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Book: Unfamiliar Fishes
Quotes of Book: Unfamiliar Fishes

Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
After Hymns and tears, they boarded the brig Thaddeus, a vessel so crappy, it made the Mayflower look like the QE2.
book-quote mayflower missionary thaddeus
Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
...it requires all my philosophy, and all my piety' to make peace...
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Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling "the void" with a husband like Hiram, a "treasure rich and undeserved." Having read his insufferable memoir, "A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands", all I can say is: I'm happy for her?
book-quote love humor marriage
Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
The last line of Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is addressed to the American people and their congressmen. "As they deal with me and my people, kindly, generously, and justly, so may the Great Ruler of all nations deal with the grand and glorious nation of the United States of America." It's clever to imply that if the U.S. swallows up her little country, God will smite it. As I reread the last sentance of a book written by a Hawaiian queen wh was taught to read and write by American missionaries, her final thought seems emblematic of how hierarchical Hawaiians adapted to Christianity. Jehovah, "the Great Ruler of all nations," is the highest high chief in the universe.
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Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
After Hiram Bingham built the first church on Oahu the student recalls, "When it was completed some of the natives said among themselves, 'That house of worship built by the haoles is a place in which they will pray us all to death. It is meant to kill us.
book-quote humor religion god
Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
Not that there wasn't still plenty of subduing to do here in North America. "Even within our own limits, the savage still lights his death fires, to appease the wrath of an idol," he points out. What's worse, to the "north, there is an immense region of palpable darkness." {Hi, Canada!}
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Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
In America, on the ordinate plane of faith versus reason, the x-axis of faith intersects with the y-axis of reason at the zero point of "I don't give a damn what you think".
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Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
quoting Kipling, "I never got over the wonder of a people who, having extirpated the aboriginals of their continent more completely than any modern race had ever done, honestly believed they were a godly little New England community, setting examples to mankind.
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Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
Acts 16:9 is the meddler's motto, simultaneously selfless and self-serving, generous but stuck-up. Into every generation of Americans is born a new crop of buttinskys sniffing out the latest Macedonia that may or may not want their help.
book-quote history the-bible
Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
The groundswell of outrage over the invasion of Iraq often cited the preemptive war as a betrayal of American ideals. The subtext of the dissent was: 'This is not who we are.' But not if you were standing where I was. It was hard to see the look in that palace tour guide's eyes when she talked about the American flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898, from time to time, this is exactly who we are."
book-quote history
Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
...the air has that bracing autumnal bite so that all you want to do is bob for apples or hang a witch or something.
book-quote fall new-england
Sarah Vowell _ Unfamiliar Fishes
For Americans, Acts 16:9 is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses--an all-purpose ingredient we'll stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing {yet not entirely unwarranted} sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion.
book-quote history the-bible