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Cho 62: …timidity passes for folly, and gentleness for dullness, and silence, which is but timid denial of the unwelcome assertion of ruling folks, and tacit Protestantism above all finds no mercy at the hands of the female inquisition.

Chp 62:I like to dwell upon this period of her life that she was cheerful and happy, you see she has not much of that existence and has not fallen in the way of means to educate her tastes or intelligence. She has been domineered over hitherto by vulgar intellects. It is a lot of many a woman, and as every one of the dear sex is a rival of the rest of her kind timidity passes for folly in their charitable judgments.

Chp 59: Nobody had ever heard of these grieves which had been part of our poor little woman’s [Amelia Sedley] life, she kept them secret from her father, who’s improvidence was the cause of much of her misery. She had to bare all the blame of his misdoings. And indeed was so utterly gentle and humble as to be made by nature for a victim.

Chapter 56: What do men know about women’s martyrdoms? We should go mad if we had to endure the 1/100th part of those daily pains that are meekly born by so many women. Constant gentleness and kindness met by cruelty. Love, labor, patience, watchfulness, without so much as even the acknowledgment of a good word. All this how many of them have to bear in quiet and appear with cheerful faces as if they felt nothing.

Chapter 33: wounds tingle most when they are about to heal

Chapter 13: a horse named Greased Lightning

Excellent book! This is a book I will want to read again. There are so many examples included about how language can be used on a wide spectrum of healthy-helpful, and all the way to really bad, and, most interestingly, the middle (I would wager we all have our favorite cults we have joined 🙃). Shining the light on the language patterns that all cults use is very interesting.

This scene is great for teaching POV:

Before the doctor had finished, Shorty came in with coffee and biscuits on a bent silver tray. He stayed a little longer that was altogether necessary, constantly glancing at Marigold in a way the doctor saw as indicating concern and Marigold herself as pretended concern hiding utter indifference, but in fact amounted to pretended concern hiding hostile curiosity. (p.79)

3// Shorty: The servant and former lover of Bernard, who spends his time looking for hidden bottles of alcohol.
4// George: A distinguished former history professor who is largely bedridden and quiet, though intellectually sharp.
5// Marigold: A frail, forgetful woman who struggles with her failing memory and is often the target of the others' malice

1// Adela: A miserly woman who dominates the household and is obsessed with saving money.
2// Bernard: Adela’s brother, a former military man who plays malicious, cruel pranks on his housemates.

Ending Up (1974) by Kingsley Amis features five elderly residents in a shared countryside home, who are navigating old age with rancorous humor and petty malice.

Chp 27: Such is the strength of men. We who live forever can know no courage nor do we love enough to give our lives. But your father could.

Chp 27: K: I gave everything for you.
V: not everything. Since clearly, your pride is intact as well as your illusions. Where is my stepmother?
K: No. I gave everything. I thought the voice was God, but it was not.

Chp 25: V: did you change the straw? Was that magic?!
Morozko: you are too attached to things as they are. You must allow things to be what best suits your purpose, and then they will. You can’t change it to a brush, because that would be to believe it is now straw. Just allow it now to be a brush.
Nothing changes. Things are or they are not. Magic is forgetting that anything ever was other than as you willed it.

Chp 16:
V: Why linger here? The world is wide, and our corner of the Earth is so small.
K: God gave me a task.
V: We are men and women. We are not a task. Go back to Moscow and save all there.

Chp 16:
V: Why do you stay here? You hate it here!
K: I have a task. I must save you from yourselves. God has punishments for those whose stray.
V: A self-appointed task. In service of your own pride. Why is it for you to say what God wants? The people would never revere you so if you had not made them afraid [in the first place].

Part 2 Chapter 12:
Vasya: I am only a country girl. I have never seen Tsargrad, or angels, or heard the voice of God, but I think you should be careful, Battushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.

Part 2 Chapter 12:
Konstantin: It is not a fit subject for girls
Vasya: you did not want to come here did you? We have no music or lights. And precious few people, can you not go away again?
K, coldly: I go where God sends me. If my work is here then I stay here.
V: and what is your work, Battushka?
K: to save souls
V: are you going to save us then?
K: if God gives me strength, I will save you

Part 2 Chapter 12: Vasya asks Konstantin about the church men’s chorus and she thinks it must be “like heaven.” K is young Orthodox priest sent from Moscow to the village of Lesnaya Zemlya. K agrees and recalls to himself what it was like back home. “Memory had him by the throat. Gold and silver, music, learned men, and freedom. The forest chocked him.”

Part 2 Chapter 12: Walking the newly arrived religious leader Konstantin to the forest to show him where he can find ingredients to make paint dyes for religious icons, Vasya asks after her siblings who live in the same city that Konstantin came from. They are doing well and that makes Vasya happy.

Vasya (Vasilisa Petrovna) is a young woman in medieval Russia with the ability to see and interact with traditional household spirits (no one else can see them). Konstantin Nikonovich is a charismatic, pious, prideful Christian priest whose efforts to eliminate these pagan beliefs, which he deems evil, create a dangerous conflict.

Chp 37: All things are moral to those with great souls (Burr said to Hamilton)

Chp 37: better an opportunist who lusted after money & power (Burr) than a dangerous ideologue, perceived atheism (Jefferson) the imperialists thought. Clergy told their congregations that if Jefferson became president, they would need to hide their Bibles. If forced to choose, Hamilton preferred the person with the wrong morals, as opposed to the one without any (Burr).

Chp 30: the Republican press had a field day with H’s Reynold’s pamphlet. Calendar rejoiced in H’s indiscretion and told Jefferson if you have not seen it no anticipation can equal the infamy of this piece. It is worth all the 50 of the best pens were set against him. Calendar mocked H, “the whole proof in this pamphlet is, I am a rake, and for that reason, I cannot be a swindler.”

Chapter 25: a letter from Angelica Church to her sister Eliza: I have a letter from Monsieur Talleyrand who expresses his gratitude for an introduction to you and My Amiable. My Amiable meaning your husband, who I love very much. And if you were as generous as the. Romans you would lend him to me for a little while.

Chapter 24: “Bring out your dead!”

Chapter 19: William Duer, and bank-o-rama

Chp 19/ about 1/2 way through the book: Mariah Reynolds/ Mary Lewis born in Duchess County NY in 1768, married James Reynolds when she was 15yo, and had a daughter 2 years later.
Extortion racket with husband against many, including Hamilton

Chp 17 “I [Eliza Hamilton] had little of private life in those days. Mrs., Washington, who, like myself, had a passionate love of home and domestic life often complained of the waste of time she was compelled to endure. ‘They call me the first lady in the land, I think that I must be extremely happy,’ She would say almost bitterly at times. ‘They might more properly call me as the chief state prisoner.’”

Chp17 Eliza would have gladly devoted herself to private life alone, but she submitted good naturally to the demands of her husband’s career. She was always a spritely presents at Martha Washington’s tea parties.