"poor as Job’s turkey" A writer whose name I failed to record in Chronicles magazine May 1994
"There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention – that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary – the sunshine, the memories, the future, - which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life." The narrator Marlow in Joseph Conrad Lord Jim
"[H.G. Wells] seems to believe that men who have begun anyhow, and come from anywhere, and believe or disbelieve anything, will by some process of pooling impressions arrive at an agreement at the end... I cannot see how this is really consistent with any rational process of thought at all... people who differ at the beginning still differ at the end…’" G.K Chesterton in G.K.’s Weekly June 22, 1928, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 20 #2 (Nov.-Dec. 2016)
"If we don’t discipline ourselves the world will do it for us." William Feather
"'When the cart stops,' said Huai-Jang, the Master of Ma-Tsu, 'do you whip the cart or whip the ox?'" Thomas Merton Zen and the Birds of Appetite
"where there is no temple, there shall be no homes" The chorus in T.S. Eliot The Rock
"the two certainties for which the mind of man tirelessly seeks: a reason to live and a reason to die." "Letter to my children" in Whittaker Chambers Witness
On this date in 364 AD, February 17, Jovian was found dead in his tent. And if your reaction was a rudely pointed "Who?", well, you have a point. Actually he was a Roman Emperor and an illustration of the vanity of much worldly ambition.
He only reigned for eight months, following Julian the Apostate’s sudden death during his bungled campaign against the Persians. He was foisted on the empire by soldiers, possibly in a case of mistaken identity. And though he was found dead in suspicious circumstances, nobody much cared to investigate them.
On the plus side, he did restore Christianity after Julian’s rather pathetic efforts to restore worship of the Olympian deities. And he did proclaim freedom of conscience while, um, forbidding magical rites and imposing the death penalty for those who worshipped ye olde Gods like Jupiter. Oh, and he had the Library of Antioch burned down because Julian had filled it with pagan books. Which actually annoyed his Christian as well as non-Christian subjects.
He then continued Julian’s retreat from the far east and signed a humiliating treaty with the Sassinids surrendering five Roman provinces. After which he made a bee-line for Constantinople to bolster his political position somehow. Except it ended up a bee-line to the cemetery.
To rub it all in, his successor Valentinian I did such a good job that he was nicknamed "the Great". Whereas Jovian was nicknamed "Who dat" or some such.
Another person who would have been better off staying on his farm. As would his nation.