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9ef3902
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The bookworm--"one of the teeth of time," as Hooke put it--is no longer familiar to ordinary readers, but the ancients knew it very well."
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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fcbdb75
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I am committed by trade to urging people to attend carefully to the verbal surfaces of what they read. Much of the pleasure and interest of poetry depends on such attention.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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8f78a02
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I like not such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath. Give me life" (5.3.57-58)."
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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84e19ae
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Jaques' vision in the same comedy of "the whining schoolboy with his satchel / And shining morning face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school"
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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1428865
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the discourse of travel in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance is rarely if ever interesting at the level of sustained narrative and teleological design, but gripping at the level of the anecdote.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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a232f67
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The mob then dragged her corpse outside the city walls and burned it. Their hero Cyril was eventually made a saint.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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ace45c6
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I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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2ed2303
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The group shared a combination of extreme marginality and arrogant snobbishness.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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79086fb
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Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know. And so far will I trust thee,
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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fe166f3
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The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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2df045e
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With his contrasting vision of anxious, work-obsessed, overly disciplined Italians and happy-go-lucky, carefree Germans,
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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1a4399c
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Can honour set-to a leg?" Falstaff asks, at the brink of battle."
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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c4fec89
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No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound?
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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b358aed
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What is honour? A word. What is in that word "honour"?"
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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ff8e845
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What is that "honour"? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?"
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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fb091fe
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He that died o'Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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baaf606
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a few months after he penned his Dialogue in Praise of the Papal Court, poor Lapo died of plague at the age of thirty-three.)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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e0e3d43
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the dread of something after death,/The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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dd0e738
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Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death we human beings all live in an unwalled city
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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e7768a5
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This man," remarked a contemporary, dismayed at the wanton damage, "knew as much of antiquities as the moon does of lobsters.")"
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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a17ef00
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The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. (4.1.179-81)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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c5ef355
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affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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98371c1
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If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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d9d1f39
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Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this: That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy, And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. (4.1.192-97)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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30cbcfc
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If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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99d3e77
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the government-controlled Saudi daily Al-Riyadh published a column declaring that "the Jews' spilling human blood to prepare pastry for their holidays is a well-established fact."
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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2f351e7
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always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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bdca831
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Instead, he wrote, quoting Lucretius, there were multiple worlds, where the seeds of things, in their infinite numbers, would certainly combine to form other races of men, other creatures. Each of the fixed stars observed in the sky is a sun, scattered through limitless space. Many of these are accompanied by satellites that revolve around them as the earth revolves around our sun. The universe is not all about us, about our behavior and ou..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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3f56fc0
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If the original ink proved tenacious, it could still be possible to make out the traces of the texts that were written over: a unique fourth-century copy of Cicero's On the Republic remained visible beneath a seventh-century copy of St. Augustine's meditation on the Psalms; the sole surviving copy of Seneca's book on friendship was deciphered beneath an Old Testament inscribed in the late sixth century. These strange, layered manuscripts--c..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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66486ba
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Vouchsafe, O Lord,21 to bless this workroom of Thy servants," declared the dedication of one scriptorium, "that all which they write therein may be comprehended by their intelligence and realized in their works." But the actual interest of the scribes in the books they copied (or their distaste for those books) was strictly irrelevant. Indeed, insofar as the copying was a form of discipline--an exercise in humility and a willing embrace of ..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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f05a1b4
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In Gilgamesh the human formed from clay is a wild man, with flowing hair (possibly all over his body) and the strength and manner of life of the animals. In Genesis the clay human is created "in the image of God" and has from the beginning the status of one who is not a companion to the other animals but of one who dominates them."
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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f0dedff
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You bitches, sows, screech-owls, night owls, she-wolves, blood suckers, [who] cry "Give, give! without ceasing" (Prov. 30:15-16). Come now, hear me, harlots, prostitutes, with your lascivious kisses, you wallowing places for fat pigs, couches for unclean spirits, demi-goddesses, sirens, witches, devotees of Diana, if any portents, if any omens are found thus far, they should be judged sufficient to your name. For you are the victims of demo..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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2923ec1
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APART FROM THE charred papyrus fragments recovered in Herculaneum, there are no surviving contemporary manuscripts from the ancient Greek and Roman world.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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7dbfc95
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It is an heretic that makes the fire, Not she which burns in't. (2.3.114-15)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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24323ce
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progress--like those cartoons that begin with an ape and end with a man sitting at a computer--now gets lost in a hundred detours and false starts, intersecting paths and dead ends. It is difficult to find the story line in a tangled bush. Evolutionary theory is not threatened by the disappearance of the main highway. On the contrary, from the beginning Darwin insisted on the randomness of mutations, followed by the editing of natural selec..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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b99b8eb
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Finally, there a motley crowd of those who carry out his orders, some reluctantly but simply eager to avoid trouble; others with gusto, hoping to seize something along the way for themselves; still others enjoying the cruel game of making his targets, often high in the social hierarchy, suffer and die. The aspiring tyrant never lacks for such people, in Shakespeare and, from what I can tell, in life. True, there might be a world somewhere w..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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fa5dec3
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You call me misbeliever, cut-throat, dog, And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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85f2831
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And all for use of that which is mine own. Well then, it now appears you need my help. Go to, then. You come to me, and you say 'Shylock, we would have moneys'--you say so, You, that did void your rheum upon my beard, And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold. (1.3.107-15)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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6f9e522
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Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, For suff 'rance is the badge of all our tribe. (1.3.105-6)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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e89d41c
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He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what's his reason?--I am a Jew. (3.1.46-49)
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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0a7543e
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Tyrannical power is more easily exercised when it appears that the old order continues to exist. The reassuring consensual structures may now be hollowed out and merely decorative, but they are all still in place, so that the bystanders, who crave psychological security and a sense of well-being, can persuade themselves that the rule of law is being upheld.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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721aedb
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Something happened in the Renaissance, something that surged up against the constraints that centuries had constructed around curiosity, desire, individuality, sustained attention to the material world, the claims of the body. The cultural shift is notoriously difficult to define, and its significance has been fiercely contested.
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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2b9d7b1
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The transformation was not sudden or once-for-all, but it became increasingly possible to turn away from a preoccupation with angels and demons and immaterial causes and to focus instead on things in this world; to understand that humans are made of the same stuff as everything else and are part of the natural order; to conduct experiments without fearing that one is infringing on God's jealously guarded secrets; to question authorities and..
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Stephen Greenblatt |
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d9d8fea
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In . . . Menenius Agrippa, Shakespeare draws a deft portrait of a successful conservative politician, altogether in the camp of the rich but adept at presenting himself as the people's friend.
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Stephen Greenblatt |