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Short and to the point

February 9, 2016 by Terry Teachout

I love aphorisms and epigrams, perhaps because I have no gift for coining them. The brilliantly precise concision that allows writers like La Rochefoucauld, Chamfort, and Karl Kraus to say big things on the smallest possible scale, and the discipline of mind that enables it, simply don’t come naturally to me.

For this reason, it’s always a joy for me to encounter a previously unknown aphorist (to me, anyway). George Weigel wrote a piece last week in which he had occasion to quote George Savile, the First Marquess of Halifax, a seventeenth-century British statesman of whose long career I knew nothing. In addition to being a politician of note, Savile was also a writer with a knack for terseness. Weigel points out that he “ranks second only to the immortal Dr. Johnson in the number of entries in The Viking Book of Aphorisms.” I own that book and consult it often, but for some reason Savile’s name had escaped my notice.

800px-George_Savile,_1st_Marquess_of_Halifax_by_Mary_BealeI did a bit of nosing around the web and found that Savile’s aphorisms were collected in 1750 in a volume called Political, Moral and Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections. I promptly sifted through it and culled the following observations, which I hope you’ll find as striking as I did:

• “Our vices and virtues couple with one another, and get children that resemble both their parents.”

• “Anger is never without an argument, but seldom with a good one.”

• “One should no more laugh at a contemptible fool than at a dead fly.”

• “The memory of an enemy admitteth no decay but age.”

• “Weak men are apt to be cruel, because they stick at nothing that may repair the ill-effect of their mistakes.”

• “Mistaken kindness is little less dangerous than premeditated malice.”

• “Explaining is generally half-confessing.”

• “A long vindication is seldom a skilful one.”

• “The world is nothing but vanity cut out into several shapes.”

• “Were it not for bunglers in the manner of doing it, hardly any man would ever find out he was laughed at.”

• “The reading of most men is like a wardrobe of old clothes that are seldom used.”

• “It is some kind of scandal not to bear with the faults of an honest man.”

• “All are apt to shrink from those that lean upon them.”

Lookback: Erroll Garner, the most happy pianist

February 9, 2016 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2006:

One of Garner’s albums was called The Most Happy Piano, and that sums him up very nicely. As Joseph Epstein wrote of H.L. Mencken, “He achieves his effect through the magical transfer of joie de vivre.” You simply cannot listen to his best recordings without breaking out in an ear-to-ear grin. What’s more, Garner was by all accounts as likable as the music he made. As George Avakian, his producer at Columbia, recalled, “He was really like a pixie or an elf. When you split with Erroll at the end of an evening you left with a happy smile and a good feeling. No worries at all. Off to bed feeling great. That’s what Erroll did for people.”…

Read the whole thing here.

Almanac: Georges Simenon on poverty

February 9, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“The poor are used to stifling any expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the demands made of them day after day, hour after hour.”

Georges Simenon, The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (trans. Linda Coverdale)

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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