atrabilious = 1 given to or marked by melancholy : gloomy; 2 ill-natured, peevish

fistic = Function: adjective
: of or relating to boxing or to fighting with the fists <fistic prowess>

"She must now learn, if she would not be ridiculous, since she cannot bring her deeds up to the level of her words, to reduce her words to the level of her performances."

--from the British Quarterly Review, 1871

I came across this bit of text while proofreading for Distributed Proofreaders. (It's 577.png, if anyone's really interested.) Here the author is describing the state of affairs in France following the devastating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Good advice, even today, n'est-ce pas?

crocodile tears

From Othello, Act IV, scene 1:

Des. I have not deserved this. 235

Lod. My lord, this would not be believed in Venice,
Though I should swear I saw 't: 'tis very much:
Make her amends; she weeps.

Oth. O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile. 240

So that's where "crocodile tears" comes from!

Courtesy of pgdp.net :)

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over."

~ Aneurin Bevan,
Welsh labor leader & politician (1897 - 1960)

"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it."

-- G. K. Chesterton

This quotation struck me rather strongly, probably because of a recent conversation on abortion rights, the ethics/morality of abortion, and the logical consistency of seemingly every possible position on the matter. In many ways, I think this comment from Chesterton summarizes my own feelings. After all, immoral != illegal.

"I suppose I am moderately devout, but I don't feel impelled to pray in the high places. (I'm more likely to cry out of the depths!) Instead, I climb upward to bask."

~ Uncle Rogi

The Surveillance
(Book One of Intervention)
by Julian May

First of all, Julian May is delightful -- and a little bit scary. She has entire worlds planned out and foreshadows things that materialize eight books later. It's amazing.

In this little section, Uncle Rogi explains his desire to climb mountains -- and that of other people with metafaculties. These two sentences struck me -- is there a difference between "prayer" and "basking"? I think so. And it's the basking that I've been missing.

plangent = having a loud reverberating sound

"Plangent" shows up at the end of Ngaio Marsh's mystery Killer Dolphin. (It's the first book featuring Peregrine Jay.) Anyway, one of the characters reports thinking of The Cherry Orchard at the time just before the murder. Later, it's revealed that a guitar string had been plucked -- and the Chekov play ends on a "single plangent note."

This is one of those words that I've read multiple times but never bothered to look up, because I could figure it out from context. But it's always good to know what words actually mean. :)

golliwog = a grotesque black doll; a person resembling a golliwog

Apparently, Bertha Upton (American writer) published a children's novel in the late nineteenth century that used the term.

Most recently, I came across "golliwog" in Julian May's Pliocene Exile series; May frequently uses the word to describe the trickster Aiken Drum.

Why doesn't Harry Potter see the thestrals pulling the school carriages at the end of Book 4?

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
-- Pablo Picasso

P.J. Tracy, Dead Run

P.J. Tracy, Live Bait

P.J. Tracy, Monkeewrench

P.J. Tracy, Snow Blind