Thoughtful Thursday

If you talked to my father (*which would be an unusual accomplishment and the envy of seance-providers far and wide), he would tell you that my mother's family tree was full of gnarls and wasp nests, and had more than its share of horse thieves and cattle rustlers.

If you talked to my mother (see above* . . . and aren't you somethin'?), she would say that my father's family tree was full of religious zealots and hoity-toities.

Let me tell you - this was some arboretum to grow up in.

Dad was very fond of reminding everyone in earshot that he was descended from French royalty, and one of his relatives was writer (hoity) and nobelman (toity) Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld.

I call bullsh*t.

Because The Baroness can't possibly be in the same gene pool as this Duc guy, described by Wikipedia thusly:

"In uniting the four qualities of brevity, clarity, fullness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival. His Maximes are never mere epigrams; they are never platitudes; they are never dark sayings. He has packed them so full of meaning that it would be impossible to pack them closer, yet there is no undue compression; he has sharpened their point to the utmost, yet there is no loss of substance."

Meh. They lost me at "brevity".

However, I did randomly run across a quote of his recently:

"L'absence diminue les mediocres passions et augmente les grandes,
comme le vent eteint les bougies et allume le feu"

(Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones,

as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire)

which makes me think that I may be getting a message from beyond.

Other than "put a light on when you're reading - do you want to go blind?".