Jibran’s Reviews > Leg over Leg: Volume One > Status Update

"Do I hear you, you confederacy of cretins, claiming that to destroy one soul for the salvation of many is a praiseworthy act that should be encouraged?" (1.19.13)

"Just protect me from these undercapitalized parasites, for they are like ravening lions that feel no mercy or pity for God's creatures. They think that destroying a soul out of zeal for religion will earn them a place close to Him. They hold tight to such exterior meanings of the words of the gospel as they believe are in keeping with their aims and will increase their standing and authority....(cont.)

"It is believed that each author has his own style and no one can please everybody, for people's likes are diverse, their opinions various. One mystery I've never been able to get to the bottom of is that a certain author will appear slothful, with neither energy or good cheer, ill at ease with anything that might stir up commotion or conflict, tepid in both inaction and action,...(cont.)

"Know then...that the Fariyaq went one day to a priest to make confession to him of all he had done, said, and thought that he didn't ought. The priest asked, among other questions, "I hear you're fond of poetry and tunes, which are among the worst causes of evil and passion. Has the Recoiler ever put it into your mind to court in verse a woman firm of breast, rosy of cheek,...(cont.)

"I must go on at some length in this chapter, just to test the reader's endurance. If he gets to the end of it at one go without his teeth smoking with rage, his knees knocking together from frustration and fury, the place between his eyes knitting in disgust and shame, or his jugulars swelling i wrath and ire, I shall devote a separate chapter to his praise and count him among those readers 'who are steadfast.'"

"Certain scholars have said that metaphors may be divided into the literal and the analogical, the literal into the categorical and the presumptive, and the categorical firstly into the make-believe and the factual, secondly into the primary and the subordinate, and thirdly into the abstracted and the presumed, with some claiming that this last may be sub-divided into...(cont.)

"This brings us to a nice point, to wit, that certain of the people known as 'atawil (plural of 'itwal and meaning "men who can see no good in women") find it irksome to use the feminine gender in amorous and erotic poetry and so turn it into a masculine instead, and others invoke it only implicitly." (1.10.7)

"Without hope's broad horizon, how narrow life would be, and many a hope is sweeter than a triumph." (1.10.14)

"Men have fallen in love with pictures, with the remains of the beloved's campfire, with her footprints in the sand, with outward forms, with a beloved land. Some have fallen in love at the sight of a hennaed hand, a lock of hair, a dress, a pair of drawers, a drawstring, or whatever. I know a man who fell in love with a woman's cat and would play with it, led by passion to imagine that...(cont.)

"Rhymed prose is to the writer as a wooden leg to the walker. I must be careful therefore not to rest all my weight on it every time I go for a stroll down the highways of literary expression lest its vagaries end up cramping my style or it toss me into a pothole from which I cannot crawl." (1.10.1)