Dominika > Recent Status Updates

"She once said to me, about the Roman occupation of Britain--in her most downright tone: 'Don't tell me' (I wasn't telling her), 'that all those Roman soldiers lived all that time in England and didn't leave a lot of Roman babies behind them. And a very good thing, too, I dare say.'"

"He was really fond of music and tried, with remarkably poor results, to make us sing. At concerts he indulged in a special kind of intellectual sandwich, by reading certain passages of Greek plays, while listening to certain pieces of music."

Funnier and funnier all the time.

"The rules of propriety are supposed to have made life very complicated in the last century, but in practice, I can't say that I found nineteenth-century decency harder to manage than twentieth-century indecency. In fact, I always find it easier to pretend to be shocked, when I am not shocked, than to pretend not to be shocked when I am."

"She is said to have wept on President Lincoln's shoulder in order to obtain promotion for her husband...I then learn the true story. She went, with two brothers-in-law, to an arranged interview with the President; saying to herself, 'After all he's only a man like any other,' by which she meant that, of course, she could get him to do what she wanted."

"The only words I can remember her saying were a comparison between her two husbands: 'Yes, poor Francis liked his beef quite red and underdone, but Gerard would not eat it unless it was well cooked and brown.' A good way of remembering the difference between them."

This book's a laugh a page. I haven't enjoyed anything so much in a long while.

"When a French woman decides to be shabby, she does it better than anyone else."

This book is so funny. Gwen Raverat is one of those authors you wish you could be friends with.

"civilized man is fundamentally an heir, he receives a history, a culture, a language, a name, a family...because he refuses to acknowledge himself as an heir, man is condemned to the hell of liberal globalization in which individual interests confront one another without any law to govern them besides profit at any price." -Cardinal Robert Sarah

"Someone was watching. Watching, not standing lamenting, and dreaming. I never thought of watching, thought Peter, and if he had, it would have seemed to him something remote from himself, old-fashioned, superstitious; but now he knew it was like China Court itself, fitting and faithful."

"The ideas put forth in this book need to be embodied in communal practices if they are to be helpful and provide the needed consolation and peace. We need the right theology, that is the right understanding of death and the afterlife, but we need as well a community in which those ideas and theology are embodied. In short, we need the Church."

"the Christian view of the afterlife is revealed most fully in the person of the risen Christ. There are other scriptural images of "heaven," and they are not unimportant. But they are still just images. The most central and important revelation about the afterlife is given by Christ himself in his own resurrected body."

"As though confessing to royal birth, the little man said modestly, 'I am Hercule Poirot.'"

LOL Poirot is at his most pompous in this short story collection.

"It is flat heresy not to like Dickens. I mean Dickens is the national household god."

"We are caught in the toils of our own selfishness"

"sentimentalism is death to art"

"Marriage is a long-distance course, and reading aloud is a kind of romantic Gatorade formulated to invigorate the occasionally exhausted racers."

"For a time I haunted shops that sold secondhand pens, pathetically clutching an old writing sample and saying, 'This is the width of the line I want.' I might as well have carried a photograph of a dead lover and said, 'Find me another just like this.'"

"we were both hard-core devotees of what I like to call You-Are-There-Reading, the practice of reading books in the places they describe."

I'm in good company.

"Though he was to teach only the fundamentals of grammar and composition to a group of unselected freshmen, he looked forward to his task with enthusiasm and with a strong sense of its significance."

Former naively enthusiastic grammar and comp teacher here. I have a feeling about how this is going to go down lolol

"'I'm Joan of Arc,' I said. My father looked over his paper. 'Mmm,' he said. 'Very nice.' 'Fancy thinking of that,' said my mother. She was always pleased when her children thought of anything."

Very relatable. I'm pleased when my children think of anything too.

"The walls were painted white, the ceiling blue with gold stars. On the altar stood Our Lady in a white veil with a blue cloak. Her cheeks were pink, her hair a rippling gold. She looked very smooth. Two tin lilies painted white and green stood on either side of her. All the colours were pure and child-like. It was like a holy fairy tale, I felt."

Dorothy Whipple's convent education is fascinating.

"'I told you we oughtn't to come and now see what an ass I look, with a girl, eating sausage and mashed potato.'"

Well, you are an ass, Geoffrey. Girl just wants her sausage and mashed potato. Nothing more reasonable than that.

"But surely you are not a coward are you? Milton is not the place for cowards."

Mrs. Thornton throws down the gauntlet 😅

"But now that he saw Margaret with her superb ways of moving and looking"

The scene where Thornton is thrown off his balance by his first impressions of Margaret is most excellent 👌🏻 😂

"She was a somewhat fierce but smiling lady, with keen grey eyes full of courage, and a face tanned by the wind; her cheeks were a rosy brown and her smile most winning."

Have a feeling this lady's gonna be awesome.

"'Really Kay!' she said having read the letter, 'I forbid you to mention the words 'quite well!' in any other letter that you write. You learn a phrase and then you repeat it just like a little parrot."

One of the fun bits of reading old children's books is learning what was considered slang back in the day 😂

I know it's July but I feel like I need to make my word of the year "kindness".

"Kindness also means coming to the rescue of others when they need help, if it is in our power to supply it. This, too, is the work of the attributes of God toward his creatures. His omnipotence is forever making up toward our deficiency of power."

Man, if that's ever a description of what parenthood asks of you.

"For the first time in their eight years of friendship, Miss MacFarren admitted a suspicion that Harriet over-estimated her own shrewdness...Harriet never refused to tackle any problem, and never shrank from proposing drastic solutions. In fact, drastic solutions were her speciality. She believed in the tonic properties of change."

Harriet sounds like a real Petunia the Silly Goose.

"For the first time in their eight years of friendship, Miss MacFarren admitted a suspicion that Harriet over-estimated her own shrewdness...Harriet never refused to tackle any problem, and never shrank from proposing drastic solutions. In fact drastic solutions were her speciality. She believes in the tonic properties of change."

Harriet sounds like a real Petunia the Silly Goose.

"He began to talk about Personality, Opportunity, and Ideals in Business. He went on for a long time...and I could neither get away nor bring him to the point. Eventually it proved to be Corsets. It was further conveyed to me that I was expected to put down thirty pounds...for the privilege of selling them. The serpent said that it was a mere thing 'compared to the profits.'"

SOUNDS LIKE AN MLM 😱🤣