Five Quotes, vol. xiv

from my month of reading Fantasy in January

This has been a little bit of a slower reading week for me because I stopped reading-at-whim (my July reading theme) and started reading a book I borrowed that I need to return.  I've also started reading Ron Chernow's, Alexander Hamilton, aloud to K.J., but not every night is a read-aloud night.  Some nights you need to watch television.  But here's what caught my eye this week, because it either rang true, made me think, or seemed beautiful.

"There was nothing impetuous or disorderly about this action [adopting the Declaration of Independence at the Continental Congress].  Even amid a state of open warfare, these law-abiding men felt obligated to issue a formal document, giving a dispassionate list of their reasons for secession.  This solemn, courageous act flew in the face of historical precedent.  No colony had ever succeeded in breaking away from the mother country to set up a self-governing state, and the declaration signers knew that the historical odds were heavily stacked against them.  They further knew that treason was a crime punishable by death, a threat that scarcely seemed abstract as reports trickled into Philadelphia of the formidable fleet bearing down on New York."

- Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

"In times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes.  The same state of the passions which fits the multitude, who have not a sufficient stock of reason and knowledge to guide them, for opposition to tyranny and oppression, very naturally leads them to a contempt and disregard of all authority.  The due medium is hardly to be found among the more intelligent.  It is almost impossible among the unthinking populace.  When the minds of these are loosened from their attachment to ancient establishments and courses, they seem to grow giddy and are apt more or less to run into anarchy."

- letter to John Jay from Alexander Hamilton, quoted in Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

"Of all the incidents in Hamilton's early life in America, his spontaneous defense of Myles Cooper was probably the most telling.  It showed that he could separate personal honor from political convictions and presaged a recurring theme of his career:  the superiority of forgiveness over revolutionary vengeance."

- Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow

"There were moments, usually on a sunny Easter morning, when she wished that she could with sincerity call herself a Christian; but for the rest of the year she knew herself to be what she was--incurably agnostic but prone to unpredictable relapses into faith."

- An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, P.D. James

"To do justice is no doubt a very fine thing, but an act of grace is sometimes a much finer one."

- Love and Liberty, Alexandre Dumas