Thursday, January 27, 2005
Nobility
"The naturalist Sutherland," quoted by Joseph Wood Krutch, The Voice of the Desert (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1954), p. 71:
Newer› ‹Older
If the test of nobility is antiquity of family, then the cockroach that hides behind the kitchen sink is the true aristocrat. He does not date back merely to the three brothers that came over in 1640 or to William the Conquerer. Wherever there have been great epoch-making movements of people he has been with them heart and soul .... Since ever a ship turned a foamy furrow in the sea he has been a passenger, not a paying one certainly, but still a passenger. But man himself is but a creature of the last twenty minutes or so compared with the cockroach, for, from its crevice by the kitchen sink, it can point its antennae to the coal in the hod and say: 'When that was being made my family was already well-established.'
