Name That Author

[WordWolf]

Thomas Aquinas?

==============

"So I'm in this movie theater,

and there's this ugly, sleazy pervert in the theater besides me.

I mean beside me.

And he says to me 'Is this seat saved?'

I replied 'Well, with Aquinas arguing that even animals have no souls,

how much less of a chance does an inanimate object like a CHAIR have of

gaining eternal salvation?'

'No-I mean, is anyone SITTING there?'

Ah.

Ambiguity.

The Devil's Volleyball."

[GeorgeStGeorge]

Thomas Aquinas is correct. Have at it, WW!

George

[WordWolf]

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

"I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent."

[GeorgeStGeorge]

Winston Churchill?

George

[mstar1]

i just found this thread, dont quite know my way around or exactly what you are doing but

I think that was Thomas Paine

Edited May 28, 2008 by mstar1

[anotherDan]

Dickens

[WordWolf]

i just found this thread, dont quite know my way around or exactly what you are doing but

I think that was Thomas Paine

CORRECT!

It was Thomas Paine.

His two most famous works were:

- "the Crisis", written during the American Revolution as a pep talk, the first part, which I quoted, was read to soldiers at Washington's order

-"Common Sense", which was going to be my next set of quotes.

Those of you who sat through Schoolhouse Rock should remember Thomas Paine wrote "Common Sense" even if you've never heard of "the Crisis."

I have a book-copy of "the Crisis" somewhere. Both books are available online for free, of course.

==========

Ok, Mstar, the rules are familiar and simple.

It is now YOUR turn.

YOU pick an author (someone relatively well-known.) Using books from the author, or checking online (or any other way you have),

you post quotes from the author.

Without looking them up, we have to guess which author it is.

Once one of us gets it right, the first who does, it's now THEIR turn.

[mstar1]

Okee doke--of course I havent read through everything in the thread so Im not sure whats been covered or if there is any specific theme---this is the first thing that popped to mind--

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

[doojable]

Okee doke--of course I havent read through everything in the thread so Im not sure whats been covered or if there is any specific theme---this is the first thing that popped to mind--

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition

And gentlemen in England now abed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

That's Shakespeare.

[mstar1]

You are correct!

2 bonus points if you know where its from

[doojable]

Sorry Mstar... I forgot that. I do know it is from one of the "Henrys" but I don't remember which one.

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have

inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these

are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been

born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have

seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who

made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres,

when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they

begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got

to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get

on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met

well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the

road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty,

its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land,

tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who

struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it

labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is

soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly

called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book,

laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves

break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find

when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that

Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads

behind them:--

[GeorgeStGeorge]

Wild swing. Since he was so fond of the seafaring life, I'll guess he was against the farmer's lot.

Hemingway?

George

[anotherDan]

Henry David Thoreau

(nice Thomas Paine quote, BTW!)

Edited May 30, 2008 by anotherDan

[doojable]

Henry David Thoreau

(nice Thomas Paine quote, BTW!)

Yep! That was an excerpt from Walden

Take it AD...

[anotherDan]

Thank you, Dooj

Walden has been a favorite of mine.

If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator,

I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me,

I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a God sustains nature

it would reveal Him without ambiguity.

Edited May 30, 2008 by anotherDan

[anotherDan]

If I saw no signs of a divinity, I would fix myself in denial. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator,

I would repose peacefully in faith. But seeing too much to deny Him, and too little to assure me,

I am in a pitiful state, and I would wish a hundred times that if a God sustains nature

it would reveal Him without ambiguity.

New quote:

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

[wrdsandwrks]

Einstein?

[anotherDan]

Not Einstein, not 20th century

Endeavour then to convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions. You would like to attain faith, and do not know the way; you would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and ask the remedy for it. Learn of those who have been bound like you, and who now stake all their possessions. These are people who know the way which you would follow, and who are cured of an ill of which you would be cured. Follow the way by which they began; by acting as if they believed, bless yourself with holy water, have Masses said, and so on; by a simple and natural process this will make you believe, and will dull you—will quiet your proudly critical intellect...

Now, what harm will befall you in taking this side? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. Certainly you will not have those poisonous pleasures, glory and luxury; but will you not have others? I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing.

[anotherDan]

If nobody gets it after this, I'll switch to another author. The author was truly remarkable from an early age... famous while in his teens... but not for theological reasons. It was only somewhat later in life that he devoted himself fully to the things of God.

If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is....

..."God is, or He is not." But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.

Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it. "No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all."

Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

"That is very fine. Yes, I must wager; but I may perhaps wager too much." Let us see. Since there is an equal risk of gain and of loss, if you had only to gain two lives, instead of one, you might still wager. But if there were three lives to gain, you would have to play (since you are under the necessity of playing), and you would be imprudent, when you are forced to play, not to chance your life to gain three at a game where there is an equal risk of loss and gain. But there is an eternity of life and happiness. And this being so, if there were an infinity of chances, of which one only would be for you, you would still be right in wagering one to win two, and you would act stupidly, being obliged to play, by refusing to stake one life against three at a game in which out of an infinity of chances there is one for you, if there were an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain. But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.

[doojable]

C.S. Lewis (I'm not sure I recognize his style here - but he did not turn to Christianity until later in life. He was a professor at Oxford, IIRC.)

Edited June 2, 2008 by doojable

[wrdsandwrks]

If nobody gets it after this, I'll switch to another author. The author was truly remarkable from an early age... famous while in his teens... but not for theological reasons. It was only somewhat later in life that he devoted himself fully to the things of God.

Isaac Newton?

[anotherDan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal

Blaise Pascal.... invented the binary computer, I think, at about age 17 for his dad, who was a tax collector. The progamming language, Pascal, is named after him. Many other accomplishments... he's the father of probability theory. Newton was a good guess. Lewis's Mere Christianity had much of the flavor of the last quote, so also a good guess, but you must have missed the clue that the author wasn't 20th century.

Quotes were from one of Pascal's most famous works, the Pensées; the last one I quoted is referred to as "Pascal's Wager."

new author!

Condemned to wires and hammers

Strike every chord that you feel

That broken trees

And elephant ivories conceal

Edited June 2, 2008 by anotherDan

[GeorgeStGeorge]

About time for some more lines, I reckon.

George

[anotherDan]

My apologies for my tardiness. And I must confess I think I may have blown it by making my last clue part of the lyrics of a song. It was from The Judgment of the Moon and Stars, written by Joni Mitchell, about Beethoven. I do think it has a higher level of literary quality than the vast body of musical lyrics (Dylan excepted, of course!) The song describes the plight of the musician. "...wires and hammers" and "...broken trees and elephant ivories..." refers, as you may have guessed, to the piano.

Here's a softball:

New Author

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Edited June 8, 2008 by anotherDan

[GeorgeStGeorge]

I would have to guess Abraham Lincoln.

George