Status Updates From Barometer Rising

“Plato’s Republic, the Nichomachean Ethics, Rashdall’s Theory of Good and Evil, Horace and Catullus, Thucydides, Shakespeare and Milton — these and all the others crowded through his visions as he hung wearily over the arm of his chair, a man grown suddenly old, with the bar of hope broken in his brain. “I’m glad I know about them,” he said to himself. “In spite of everything, I’m glad of that.””

“It’s what that scrubby brown head of yours always needed.”
“It’s not scrubby.”
“Never mind, it’s brown— a dull colour.”

WHY is this the way their flirting is written???? am i supposed to find this endearing?? (this is their reunion scene after two years of her thinking he died in war btw…….. oh and also they’re first cousins)

“Craftsmanship was already being apologized for, these days. The real skill of the future would be the manipulating of men”

“The worst aspect of it was that the principle was sensible. What was the use of quality in a world like this?”

i love the author’s constant descriptions of Halifax!! its so clear he has such a deep love for that city… “Murray realized, it could never change its nature. [Halifax] would do its duty by the English as long as there was an England left.”

“But the trouble was that Canada had no proper spring; that season was always skipped when winter leaped right into summer. One week there would be snow-flurries and then, toward the end of May, it would be blazing summer with the leaves unfurling on the trees, and the blackflies chewing your ears off when you went fishing on the Queen’s Birthday”

“She had to be better than her male colleagues; she had to work longer hours and be doubly careful of all that she did, for a mistake would ruin her” — i’m kind of pleasantly surprised that a man writing in the 40s would be aware of this kind of gender-based issue

“…determined to preserve himself for a future which gave no promise of being superior to the past. It was his future, and that was all he could say of it. At the moment it was all he had”

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