"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."
"But now, at the age of forty-one, I feel another birth coming on. After decades of neglect, I find myself thinking about departed great aunts and -uncles, long-lost grandfathers, unknown fifth cousins, or, in the case of an inbred family like mine, all those things in one."
"Three months before I was born, in the aftermath of one of our elaborate Sunday dinners, my grandmother Desdemona Stephanides ordered my brother to get her silkworm box."
"Up until now Desdemona had had a perfect record: twenty-three correct guesses."
"She didn't want a boy. She had one already. In fact, she was so certain I was going to be a girl that she'd picked out only one name for me: Calliope."
". But when my grandmother shouted in Greek, "A boy!" the cry went around the room, and out into the hall, and across the hall into the living room where the men were arguing politics."
"Forbidden Fruit" - from the letters of Abelard and Heloise
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"You alone have the power to make me sad, to bring me happiness or confort"
"Home and wealth may come down from ancestors; but an intelligent wife is a gift from the Lord"
"In my case, the pleasures of lovers which we shared have been to sweet - they cannot displease me, and can scarcely shift from my memory. Wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and fantasies which will not even let me sleep"
"(...) virtue belongs not to the body but to the soul"
Peter Abelard (1079-1142) was a French philosopher, considered one of the greatest thinkers of the 12th century. Among his works is "Sic et Non," a list of 158 philosophical and theological questions. His teachings were controversial, and he was repeatedly charged with heresy. Even with the controversy that surrounded him at times, nothing probably prepared him for the consequences of his love affair with Heloise, a relationship destined to change his life in dramatic ways.
Heloise (1101-1164) was the niece and pride of Canon Fulbert. She was well-educated by her uncle in Paris. Abelard later writes in his Historica Calamitatum: "Her uncle's love for her was equaled only by his desire that she should have the best education which he could possibly procure for her. Of no mean beauty, she stood out above all by reason of her abundant knowledge of letters."
She was supposedly a great beauty, one of the most well-educated women of her time; so, perhaps it's not surprising that Abelard and she became lovers. Also, she was more than 20 years younger than Abelard... And, of course, Fulbert discovered their love.
They were separated, but that didn't end the affair...
"Of Mistresses, Tigresses and other Conquests" - Giacomo Casanova
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"As true virtues are merely habits, I dare say that the truly virtuos are those fortunate people who practice virtue without any effort at all"
"Death is a monster that chases the rapt spectator from the theater before the play he is watching with infinite interest has ended. This alone is reason enough to despise it"
"The happiest man is he who best understands the art of finding happiness without letting it encroach upon is duties; and the an happiest is he who has chosen a way of life in which he finds himself with the sad obligation to plan every day, from morning till night"
"Nothing is more precious to the thinking man than life itself; yet in spite of this, the greatest voluptuary is he who best practices the difficult art of making it pass quickly"
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