Notes on Quotes

Observant readers of these blogs may have noticed that I have a slight penchant for sharing interesting quotations. It is a predisposition that long predates blogging. In fact, I have many old journals loaded with gleanings from my reading. I have, occasionally, committed the more interesting ones to memory, squeezing them in amongst the poetry, Gettysburg Address, the first half of the Declaration of Independence, and all the Shakespeare that can be crammed into my thick Irish skull.

When I started putting quotes in here, it was only a matter of time before I decided to use a few from memory, and was faced with the very real problem of finding out if memory truly served. Whenever I've quoted the Bard I've easily looked up the needed lines to check proper phrasing and punctuation (who can ever remember that? ) Trying to find quotes from different writers, however, aint always so easy.Three times now, having failed to find the needed passages on the internet, I've re-read the novels in order to confirm the quotes. It wasn't the chore you might be thinking, as the novels were by Steinbeck, R.L.Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. And, no, the Doyle was not a Sherlock Holmes, but one of his lesser known historical novels, Micah Clarke. It was that experience that occasions this piece.

Here's the quotation as I remembered it:

     Beware the zealot, for he will not only fight for his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice. He will also presume upon the consciences of others, thereby falling into the very error against which he fights.

Nice, huh? As relevant today as in the nineteenth century, when it was written. Also, not quite on the mark. Here is the actual quote:

     For the zealot is a man who not only defends his own right of worship, wherein he hath justice, but wishes to impose upon the consciences of others, by which he falls into the very error against which he fights.

Ok. Conan Doyle gives it a bit more poetry, perhaps, but the meaning is the same in both versions. I seem to have edited it down to its essence. Or, at least, I'd like to think so. My memory also tricked me in the setting of the story. I had remembered it as taking place during the English Civil War- Oliver Cromwell, and all that, you know. It turns out that I was close there as well. Micah Clarke is the story of the Duke of Monmouth's Rebellion which happened about a generation later.

A mind can be a minefield if you're not careful. As for me, it was no great effort to re-read those books. Re-discovering great writing is nearly as joyful as discovering it in the first place. I wish all of you happy hunting.