patchwork and piece

CA summer

"The choice of occupation, that is, of [Pierre's] way of life—now that that choice was so restricted—seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a superfluity of comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying one’s needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation—such freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had given him in his own life—is just what makes the choice of occupation insolubly difficult, and destroys the desire and possibility of having an occupation" (1090).

$quirreling

"There had been the extraordinary autumn weather that always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights are warm, and when, in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and delight us continually by falling from the sky" (935).

grateful for this day: 11/22/18

"On the tray was a bottle of herb-wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye-cakes made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead, apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves made with sugar" (546).

"When an apple has ripped and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it" (650).

Life of Yuki, graduation day:
"But hard as they worked till quite late that night,
they could not get everything packed" (919).

"Pierre felt himself to be an insignificant chip fallen
among the wheels of a machine whose action he did
not understand but which was working well" (1035).
do u ever feel like a plastic bag

Said small unit: mouse that lived for 24 hours in trap.
Unlatched and put outside with a peanut.
"Go make some mighty mice."

"The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable arbitrary human wills, is continuous…Only by taking an infinitesimally small unit for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history" (881).

Scattering of light over snow

"Q = mL, where Q is thermal energy in Joules, m is mass in kg, and L is latent heat!" -Ms. Breck 

"A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the remaining snow becomes. Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this" (1108), and that's why this happened: 

"Charles Minard's 1869 chart showing the number of men
in Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign army, their movements,
as well as the temperature they encountered on the return path."
As seen in the beloved book by Tufte!

Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

"Physical and spiritual wounds alike can heal completely only as the result of a vital force from within. Natasha’s wound healed in that way. She thought her life was ended, but her love for her mother [and father] unexpectedly showed her that the essence of life—love—was still active within her. Love awoke, and so did life" (1162).

nesting desktops

“'Yes, in our time it would be hard to live without faith…' remarked Pierre" (1199).

A great article from Dad: "Tolstoy reminds us that to be a Christian is to be a fool and a social outcast, that anyone who wishes to follow Christ has to be prepared to die as an enemy of the state, nailed to the cross. It’s a little bit more than a few verses of "Shine, Jesus, Shine" on a Sunday morning. So don’t think of War and Peace as just some Russian Downton Abbey, full of distracting eye-candy. Not that Tolstoy was averse to the sins of the flesh. Like Count Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace – who is a thinly veiled self-portrait of Tolstoy himself – his pilgrim’s progress begins in the brothel, and proceeds via a commitment to religious organizations... to a simple inner commitment to the will of God. This faith only has one commandment: love God and love one other – yes, that’s only one commandment because the latter is a consequence of the former. And this commandment will get you into trouble."



Italo Calvino via Stephen Donadio: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” I finally know what you mean, Professor, when you said that readers of War and Peace never want it to end.