been west before, tough – in the army, fighting Indians.’
‘Were you now? Then it’s you should talk and let me learn.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Why not? God help my family and my neighbours if I had fought the Indians!’
‘I didn’t want to fight them, sir.’ The ‘sir’ crept in without his knowing it.’
‘Yes, I can understand that. It must be a hard thing to kill a man you don’t know and don’t hate.’
‘Maybe that makes it easier,’ said Louis.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 13, section 3

In her school there were pupils older and bigger than she was. It required great tact to be a school-teacher. To keep order among the big undisciplined boys without pistol and bull whip was a difficult and dangerous business. In one school in the mountains a teacher was raped by her pupils.  Olive Hamilton had not only to teach everything, but to all ages. Very few youths went past the eighth grade in those days, and what with farm duties some of them took fourteen or fifteen years to do it. Olive had also to practices a rudimentary medicine, for there were constant accidents. She sewed up knife cuts after a fight in the school-yard. When a small barefooted boy was bitten by a rattle snake, it was her duty to suck his toe to draw the poison out.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1

In addition, the whole social life of the area was in her hands, not only graduation exercises, but dances, meetings, debates, chorals, Christmas and May Day festivals, patriotic exudations on Decoration Day and the Fourth of July. She was on the election board and headed and held together all charities. It was far from an easy job, and it had duties and obligations beyond belief. The teacher had no private life. She was watched jealously for any weakness of character.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1

Teachers rarely lasted very long in the country schools. The work was so hard and the proposals so constant that they married within a very short time. This was a course Olive Hamilton determined she would not take. She did not share the intellectual enthusiasms of her father, but the time she had spent in Salinas determined her not to be a ranch wife.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1

As she grew older she developed a scattergun method for dealing with unpleasant facts. When I, her only son, was sixteen I contracted pleural pneumonia, in that day a killing disease. I went down and down, until the wing-tips of the angels brushed my eyes. Olive used her scattergun method of treating pleural pneumonia, and it worked. The Episcopalian minister prayed with and for me, the Mother Superior and nuns of the convent next to our house held me up to Heaven for relief twice a day, a distant relative who was a Christian Science reader held the thought for me. Every incantation, magic, and herbal formula known was brought out, and she got two good nurses and the town’s best doctors. Her method was practical. I got well.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1

She was loving and firm with her family, three girls and me, trained us to housework, dishwashing, clothes-washing, and manners. When angered she had a terrible eye which could blanch the skin off a bad child as easily as if he were a boiled almond.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1

Debt was an ugly word and an ugly concept to Olive. A bill unpaid past the fifteenth of the month was a debt. The world had connotations of dirt and slovenliness and dishonor. … She planted that terror of debt so deeply in her children that even now, in a changed economic patter where indebtedness is a part of living, I become restless when a bill is two days overdue.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1

‘Look, Samuel, I mean to make a garden of my land. Remember my name is Adam. So far I’ve had no Eden, let along been driven out.’
‘It’s the best reason I ever heard for making a garden,’ Samuel exclaimed.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 15, section 3

Adam seemed clothes in a viscosity that slowed his movements and held his thoughts down. He saw the world through grey water. Now and then his mind fought is way upwards, and when the light broke in it brought him only a sickness of the mind, and he retired into the greyness again. He was aware of the twins because he heard them cry and laugh, but he felt only a think distaste for them. To Adam they were symbols of his loss.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 22, section 1

Shyly Samuel told his wife he wanted to visit the Trask place. He thoughts she would pile up strong walls of objection, and for one of the few times in his life he would disobey her wish no matter how strong her objection. It gave him a sad feeling in the stomach to think of disobeying his wife. He explains is purpose almost as though he were confessing.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 22, section 2

Could I take the Bible along?’ he asked. ‘There’s no place for getting a good name like the Bible.’
‘I don’t’ much like it out of the house,’ she said uneasily. ‘And if you’re late coming home, what’ll I have for my reading? And the children’s names are in it.’ She saw his face fall. She went into the bedroom and came back with a small Bible, worn and scuffed, its cover held on by brown paper and glue. “Take this one,’ she said.
‘But that’s your mother’s.’
‘She wouldn’t mind.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 22, section 2

‘And I warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in the. They will be what you expect of them.’
‘But their blood –‘
‘I don’t very much believe in blood,’ said Samuel. ‘I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.’
‘You can’t make a racehorse of a pig.’
‘No,” said Samuel, ‘but you can make a very fast pig.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 22, section 3

‘Did you listen? Cain bore the mark not to destroy him but to save him. And there’s a curse down on any man who shall kill him. It was a preserving mark.’
Adam said, ‘I can’t get over a feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick.’
‘Maybe he did,’ said Samuel. ‘But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story. We are Cain’s children. And isn’t it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened in King City yesterday and hadn’t come up for trial?’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 22, section 4

I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I’m feeling my way now – don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 22, section 4

The Hamiltons were strange, high-strung people, and some of them were tuned too high and they snapped. This happens often in the world.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 23, section 1

And then Dessie fell in love. I do not know any details of her love affair – who the man was or what the circumstances, whether it was a religion or a living wife, a disease or a selfishness. I guess my mother knew, but it was one of those things put away in the family closet and never brought out. And if other people in Salinas knew, they must have kept it a loyal town secret. All I do know is that it was a hopeless thing, grey and terrible.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 23, section 1

On Thanksgiving of 1911, the family gathered at the ranch – all the children except Joe, who was in New York, and Lizzie, who had left eh family and joined another, and Una, who was dead. They arrived with presents and more food than even this clan could eat. They were all married save Dessie and Tom. Their children filled the Hamilton place with riot. The home place flared up – noisier than it had ever been. The children cried and screamed and fought.  Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 23, section 2

They all wanted to say the same thing – all ten of them. Samuel was an old man. It was as startling a discovery as the sudden seeing of a ghost. Somehow they had not believed it could happen. They drank their whisky and talk softly of the new thought.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 23, section 2

I have wondered why it is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities of life and death than others.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 1

I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the Bible, with all its paradoxes and its reverses. She did not like death but she knew it existed, and when it came it did not surprise her.
Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, but he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 1

She was gay and frightened about eh visit to Salinas. She liked the idea so well that she felt that there must be something  bordering on sin involved in it.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 1

Places were very important to Samuel. The ranch was a relative, and when he left it he plunged a knife into a darling. But having made up his mind, Samuel set about doing it well. He made formal calls on all of his neighbours, the old-timers who remembered how it used to be and how it was. And when he drove away from his old friends they knew they would not see him again, although he did not say it.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 1

‘You know how it is,’ Samuel said. ‘When you know a friend is there you do not go to seek him. Then he’s gone and you blast your conscience to shreds that you did not see him.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 1

‘The sweetness of your offer is a good smell on the west wind.’
‘Then you’ll do it?’
‘No, I will not do it. But I’ll see it in my mind when I’m in Salinas, listening to William Jennings Bryan. And maybe I’ll get to believe it happened.’
 Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 1

‘Why didn’t you want the boys to learn Chines, Adam?’
Adam thought for a moment. ‘It seems a time for honesty,’ he said at last. ‘I guess it was plain jealousy. I gave it another name, but maybe I didn’t want them to be able so easily to go away from me in a direction I couldn’t follow.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 24, section 2

Dessie did not simply throw up her hands and give up. It was much worse than that. She went right on doing and being what she was – without the glow. The people who had loved her ached for her, seeing her try, and they got to trying for her.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 32, section 1

Dessie’s friend were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 32, section 1

Dessie’s business began to fall off. And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness. Times were changing and the ready-made dress was becoming popular. It was no longer a disgrace to wear one.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 32, section 1

The sharpest question she had asked, ‘How does it feel not to have a mother?’ slipped into his mind. And how did it feel? It didn’t feel like anything. Ah, but in the schoolroom, at Christmas and graduation, when the mothers of other children came to the parties – then was the silent cry and the wordless longing. That’s what it was like.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 36, section 3

Salinas was surrounded and penetrated with swamps, with tule-filled ponds, and every pond spawned thousands of frogs. With the evening the air was so full of their song that I was kind of a roaring silence. It was a veil, a background, and its sudden disappearance, after a clap of thunder, was a shocking thing.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 36, section 3

Lee jumped up. ‘You stop that!’ he said sharply. ‘You hear me? Don’t let me catch you doing that. Of course you may have that in you. Everybody has. But you’ve got the other two. Here – look up! Look at me!’
Cal raised his head and said wearily, ‘What do you want?’
“You’ve got the other too. Listen to me! You wouldn’t even be wondering if you didn’t have it. Don’t you dare take the lazy way. It’s too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don’t let me catch you doing it! Now – look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do it – not your mother.’
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 38, section 3

A war comes always to someone else. In Salinas we were aware that the United States was the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. Every American was a rifleman by birth, and one American was worth ten or twenty foreigners in a fight.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 42

Marty Hopps was dead, the Berges boy, from across the street, the handsome one our little sister was in love with from the time she was three, blown to bits! And the gangling, shuffling, loose-jointed boys carrying suitcase were marching awkwardly down Main Street to the Southern Pacific Depot. They were sheepish, and the Salinas Band marched ahead of them, playing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the families walking along beside them were crying, and the music sounded like a dirge. The draftee wouldn’t look at their mothers. They didn’t dare. We’d never thought the war could happen to us.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 42

The German army was so far superior to ours that we didn’t have a chance.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 42

NOTE
Narrator is Olive Hamilton’s son.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 1, Chapter 5
Olive Hamilton became a teacher, left home at 15, lived in Salinas. Didn’t want to settle there.
Longed for the metropolitan life.
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 2, Chapter 14, section 1
His name is John Hamilton
Steinbeck, East of Eden, Part 3, Chapter 23, section 1

PLUTARCH –The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar

PLUTARCH –The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar

100-44 BC

  

 For thirty-eight days, with all the freedom in the world, he amused himself with joining in their exercises and games if they had not been his keepers, but his guards. He worse verses and speeches, and made them his auditors, and those who did not admire them, he called to their faces illiterate and barbarous, and would often in raillery, threaten to hang them. They were greatly taken with this, and attributed his free talking to a kind of simplicity and boyish playfulness.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 577

Cicero was the first who had any suspicions of his designs upon the government, and as a good pilot is apprehensive of a storm when the sea is most smiling, saw the designing temper of the man, through this disguise of good humour and affability, and said that, in general, in all he did and undertook, he detected the ambition for absolute power, “but when I see his hair so carefully arranged, and observe him adjust it with one finger, I cannot imagine it should enter into such a man’s thoughts to subvert the Roman state.”

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 578

Upon this, Cato, much fearing some movement among the poor citizens, who were always the first to kindle the flame among the people, and placed all their hopes in Caesar, persuaded the senate to give them a monthly allowance of corn, and expedient which put the allowance of corn, an expedient which put the commonwealth to the extraordinary charge of seven million five hundred thousand drachmas in the year, but quite succeeded in removing the great cause of terror for the present, and very much weakened Caesar’s power, who at that time was just going to be made praetor, and consequently would have been more formidable by his office.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 580

A little time after, Caesar married Calpurina, the daughter of Piso, and got Piso made consul for the year following. Cato  exclaimed loudly against this, and protested with a great deal of warmth, that it was intolerable the government should be prostituted by marriages, and that they should advance one another to the commands of armies, provinces, and other great posts, by means of women.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 582

It was usual with him to sit with his hands joined together behind his back, and so to put his horse to its full speed. And in this way he disciplined himself so far as to be able to dictate letters from on horseback, and to give directions to two who took notes at the same time, or as Oppius says, to more.
And it is thought that he was the first who contrived means for communicating with friends by cipher, when either press of business, or the large extent of the city, left him no time for a personal conference about matters that required dispatch.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 584

All who were candidates for offices used his assistance, and were supplied with money from him to corrupt the people and buy their votes, in return of which, when ty were chose, they did all things to advance his power.
Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 586

He put forth an edict declaring the city to be in a state of anarchy, and left it with orders that the senate should follow him, and that no one should stay behind who did not prefer tyranny to their country and liberty.
The consuls at once fled without making even the usual sacrifices; so did most of the senators, carrying off their own goods in as much haste as if they had been robbing their neighbours. Some who had formerly much favoured Caesar’s cause, in the prevailing alarm quitted their own sentiments,

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 591

He, in despair of maintaining the defence, requested a physician, whom he had among his attendants, to give him poison; and taking the dose, drank it, in hopes of being despatched by it. But soon after, when he was told that Casesar showed the utmost clemency towards those he took prisoners, he lamented his misfortune, and blamed the hastiness of his resolution. His physician consoled him by informing him that he had taken a sleeping draught, not a poison; upon which, much rejoiced, and rising from his bed, he went presently to Caesar, and give him the pledge of his hand, yet afterwards again went over to Pompey.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 591

Caesar had found great difficulties in his march, for no country would supply him with provisions, his reputation being very much fallen since his late defeat. But after he took Gomphi, a town of Thessaly, he not only found provisions for his army, but a physic too. For there they met with plenty of wine, which they took very freely, and heated with this, sporting and reveling on their march in bacchanalian fashion, they shook off the disease, and their whole constitution was relieved and changed into another habit. 

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 594

Caesar, as a memorial of his victory, gave the Thessalians their freedom, and then went in pursuit of Pompey. When he was come into Asia, to gratify Theopompus, the author of the collection of fables, he enfranchised the Cnidians, and remitted one-third of their tribute to all the people of the province of Asia. When he came to Alexandria, where Pompey was already murdered, he would not look upon Theodotus, who presented him with his head, but taking only his signet, shed tears.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 596

In his letter to his friends at Rome, he told them that the greatest and most signal pleasure his victory had given him was to be able continually to save the lives of fellow-citizens who had fought against him.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 596

Others blame the ministers of the king, and especially the eunuch Pothinus, who was the chief favourite and had lately killed Pompey; he had banished Cleopatra, and was now secretly plotting Caesar’s destruction. …he was intolerable in his affronts to Caesar, both by his words and actions. For when Caesar’s soldiers had musty and unwholesome corn measure out to them, Pothinus told them they must be content with it, since they were fed at another’s cost.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 596

Achillas escaped to the army, and raised a troublesome and embarrassing war against Caesar, which it ws not easy for him to manage with his few soldiers against so powerful a city and s large an army. The first difficulty he met ws want of water, for the enemies had turned the canals. Another was, when the enemy endeavoured to cut off his communication by sea, he was forced to divert that danger by setting fire to his own ships, which after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great library. A third was, when in an engagement near Pharos, he leaped from the mole into a small boat to assist his soldiers who were in danger, and when the Egyptians pressed him on every side, he threw himself into the sea, and with much difficulty swam off. This was the time when, according to the story, he had a number of manuscripts in his hand, which, thought he was continually darted at, and forced to keep his head often under water, yet he did not let go, but held them up safe from wetting in one hand, whilst he swam with the other. His boat, in the meantime, was quickly sunk.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 596

Caesar immediately marched against him with three legions, fought him near Zela, drove him out of Pontus, and totally defeated his army. When he gave Amantius, a friend of his at Rome, an account of this action, to express the promptness and rapidity of it he used three words, “I came, saw, and conquered,” which in Latin, having all the same cadence, carry with them a very suitable air of brevity.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 597

He was also reflected on for Dolabella’s extravagance, Amantius’s covetousness, Antony’s debauchery, and Corfinius’s profuseness, who pulled down Pompey’s house and rebuilt it, as not magnificent enough; for the Romans were much displeased with all these. But Caesar, for the prosecution of his own scheme of government, though he knew their characters and disapproved them, was forced to make use of those who would serve him. Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 596

For he was in such a want both of victualling for his men and forage for his horses, that he was forced to feed the horses with seaweed, which he washed thoroughly to take off its saltiness, and mixed with a little grass to give it a more agreeable taste.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 597

The triumph which he celebrated for this victory displeased the Romans beyond anything, for he had not defeated foreign generals or barbarian kings, but had destroyed the children and family of one of the greatest men of Rome, though unfortunate; and it did not look well to lead a procession in celebration of the calamities of his country , and to rejoice in those things for which no other apology could be made either to gods or men than their being absolutely necessary.

Plutarch, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans: Caesar, Great Books, Volume 14, pg. 598

STOKER, Bram - Dracula

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Johnathan Harker: I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams.

Bram Stoker, Dracula, chapter 1

Johnathan Harker: The women looked pretty, except when you got near them.
Bram Stoker, Dracula, chapter 1

Coachman: You cannot deceive me, my friend. I know too much, and my horses are swift.
Bram Stoker, Dracula, chapter 1

Johnathan Harker: This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining.
Bram Stoker, Dracula, chapter 1

Johnathan Harker: I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.” Bram Stoker, Dracula, chapter 1

Johnathan Harker: I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place.

Stoker, Dracula, chapter 2

Johnathan Harker: As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 2

Johnathan Harker: "Do you wish me to stay so long?" I asked, for my heart grew cold at the thought.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 3

Johnathan Harker: I quite understood. My only doubt was as to whether any dream could be more terrible than the unnatural, horrible net of gloom and mystery which seemed closing around me.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 3

Johnathan Harker: Up to now I never quite knew what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, "My tablets! Quick, my tablets! `tis meet that I put it down," etc., For now, feeling as though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 3

Johnathan Harker: To be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. My watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. But these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, for some cause or another, I had certainly been much upset. I must watch for proof.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 4

Johnathan Harker: Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 4

Lucy Westenra: I do not, as you know, take sufficient interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions. Dress is a bore. That is slang again, but never mind. Arthur says that every day.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 5

Lucy Westenra: He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same. He had evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of little things, and remembered them, but he almost managed to sit down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 5

Miss Lucy, I know I ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of your little shoes, but I guess if you wait till you find a man that is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you quit. Won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down the long road together, driving in double harness?
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 5

Lucy Westenra: My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little worthy of them? Here was I almost making fun of this great hearted, true gentleman.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 5

Quincy P. Morris: It's better worth being late for a chance of winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world. Don't cry, my dear. If it's for me, I'm a hard nut to crack, and I take it standing up. If that other fellow doesn't know his happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal with me. Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend, and that's rarer than a lover, it's more selfish anyhow. My dear, I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom Come.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 5

Mr. Swales: Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was,
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mina Murray: Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these tombstones are not all wrong?
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mina Murray: I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the church.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mr. Swales: "Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here? Murdered off the coast of Andres! An' you consated his body lay under! Why, I could name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above,
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mina Murray & Mr. Swales:

"But," I said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you think that will be really necessary?"

"Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!"

"To please their relatives, I suppose."

"To please their relatives, you suppose!" This he said with intense scorn. "How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies?"

Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mr. Swales: And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to addle where she was.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Dr. John Seward: To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it shall be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss.

Dr. John Seward: Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! Work!
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mina Murray: Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mina Murray: Another week gone by, and no news from Jonathan, not even to Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard. Oh, I do hope he is not ill. He surely would have written. I look at that last letter of his, but somehow it does not satisfy me. It does not read like him, and yet it is his writing. There is no mistake of that.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 6

Mina Murray: Oh, but I am tired! If it were not that I had made my diary a duty I should not open it tonight.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 8

Mina Murray: The town seemed as dead, for not a soul did I see. I rejoiced that it was so, for I wanted no witness of poor Lucy's condition.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 8

Sis Agatha, St. Joseph Hospital: He has had some fearful shock, so says our doctor, and in his delirium his ravings have been dreadful, of wolves and poison and blood, of ghosts and demons, and I fear to say of what. Be careful of him always that there may be nothing to excite him of this kind for a long time to come. The traces of such an illness as his do not lightly die away. We should have written long ago, but we knew nothing of his friends, and there was nothing on him, nothing that anyone could understand. He came in the train from Klausenburg, and the guard was told by the station master there that he rushed into the station shouting for a ticket for home.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 8

Mina Murray: I knew then that he was in deadly earnest, for he has never called me by that name since he asked me to marry him,
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 9

Johnathan Harker: You know I had brain fever, and that is to be mad. The secret is here, and I do not want to know it. … Are you willing, Wilhelmina, to share my ignorance? Here is the book. Take it and keep it, read it if you will, but never let me know unless, indeed, some solemn duty should come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake, sane or mad, recorded here.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 9

Mina Murray: I took the book from under his pillow, and wrapped it up in white paper, and tied it with a little bit of pale blue ribbon which was round my neck, and sealed it over the knot with sealing wax, and for my seal I used my wedding ring. Then I kissed it and showed it to my husband, and told him that I would keep it so, and then it would be an outward and visible sign for us all our lives that we trusted each other, that I would never open it unless it were for his own dear sake or for the sake of some stern duty.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 9

Lucy Westenra: Perhaps it is the change of air, or getting home again. It is all dark and horrid to me, for I can remember nothing. But I am full of vague fear, and I feel so weak and worn out.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 9

You must not be angry with me, Art, because his very reticence means that all his brains are working for her good. He will speak plainly enough when the time comes, be sure.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 9

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: The good husbandman tell you so then because he knows, but not till then. But you do not find the good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow. That is for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it as of the work of their life.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 10

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: But now you are here, you are more good than us, old or young, who toil much in the world of thought. Our nerves are not so calm and our blood so bright than yours!
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 10

Dr. John Seward: For two nights I had hardly had a wink of sleep, and my brain was beginning to feel that numbness which marks cerebral exhaustion.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 10

Dr. John Seward: I tried to sleep, but I could not. Then there came to me the old fear of sleep, and I determined to keep awake. Perversely sleep would try to come then when I did not want it.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 11

Dr. John Seward: Only resolution and habit can let me make an entry tonight. I am too miserable, too low spirited, too sick of the world and all in it, including life itself,
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 12

Dr. John Seward: "Ah well, poor girl, there is peace for her at last. It is the end!"

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity, "Not so, alas! Not so. It is only the beginning!"
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 12

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: Friend John, there are strange and terrible days before us. Let us not be two, but one, that so we work to a good end. Will you not have faith in me?"
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 13

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 14

Dr. John Seward: For a while sheer anger mastered me.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: …why take so long to tell so simple a thing? Was it because I hate you and have hated you all my life? Was it because I wished to give you pain? Was it that I wanted, no so late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful death? Ah no!"
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: It is so hard to accept at once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we have always believed the `no' of it.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: If it not be true, then proof will be relief. At worst it will not harm. If it be true! Ah, there is the dread. Yet every dread should help my cause, for in it is some need of belief.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Dr. John Seward: My heart sank within me, for I felt that there was some fearful ordeal before us. I could do nothing, however, so I plucked up what heart I could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was passing.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Arthur Holmwood:  …if it be anything in which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is concerned, I cannot make such a promise. If you can assure me that what you intend does not violate either of these two, then I give my consent at once, though for the life of me, I cannot understand what you are driving at.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: In a long life of acts which were often not pleasant to do, and which sometimes did wring my heart, I have never had so heavy a task as now.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 15

Dr. John Seward: If ever a face meant death, if looks could kill, we saw it at that moment.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 16

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world. For all that die from the preying of the Undead become themselves Undead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 16

Mina Murray: We need have no secrets amongst us. Working together and with absolute trust, we can surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 17

Dr. John Seward: She has man's brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 18

Mina Murray: I wonder what has come over me today. I must hide it from Jonathan, for if he knew that I had been crying twice in one morning. . .I, who never cried on my own account, and whom he has never caused to shed a tear, the dear fellow would fret his heart out. I shall put a bold face on, and if I do feel weepy, he shall never see it. I suppose it is just one of the lessons that we poor women have to learn...
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 19

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: He have done this alone, all alone! From a ruin tomb in a forgotten land. What more may he not do when the greater world of thought is open to him. He that can smile at death, as we know him. Who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill off whole peoples. Oh! If such an one was to come from God, and not the Devil, what a force for good might he not be in this old world of ours.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 24

Dr. John Seward: It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 24

Dr. John Seward: We were all wild with excitement yesterday when Godalming got his telegram from Lloyd's. I know now what men feel in battle when the call to action is heard.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 25

Dr. John Seward: Transcendentalism is a beacon to the angels, even if it be a will-o'-the-wisp to man.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 25

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: We, however, are not selfish, and we believe that God is with us through all this blackness, and these many dark hours.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 25

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing: My legs are not so quick to run as once. And I am not used to ride so long or to pursue as need be, or to fight with lethal weapons. But I can be of other service. I can fight in other way. And I can die, if need be, as well as younger men.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 26

And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of money! What can it not do when basely used. I felt so thankful that Lord Godalming is rich, and both he and Mr. Morris, who also has plenty of money, are willing to spend it so freely. For if they did not, our little expedition could not start, either so promptly or so well equipped, as it will within another hour.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 26

Quincy P. Morris: "I am only too happy to have been of service! Oh, God!" he cried suddenly, struggling to a sitting posture and pointing to me. "It was worth for this to die!"
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 27

Johnathan Harker: This boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care. Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.
Stoker, Dracula, chapter 27

Characters (had difficulty keeping track)

Johnathan Harker: travels to Transylvania, Mina’s fiancée

Mina Murray: Johnathan’s fiancée

Lucy Westenra: Mina’s best friend, Arthur’s fiancée

Arthur Holmwood: Lucy’s fiancée, son and heir of Lord Godalming. Also goes by the name Godalming when his father dies.

Mrs. Westenra: Lucy’s ill mother

Dr. John Seward: insane asylum administrator, Van Helsing’s pupil, lives close to Dracula, Lucy rejects his marriage proposal

Renfield: insane, consumes flies, spiders, birds

Quincy P. Morris: well educated, but uses American slang to amuse Lucy, Lucy rejects his marriage proposal

Dr. Professor Abraham Van Helsing, of Amsterdam: science professor of John Seward, knows vampire folklore, knows as much about obscure diseases, willing to work outside of traditional medicine

Mr. Swales: retired, aged seaman

WHARTON, Edith - ETHAN FROME

WHARTON, Edith - ETHAN FROME

I had had an uneasy sense that the New England of fiction bore little- except a vague botanical and dialectical- resemblance to the harsh and beautiful land as I had seen it.

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, Introduction

There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two.
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, prologue

But the Fromes are tough. Ethan'll likely touch a hundred. (Reach the age of 100)
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, prologue

It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with detachment.

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, prologue

Sickness and trouble: that's what Ethan's had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping.
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, prologue

"I've always set down the worst of mother's trouble to that. When she got the rheumatism so bad she couldn't move around she used to sit up there and watch the road by the hour; and one year, when they was six months mending the Bettsbridge pike after the floods, and Harmon Gow had to bring his stage round this way, she picked up so that she used to get down to the gate most days to see him. But after the trains begun running nobody ever come by here to speak of, and mother never could get it through her head what had happened, and it preyed on her right along till she died."

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, prologue

"We never got away- how should you?" seemed to be written on every headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a shiver: "I shall just go on living here till I join them." But now all desire for change had vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability.

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, chapter 2

Zenobia's fault-finding was of the silent kind, but not the less penetrating for that.
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, chapter 3

Sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when in desperation her son asked her why she didn't "say something," she would lift a finger and answer: "Because I'm listening";

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, chapter 4

After the funeral, when he saw her preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter...
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, chapter 4

“I'm fixing up a little house for Ned and Ruth when they're married. I'm glad to do it for 'em, but it costs." His look appealed to Ethan for sympathy. "The young people like things nice. You know how it is yourself: it's not so long ago since you fixed up your own place for Zeena."

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, chapter 4

He started down the road toward their house, but at the end of a few yards he pulled up sharply, the blood in his face. For the first time, in the light of the words he had just heard, he saw what he was about to do. He was planning to take advantage of the Hales' sympathy to obtain money from them on false pretences. That was a plain statement of the cloudy purpose which had driven him in headlong to Starkfield.

With the sudden perception of the point to which his madness had carried him, the madness fell and he saw his life before him as it was. He was a poor man, the husband of a sickly woman, whom his desertion would leave alone and destitute; and even if he had had the heart to desert her he could have done so only by deceiving two kindly people who had pitied him.

Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome, chapter 8