"Shred" auditorium

Am I the only one who sees Shredder in this "beautiful" bandshell?

Courting these days

"...do you know the new way of courting?" ... "No," replied Princess Mary. "To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy."
...
...She adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life. ... Boris, entered more deeply into Julia's melancholy, and with these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with mournful sketches, maxims, and verses. ... Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me." On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote: "Death gives relief and death is peaceful. Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge." Julia said this was charming. "There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and despair, showing the possibility of consolation." In reply Boris wrote these lines: "Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul, Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible, Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me, Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat, And mingle a secret sweetness With these tears that I feel to be flowing." ...For Boris, Julia played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings Julia and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who understood one another in a world of indifferent people.
Leo Tolstoy

Let your women keep silence in the churches...

...for it is not permitted unto them to speak (1 Cor. 14:34). So the other day I was talking with a certain friend of mine and she brought up, once again, all the emotions and interpersonal politics she has encountered being in and of the choir at her Church. Having my own fair exposure to such "choral emotions", even as recently as on the feast of the Nativity!, I realized that maybe this verse of St. Paul is addressing this same issue in the choirs of yore?

Christmas with the convicts

At last the holidays arrived. On Christmas Eve very few convicts went out to work. A few went to the sewing sheds and the workshops; the rest of the men merely attended the work detail, and although they were assigned to various locations, almost all of them, either singly or in groups, went straight back to the prison, and after dinner no one left it at all. Even during the morning the majority of the convicts went about exclusively on their own business, and not on official tasks: some busied themselves with the illicit provision of vodka and the ordering of new supplies; others to see friends of both sexes, or to collect before the holiday the small amounts of money owing to them for work done earlier in the year. Baklushin and the men who were taking part in the stage show went to see certain acquaintances, mostly in the officers' detachment, and to obtain necessary costumes. Some men walked around looking preoccupied and fussed simply because others did, and although some, for example, had no prospects of getting any money from anywhere, they non the less acted as though they were indeed about to get some; in short, everyone seemed to be expecting some sort of a change to take place on the following day, something out of the ordinary. Towards evening the veterans who had gone to the market to do the convicts' errands came back laden with many different kinds of things to eat: beef, sucking-pigs, even geese. Many of the convicts, even the most plain-living and thrifty ones, who saved up their copecks all year round, considered it their duty to spare no expense on this occasion and to celebrate the end of the fast in a proper manner. The day that would come tomorrow was a real holiday, which the convicts could not be deprived of – it was formally recognized by law. A convict could not be sent out to work on this day; there were only three such days in the year.

And really, who can tell how many memories must have stirred in the souls of these outcasts as they rose to meet such a day! The days of the great feasts are sharply imprinted on the memory of the common people, beginning in childhood. These are the days when they rest from their strenuous labours, days when families gather together. In prison they must have been remembered with torment and anguish. Respect for the solemn feast even acquired a certain ritual majesty among the convicts; there was little merrymaking, everyone was serious and seemingly preoccupied with something, although many had practically nothing at all to do. But even the idlers and the merrymakers tried to preserve a certain air of importance ... It was if laughter had been forbidden. The prevailing mood was one of a certain exaggerated puctiliousness and irritable impatience, and any man who did anything to disturb this general atmosphere, even accidentally, would be set upon with shouts and curses by the others, as if he had aroused their anger by not having sufficient respect for the holy feast. This mood of the convicts was remarkable, and could even be quite moving. In addition to his inborn sense of reverence for the great day, each convict had an unconcious feeling that by observing this feast he was in some way coming into contact with the whole world, that consequently he ws not altogether an outcast, a lost man, a severed limb, and that as it was in the world of men, so it was in prison. They felt this; it was obvious and understandable.

Akim Akimych too was very busy preparing for the holiday, He had no family memories, for he had grown up as an orphan in a house belonging to strangers and had begun an arduous military service from the age of fifteen: there had been no particular happiness in his life, because he had always lived it with such regularity and monotony, afraid to stray even by a hair's breadth from the particularly religious, either, since probity had apparently swallowed up all his other human endowments and attributes, his passions and desires, good and bad. Consequently he was preparing to greet the solemn day without fuss or agitation, without being troubled by any anguished and entirely futile memories, but with a quiet, methodical probity which was exactly as great as was necessary for the execution of his duties and the performance of a ritual that had been established for once and for all. In general, he was not one to give matters much reflection. It seemed that he never bothered his head about the meaning of any fact; but once rules were explained to him, he would carry them out with religious exactitude. If tomorrow he had been required to do the exact opposite, he would have done it with precisely the same obedience and thoroughness. Once, once only in his life had he attempted to live according to his own perceptions – and had ended up in prison. The lesson had not been lost on him. And although fate had decreed that he should not have even the slightest understanding of what it was he had been found guilty of, he had none the less deduced from his adventure one saving maxin: never under any circumstances to use his reason, since this was 'no business of his mind', as the convicts expressed it among themselves. In his blind devotion to ritual, he even regarded his Christmas sucking-pig, which he had stuffed with buckwheat porridge and roasted (with his own hands, for he knew how it was done), with a kind of anticipatory respect, as if this were no ordinary sucking-pig, which one could buy and roast any time one liked, but a special, Christmas one. It is possible that he had been used from childhood onwards to seeing a sucking-pig on the table when Christmad Day came round, and I am convinced that if even once he had missed his taste of sucking-pig on that day he would have been left for the rest of his life with a nagging sense of quilt at not having done his duty. Until the holiday arrived he went around in an old jacket and a pair of old trousers, which although they were quite respectably darned were none the less threadbare. It now transpired that he had carefully preserved in his locked box the new suit of jacket and trousers which had been issued to him about four months previously, and had not touched it, smiling at the thought of how he would put it on for the first time when it was Christmas. And that was what he did. On Christmas Eve he took out the new suit, unfolded it, examined it, gave it a brush, blew the dust off it and, when he had attended to all this, tried it on. The suit fitted him perfectly, it turned out; everything was as it should be, the jacket buttoned all the way to the top, the collar, as if it were made of cardboard, propped his chin up high; the jacket was even drawn in at the waist, reminding one of a military uniform, and Akim Akimych fairly beamed with pleasure, turning from side to side, not without a certain dash and swagger, in front of his tiny looking-glass, the rim of which he had once, long ago, in a moment of idlenes, decorated with a border of gold paper. There was only one little hook on the jacket collar which did not seem to be in quite the right position. Taking note of this, Akim Akimych decided to move the hook; this he did, tried the jacket on again, and this time everything seemed fine. Then he folded the garments once more and hid them in his locked box with his mind at ease until the next day. His head was shaven in the approved manner; but as he viewed himself attentively in the looking-glass, he noticed that his head did not appear to be entirely smooth on top; a few little tufts of hair were just visible, and he went straight of to 'the major' to have himself shaved properly and according to the regulations. Although noone was going to inspect him the following day, he had himself shaved, purely in order to satisfy his conscience, so as to have carried out all his Christmas duties. A reverence for buttons, epaulettes and stripes had been indelibly impressed upon his mind from childhood onwards as a kind of unquestionable obligation, and upon his heart as an image of the highest degree of beauty a decent man could attain to. When he had set everything to rights, as the head convict in the barrack he gave orders for hay to be brought in, and carefully supervised the spreading of it over the floor. The same was done in the other barrcks. For some unknown reason hay was always spread on the barrack floors at Christmas. Then, when he had completed his labours, Akim Akimych said his prayers, lay down on his camp bed and immediately fell into a peaceful slumber like that of a young infant; so as to wake up as early as possible in the morning. All the convicts acted in exactly the same manner, however. In all the barracks the men went to bed far earlier than they usually did. Their usual evening occupations were neglected; no one even mentioned maydans. Everyone was waiting for the morning that followed.

At last it arrived. Early, before it was light, as soon as reveille had been sounded on the drum, the barracks were unlocked and the duty sergeant wished them all a merry Christmas. The men did likewise, replying in a friendly, affectionate tone. After hurriedly saying their prayers, Akim Akimych and a lot of other men whose geese and sucking-pigs were cooking in the kitchen rushed off to see what was being done to them, how they were being roasted, where they were being put, and so on. Through the small, snow-and-ice-encrusted windows of our hut we could see out across the darkness to where in all six ovens of both kitchens brights fires were burning, having been kindled well before dawn. Convicts were already poking about the courtyard in the dark, wearing their sheepskin coats aither arm-in-sleese or thrown carelessly over their shoulders; they were all swiftly heading for the kitched. There were some, however, only a very few, it must be admitted, who had already managed to pay a visit to the 'barmen'. These were the most impatient ones. In general, all the men behaved in a decent manner, peaceably and with a decorum that was somehow unusual for them. None of their usual quarrels and bad language were to be heard. They all knew that it was a day of great importance, a religious holiday of the first magnitude. There were some who went round the other barracks to give their greetings to men from their part of the country. Something akin to friendliness made its appearance. I will observe in passing that friendliness was something one hardly ever saw among the convicts: I allude not to any general spirit of friendliness – that was even less in evidence – but simply to the private friendship of one convict with another. This was something almost completely absent in the prison, and it was a remarkable feature of our life: things are different in freedom. All the men in the prison, with very few exceptions, were callous and sour in their dealings with each other, and this was a form of behaviour that had been accepted and established once and for all. I also left the barrack; it was just beginning to get lights; the stars were growing faint; a thin, frosty mist was rising into the air. The kitchen chimneys were emitting columns of smoke. Some of the convicts I met as I walked withed me a merry Christmas spontaneously and with real affection. I thanked them and responded in kind. Some of them were men who until now had not said a work to me all during the past month.

Right outside the kitched I was accosted by a convict from the military barrack, his sheepskin coat thrown over his shoulders. He saw me from halfway across the yard, and shouted to me: 'Aleksandr Petrovich! Aleksandr Petrovich!' He was on his way to the kitchen and in a hurry. I stopped and waited for him. He was a round-faced lad with a quiet expression in his eyes, he was very untalkative with everyone, and had not said a single word to me or paid me the slightest attention since I had entered the prison; I did not even know his name. He ran up to me breathlessly and stood right in from of me, staring at me with a meanngless, yet somehow blissful smile on his face.

'What do you want?' I asked him, not without astonishment, in view of the fact that he was standing and staring, smiling at me with all his might, yet not having started up any sort of conversation with me.

'Well, I mean, it's Christmas...' He muttered and, having surmised that there was nothing more to talk about, he left me and rapidly set off for the kitchen.

I will observe, incidentally, that we never had any close of dealings with one another after this, and hardly said a word to one another for all the rest of my time in the prison.

Around the blazing ovens in the kitchen there was a great deal of bustle and jostling, quite a crowd. Each man was looking after what was his; the cooks were getting on with the preparation of the prison food, for dinner would be eaten earlier than usual today. No one had begun to eatyet, however; although some would have liked to, they disisted out of a sense of decorum in the presence of others. A priest was expected, and only after his visit would the breaking of the fast begin. In the meanwhile it was sstill not quite lights, when outside the prison gate the corporal's summoning cry began to ring out: 'Cooks!' These cries rang out practically every minute and continued for almost two hours. The cooks were needed to receive the gifts of food which had been broughts to the prison from every quarter of the town. The food arrived in enormous quantities in the form of kalatches, bread, curd tarts, pastried, buns, blintzes and other fancy confections. I don't believe there was one merchant or artisan housewife in all the town who had not sent some of her baking as a Christmas present for the 'unfortunates', the convicts. Some of this charity was extremely generous – there were fancy loaves made of the finest flour, sent in large quantities. Some of it was very meagre – a half-copeck kalatch and two rye buns with a thin smearing of sour cream on them: this was the gift of pauper to pauper, from the last there was to spare. Everything was accepted with equal gratitude, without respect of gifts and donors. As they accepted the gifts, the convicts took off their hats, bowed, wished the donor a merry Christmas and took the offering back to the kitchen. When heaps of bakeries had accumulated, the head convicts from each barrack were sent for, and they distributed all the items equally among the barracks. There was no quarrelling, no bad language; the distribution was done fairly and equitably. Our barrack's share was divided up in the barack itself by Akim Akimych and another convict, who made the division and distributed the bakeries to each convict personally. There was not the slightest objection, not the slightest envy; everyone was pleased with what he got; there was not even any suspicion that the offerings might have been hidden or unevenly distributed. When he had seen to his business in the kitchen, Akim Akimych proceeded to his investiture; he dressed with the greatest of decorum and solemnity, not leaving one hook unfastened, and when he had finished he at once began to pray in earnest. He spent quite a long time in prayer. Many convicts, the elderly ones for the most part, were already standing in prayer. The younger convicts did not pray much: some of them might cross themselves when they got up in the morning, but that was all, even on a feast day. When he had finished praying, Akim Akimych came up to me and rather solemnly wished me a merry Christmas. I at once invited him to have tea with me, and he offered to share his sucking-pig with me. After a bit Petrov, too, came running up to me to wish me season's greetings. It seemed he had had a few drinks already, and though he was out of breath when he came running up to me, he did not say much, but merely stood in front of me for a short while and soon went off in the diretion of the kitchen. In the military barrack the men were making preparations to receive the priest. This barrack was designed differntly from the rest: in it the plank bed extended around the walls, and not into the middle of the room, as in all the other barracks, so that it was the only room in the prison that was not cluttered up in the middle. It had probably been designed in this way so that all the convicts could be mustered here if necessary. A small table, covered with a clean towel, had been placed in the centre of the room; an icon had been placed on the table, and a lamp lit. At last the priest arrived with the cross and the holy water. After he had prayed and sung the liturgy in front of the icon, he stood before the convicts, and they came forward to kiss the cross with genuine reverence. Then the priest went round all the barracks, sprinkling them with holy water. In the kitched he praised our prison bread, which was renowned for its fine taste in the town, and the convicts immediately expressed a desire to have two freshly baked loaves sent to him; a veteren was immediately charged with this task. The convicts escourted the cross out of the prison as reverently as they had received in among them. Almost immediately aftarwards, the Major and the prison governor arrived. The governor was liked and even respected by the men. He made the rounds of all the barracks accompanied by the Major, wished each man a merry Christmas, went into the kitchen and tried the prison soup. The soup was delicious; almost a pound of beef per convict had been added to it. In addition, millet porridge had been prepared and the men could have as much butter as they wanted. Thwn he had seen the governor off, the Major gave orders for the meal to begin...

We began to eat. Akim Akimych's sucking-pig was done to a turn. I don't know how it was, but immediately after the Major's departure, about five minutes after he had gone, there suddenly seemed to be an unusually large number of drunken convicts. Yet only five minutes earlier, nearly all the men had been completely sober. There were a lot of glowing, beaming faces. Balalaikas were produced. The little Pole with the violin was already following around some reveller who had hired him for the whole day to saw out lively dance-tunes for him. The conversation was growing noisier and more drunken. But the meal passed off without any serious desturbances. Everyone was full. Many of the older and moore sedate concicts went away to sleep, as did Akim Akimych, in the apparent assumption that this was what one always did after dinner on a major holiday.

...

Meanwhile it had begun to get dark. Sadness, depression and stupor began to show painfully through the drunkenness and merrymaking. A man who had been laughing an hour ago was now sobbing to himself somewhere, having drunk more than he could manage. Others had already contrived to get into a couple of fights. Yet others, pale and hardly able to stand, staggered about the barracks, picking quarrels with anybody they met. The very same men whose initial intoxication had been of the least provicative kind now looked in vain for friends in order to lay bare their souls to them and sob out their drunken misery. All this pathetic crowd had wanted to have a good time, to spend the holiday in high spirits and good humour. Yet God, how dreary and dismal the day was for nearly everyone. Everyone spent it looking as though they had been disappointed in some hope.

...

At last the claustrophobic day was at an end. The convicts fell asleep heavily on the plank bed. They talked and raved in their sleep even more than on other nights. Here and there men still sat at maydans. The long-awaited holiday was over. Tomorrow would be an ordinary day, with work again...

Fyodor Dostoevsky. The House of the Dead

On the Nativity

'Spiritual light,' sometimes combined with spiritual 'warmth' and 'fragrance,' is in fact the reasonable intuition we have been seeking, the intuition that includes the series of its own groundings. It is perfect beauty as the synthesis of absolute concrete givenness and absolute reasonable justifiedness. Spiritual light is the light of the Trihypostatic Divinity Itself, the Divine essence, which is not only given, but also self-given. Spiritual light is the 'light of reason,' the light that started to shine for the world at the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, as is sung in the Christmas troparion:

Thy birth, O Christ our God,
has shed upon the world the light of reason …

Spiritual light is the 'Light of Christ' that illuminates everyone. Spiritual light is the 'mental light' that makes 'the soul vigilant before Thee,' God, as the Holy Church tells us. It is the light of God’s love, about which we pray:

With love illuminate me, I pray
that I may see Thee, Word of God

Spiritual light is the light whose seeing constitutes the contemplation of God and therefore our salvation, the salvation of us who cannot be without God. Does not the Orthodox believer pray: 'Save me with Thy illumination'?
St. Pavel (Florensky)


Nativity Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

I behold a new and wondrous mystery!

My ears resound to the shepherd's song, piping no soft melody, but loudly chanting a heavenly hymn!

The angels sing!

The archangels blend their voices in harmony!

The cherubim resound their joyful praise!

The Seraphim exalt His glory!

All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead herein... on earth and man in heaven. He who is above now, for our salvation, dwells here below; and we, who were lowly, are exalted by divine mercy!

Today Bethlehem resembles heaven, hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices and, in place of the sun, witnessing the rising of the Sun of Justice!

Ask not how this is accomplished, for where God wills, the order of nature is overturned. For He willed He had the powers He descended. He saved. All things move in obedience to God.

Today He Who Is, is born ! And He Who Is becomes what He was not! For when He was God, He became man-while not relinquishing the Godhead that is His...

And so the kings have come, and they have seen the heavenly King that has come upon the earth, not bringing with Him angels, nor archangels, nor thrones, nor dominions, nor powers, nor principalities, but, treading a new and solitary path, He has come forth from a spotless womb.

Yet He has not forsaken His angels, nor left them deprived of His care, nor because of His incarnation has He ceased being God. And behold kings have come, that they might serve the Leader of the Hosts of Heaven; Women, that they might adore Him Who was born of a woman so that He might change the pains of childbirth into joy; Virgins, to the Son of the Virgin...

Infants, that they may adore Him who became a little child, so that out of the mouths of infants He might perfect praise; Children, to the Child who raised up martyrs through the rage of Herod; Men, to Him who became man that He might heal the miseries of His servants;

Shepherds, to the Good Shepherd who was laid down His life for His sheep;

Priests, to Him who has become a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek;

Servants, to Him who took upon Himself the form of a servant, that He might bless our stewardship with the reward of freedom (Philippians 2:7);

Fishermen, to the Fisher of humanity;

Publicans, to Him who from among them named a chosen evangelist;

Sinful women, to Him who exposed His feet to the tears of the repentant woman;

And that I may embrace them all together, all sinners have come, that they may look upon the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! Since, therefore, all rejoice, I too desire to rejoice! I too wish to share the choral dance, to celebrate the festival! But I take my part, not plucking the harp nor with the music of the pipes nor holding a torch, but holding in my arms the cradle of Christ!
For this is all my hope!

This is my life!

This is my salvation!

This is my pipe, my harp!

And bearing it I come, and having from its power received the gift of speech, I too, with the angels and shepherds, sing:

'Glory to God in the Highest! and on earth peace to men of good will!'

I can

Here, in the West, culture has long ago become an object of consumption, a consumer property. What does culture mean for them? Culture is what I can have. As a result of my being free. And what does it mean free? — I am free to have what everyone here has. Does culture exist in the West? It does. Thus I can and I have the right to use it. And what does it mean: I can? Well, just — physically, pragmatically — I can.
Andrei Tarkovsky

Be fruitful and multiply.

...young couples should keep God's commandments without deviation and have many children. Those who refrain from having more than two children are transgressors of God's commandment which says Be fruitful, and multiply (Gen. 1:28), since they being two individuals bring two children into the world and do not increase the population. Increase, that is, from zero population. The Lord is clear, and His commandment in this case is twofold. First He said 'be fruitful' and then He said 'multiply.' So, whichever couples have four children fulfill the first commandment, that is, 'be fruitful.' Whichever ones, again, have five or more please God, because they fulfill both of His commandments, both to be 'fruitful' and to 'multiply.'
Fr. Anthimos of St. Anne's Skete

Another kind of salvation is offered.

It is not to flee our land by sea, saving our despicable worldly goods, but, saving our souls, not going out of the state, each of us ought to save himself in the very heart of the state. It is on the ship of his position and service that each of us ought now escape the whirlpool, our eyes fixed on the Divine pilot. Even he who is not in the service now ought to join the service and grasp his position as a drowning man grasps his plank, without which no one will be saved. Each of us ought now to serve, not as he would have served in old Russia, but as he would in the celestial state, the head of which is Christ himself, and this is why we ought to fulfill all our obligations in the same way as Christ and no other has commanded, whoever may be the authorities over us, those equal to and surrounding us, as well as those below and under us. And certainly this is not the moment to pay attention to any slights to our vanity and self-love which may be inflicted on us by whomsoever it might be—let us remember only that our obligations are undertaken by the grace of Christ, and this is why they ought to be fulfilled as Christ and no other has commanded. Only by this means can each of us now be saved. And ill luck will befall him who does not reflect on this now. His intelligence will be dimmed, his thoughts will become clouded, he will find no corner where he may hide from his fears. Remember the darkness of Egypt, produced with so much strength by King Solomon when the Lord, wishing to punish only the Egyptians, sent mysterious and incomprehensible fears upon them. Blind night enveloped them suddenly in broad daylight; frightful forms were raised up before them on all sides; sinister scarecrows with dismal faces came before their fascinated eyes; a dread which had no need or iron chains locked them all and deprived them of all sense, all movement, they lost all their strength, only fear remained. This happened only to those whom the Lord had punished. The others, during this time, saw no terrors; for them it was day and light.

See that the same thing does not happen to you. Rather, pray and implore God that He make you understand that you ought to be in your position and in it accomplish everything in accordance with the law of Christ. This is now no joke. Before becoming confused because of the disorders surrounding us, it would be well for each of us to look into his own soul. Do you look into yours. God knows, perhaps there you will see the same disorder for which you abuse others; perhaps there dwells a troubled, disordered anger, capable at any moment of possessing your soul, to the greater glory of the enemy of Christ; perhaps there lodges a cowardly ability for falling into dejection at every step—pitiful daughter of lack of faith in God; perhaps, again, there is hidden a vain desire to chase after what glitters and to profit from worldly reputation; perhaps there dwells a pride in the personal qualities of your soul, capable of reducing to nothing all the good that we have in us. God knows what there can be in our souls. It is better and more worthwhile to be troubled by what is inside us than by what is beside and around us.
Nikolai Gogol

To the strengthening of faith

Many do not allow even the thought that an intellectual man of our time could have such a lively and sincere faith as the simple masses do out of ignorance. But this is a great mistake. An educated man, once he gets past a certain [point] is able to believe much more deeply and ardently than an ordinary person who believes partly by habit (following the example of others), partly because his faith, his vague religious ideas are not troubled by any opposing ideas. There is nothing for him to conquer, no intellectual battles to fight. For him, what he must conquer in the spiritual arena are not ideas but passions, feelings, habits, anger, rudeness, malice, envy, greed, drunkenness, depravity, laziness, etc. For an intellectual the warfare is much more difficult and complex. Like the ordinary person he must battle all these passions and habits, but in addition he must also break his intellectual pride and consciously subjugate his mind to the teaching of the Church. Once we get past this mystical threshold, which I mentioned earlier, then our erudition will itself begin to help us in strengthening our faith.
Konstantin Leontiev

Extravagant insolence

Everything is subordinated to external appearances here. Being polite means never contradicting anyone; being amiable means babbling anything that comes into your mind—here are the two rules you have to follow in order to be un home charmant. Thinking over everything I have seen here I can say without being mistaken that the people here are not really living, that they are not really tasting of true happiness, and that they do not even have any comprehension of it. An empty brilliance and extravagant insolence in the men, a shameless indecency in the women—apart from these truly I see nothing else. You can imagine how we found all this to our great displeasure.
Denis Fonvizin, Paris 1778

And what would Fonvizin say about Paris 2006? Or for that matter any other city 2006?

Words that were spoken

"I feel like a whore when I'm single because I just have sex with random people."

The rewards of riding the buses in Chicago...priceless?

Pastures of doctrine

The truth of the Unity of God has been delivered to thee: learn to distinguish the pastures of doctrine. Be an approved banker, holding fast that which is good, abstaining from every form of evil. Or if thou hast ever been such as they, recognise and hate thy delusion. For there is a way of salvation, if thou reject the vomit, if thou from thy heart detest it, if thou depart from them, not with thy lips only, but with thy soul also: if thou worship the Father of Christ, the God of the Law and the Prophets, if thou acknowledge the Good and the Just to be one and the same God. And may He preserve you all, guarding you from falling or stumbling, stablished in the Faith, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to Whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem

The bondage of words

…wherever the main purpose of speech is flattery, there the word becomes corrupted, and necessarily so. And instead of genuine communication, there will exist something for which domination is too benign a term; more appropriately we should speak of tyranny, of despotism. On the one side there will be sham authority, unsupported by any intellectual superiority, and on the other a state of dependency, which again is too benign a term. Bondage would be more correct. Yes, indeed: there are on the one side a pseudoauthority, not legitimized by any form of superiority, and on the other a state of mental bondage.
Josef Pieper

The purity of faith

...whenever the teaching of faith deviates even a little from its basic purity, the deviation, growing little by little, cannot help becoming a contradiction to faith. The lack of wholeness and inner unity of faith compels one to seek unity in abstract thinking; and reason, having received equal rights with Divine Revelation, first serves as the ground of religion, and subsequently replaces it.
Ivan Kireevskii

"Everyone is entitled to know everything."

But this is a false slogan of a false era; far greater in value is the forfeited right of people not to know, not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person whose life and work are meaningful has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Unnecessary

In my computer's Oxford dictionary:
unnecessary
adjective
not needed: a fourth Chicago airport is unnecessary.

A fourth airport might not have been necessary but a third one was nice...