The Hammock Papers: marx brothers

Showing posts with label marx brothers. Show all posts

14 November 2025

Duty.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.

Robert Louis Stevenson

16 June 2025

Fervent.

Being a more fervent vexillologist than humanist, I implore all future factions, sects, and cabals to appropriate original flags and phraseologies (those are "tags" for those who don't habla) in their parades, pickets, and protests.

First it was my Gadsden, now my most esteemed standard (and the motto of my classroom) has gained pop culture clout.

I'm perturbed with being misassociated with anything.

27 March 2025

Nuisance.

Thanks to Walker's Arms.

02 October 2023

Happy Birthday, Marx

Groucho Marx was born on this day in 1890.

"Whatever It Is, I'm Against It" ...

18 March 2023

Grand.

I am your true Marxist critic, following Groucho rather than Karl, and take as my motto Groucho's grand admonition, "Whatever it is, I'm against it."

Harold Bloom

02 October 2022

Calling.

Whitmore, you calling me?

30 April 2022

Benefits.

Robert Louis Stevenson

19 January 2021

Lifesaver.

28 March 2020

Sturgeon.

A sturgeon ...

23 February 2020

Envelope.

... No, put that in an envelope.

28 September 2018

Two.

04 April 2018

Seal.

The Seal of Good Housekeeping ...

... that's dry champagne.

19 January 2018

Sure.

29 July 2017

Sturgeon..

A sturgeon is a doctor who cuts you open when you're sick ...

30 June 2017

Marxism.

Add another quote and make it a gallon.

... ace of spades.

Fascinating. Now tell it to me in detail.

15 April 2017

Fascinating.

Fascinating. Now tell it to me in detail.

06 April 2017

Hackenbush.

27 March 2017

Lemonade.

From The Marx Brothers, Duck Soup ... a nice, cold glass of lemonade ...

06 March 2017

Yourself.

The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, from The Bed of Procrustes

19 October 2016

Marxism.

That's a novelty ...

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."