(Sop(hist)rionic)

Histrionic sophist

[notnursenightingale]

"You know you're perfectly effulgent."

|| F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

[notnursenightingale]

"I am come of kings; I bear a king's name. My badge is the oak. Do you see my sword? It has slashed the heads off mair [goblins] than you have toes upon your feet. Call up your vermin to your back, sir, and fall on! The sooner the clash begins, the sooner ye'll taste this steel throughout your vitals."

|| Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped

[notnursenightingale]

Raven Boys Over Flowers

Ok I just watched the k-drama Boys Over Flowers and I have Thoughts (TM):

elite school for rich people - Shin Hwa/Aglionby

elite quadron of pretty boys - F4/the Raven Boys

quirky poor girl has run-in with said boys - Jan Di/Blue

girl first falls for nice quiet boy of the group - Ji Hoo/Adam

girl ends up with leader of group who she initially clashes with - Jun Pyo/Gansey

leader of group has fear of insects/bees - Jun Pyo/Gansey

secondary boy has self-destructive tendencies because his mother is sick and he's too much like his father - Yi Jung/Ronan (this boy is also my favourite, in both cases)

Bonuses: Ji Hoo reads tarot like the women of Fox Way. Jan Di gets her fortune read about her future husband and soul mate, like Blue has a fortune about her future love. And Woo Bin kind of fades into the proverbial background most of the time, like poor Noah. The exceptions being when he's being Yi Jung's second brain cell - like when Noah is Ronan's second brain cell.

It's not conclusive, but the connections are there. Just missing a Welsh king...

[notnursenightingale]

"I do not think you could be so bad a man," said I, "if you had not all the machinery to be a good one."

|| R.L. Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae

[notnursenightingale]

Everybody wants it

The commodity is attention.

Every social media platform wants my attention but it doesn't reward me for it. I feel drained, emptier than when I started my mindless scroll far too many hours ago.

You know what rewards attention? Classic literature. For the low low cost of actually focusing for more than a few minutes at a time, literature will actually reward the attention I give it. It surprises me with dry humor, irony, incredible word pictures, fantastically drawn characters, and deep philosophical considerations.

To paraphrase Epictetus: "Consider at what price you sell your [attention]; but please, for God's sake, don't sell it cheap."

[notnursenightingale]

Plato and the Olympians

Rip Plato

You would have hated Rick Riordan

[notnursenightingale]

[She] was a novelty. [She] was unusual, ridiculous, brilliant, sombre and absurd. [She] was innovation in a stodgy town.

|| Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

[notnursenightingale]

Dear Schober, 

I hear you are not happy and have to sleep off the frenzies of your despair... Although this makes me extraordinarily sad, it does not surprise me in the least, since such is the lot of almost every sensible person in this miserable world.


|| Franz Schubert, 21 September 1824 letter to Franz von Schober

[notnursenightingale]

And now, farewell, Sir Knight; and if you cannot think of me as a man of nice conscience, acknowledge me at least as one of reason and judgement.

|| Sir Walter Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth

[notnursenightingale]

“Confound Mrs. Rachael!” said the gentleman. “Let her fly away in a high wind on a broomstick!”

|| Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“Just looka yonder,” he pointed. “Every one of ‘em oughta be ridin’ broomsticks. Aunt Rachel already does.”

|| Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

[notnursenightingale]

Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for broad and eternal summer.

|| Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance

[notnursenightingale]

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me?

|| Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

[notnursenightingale]

I propose that we add Winchesters to our armament. I have a kind of belief in a Winchester when there is any trouble.

|| Bram Stoker, Dracula

[notnursenightingale]

He was a novelty. He was unusual, ridiculous, brilliant, sombre and absurd. He was innovation in a stodgy town.

|| Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

[notnursenightingale]

A strong man with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous. The combination is a dreadful one…and he will soon think that he himself is God.

|| Bram Stoker, Dracula

[notnursenightingale]

So you put the whole binge to Jeeves and see if he can’t scare up a happy ending somehow. Tell him my future is in his hands, and that if the wedding bells ring out, he can rely on me, even unto half my kingdom.

|| P. G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves

[notnursenightingale]

He had the courage of a lion, and the cunning of a rat; and if he’s not in hell today, there’s no such place. I know but one good point to the man—that he was fond of his wife, and kind to her.

|| Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Beach of Falesa”