“We tire of distraction or concentration. we sleep and are glad to sleep”
From “Choruses from the Rock”, T S Eliot: In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and…
Tag: commonplace book
October in the Cairngorms – from Nan Shepherd, “The Heart of the Mountain”
Among drifts of these purple glowing birches, an occasional rowan looks dead; its naked boughs are a smooth white-grey, almost ghastly as the winter light runs over them. The rowan’s…
“an author whose books were marvellous but rather the same” – Elizabeth Taylor and Andrei Makine
I have just begun reading Elizabeth Taylor’s At Mrs Lippincote’s (not, it feels obligatory to point out, not that Elizabeth Taylor. From Valerie Martin‘s introduction: Though I never met either…
From “The Making of Mr Bolsover”, Cornelius Medvei
Perhaps then, Mr Cruikshank suggested, he would like to tell everyone which political figures he did admire. Without hesitation Mr Bolsover named Lord Salisbury, Queen Victoria’s last prime minister. Amid…
“Sleeping, as we all know, is the most secret of our acts.”
Sleeping, as we all know, is the most secret of our acts. We devote a third of our lives to it, and yet do not understand it. For some, it…
Séamus Sweeney 