josh blog
Ordinary language is all right.
One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.
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Level of comment-box discourse provoked by the Chicago teacher's union strike:
'Too bad, so sad'
Emerson, 'Self-Reliance': 'Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state…'
In Walden ii, 1-6, Thoreau makes his attitude toward settlement, toward settling, clear: 'I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted' (ii, 5).
ii, 8: 'When first I took up my abode in the woods…'
Abode, per OED, 'apparently an alteration of BODE n by association with ABIDE v'; bode, 'biding, tarrying, waiting, delay; but bode: without delay'; abide runs through senses involving waiting, expecting, remaining ready, staying, remaining, residing, dwelling, staying habitually in a place, continuing, persisting.
ii, 1: 'The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated'.