After-Orts #14
One of the world’s foremost experts on Latin, Father Foster was a monk who looked like a stevedore, dressed like a janitor and swore like a sailor.
Reginald Foster, a former plumber’s apprentice from Wisconsin who, in four decades as an official Latinist of the Vatican, dreamed in Latin, cursed in Latin, banked in Latin and ultimately tweeted in Latin, died on Christmas Day at a nursing home in Milwaukee. He was LXXXI.
Margalit Fox, in a NYT obituary:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/27/obituaries/reginald-foster-vatican-latinist-who-tweeted-in-the-language-dies-at-81.html
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On 15 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito made a broadcast to the Japanese nation. It was the first time an Emperor had ever spoken on the radio, so the Japanese people knew that something was up. Moreover, two atomic bombs had just been dropped. Hirohito announced to his listening nation that 'the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage', which is perhaps the most extreme example of litotes in all humanity's huge history. But it wasn't quite clear enough. Many listeners didn't realise what he was saying until the speech was over and the announcer cut in to say that Japan had surrendered to the Allies.
--Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence, chapter 28
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I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
— Mark Twain, in a letter to Joseph Twichell, September 13, 1898
We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.
-- Elizabeth, to Jane, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 54