# The Decameron  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Giovanni Boccaccio]] - Full Title:: The Decameron - Category: #books ## Highlights > Dante deliberately places his pilgrimage in his thirty-fifth year: his journey thus occurs at the biblical midpoint of his life, a key moment when he finds himself in between his own sinful past and his redeemed future. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=299)) > Black Death had struck Florence in 1348, ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=303)) > Leonardo Bruni, ([Location 320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=320)) > periods. In its emphasis on worldly pleasures, its embrace of sex and the body, and its investment in things material, the Decameron anticipates the increasingly worldly and secular side of the Renaissance. ([Location 336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=336)) > Teseida (The Thesiad, 1339–40), an epic also on the theme of unhappy love, which was to form the basis for Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=367)) > 1348 Florence was struck by the worst plague in European history, ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=381)) > By thus increasing the number of stories to one hundred, Boccaccio made his text more closely resemble the Divine Comedy with its one hundred cantos. ([Location 406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=406)) > there are ten of them in all, including seven women and three men. ([Location 500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=500)) > The number seven had many important associations in late medieval thinking, including the days of the week, the seven (known) planets, the seven virtues, and the seven liberal arts. ([Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=501)) > The plague has essentially destroyed the civilization of Florence. The social, political, and religious institutions and hierarchies that served to organize and direct people’s life have all broken down. ([Location 540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=540)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Of course, to be trapped in such a deadly vicious circle is precisely the punishment meted out to the damned in Dante’s Inferno, ([Location 563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=563)) > They are, in fact, even more organized than they would have been at home, perhaps in order to compensate for the utter chaos created there by the plague. ([Location 585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=585)) > As they tell their stories, the group sits in a symbolic circle: they turn their backs to the outside world and face one another, reinforcing their connectedness by looking at and listening to the other members of the group. ([Location 596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=596)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The Decameron, after all, is not Utopia; it is not a discursive exploration of social alternatives. ([Location 613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=613)) > Decameron contain many examples of women cleverly deceiving men, ([Location 716](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=716)) > Instructively, as Boccaccio’s storytellers head back to Florence, they do not return with plans for building some brave new world, even though the social thinking they have done in their stories has opened up new ways for people to conceive of the traditional social order. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=884)) > And thus, just as happiness at its limit turns into sadness, so misery is ended by the joy that follows it. ([Location 1209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1209)) > begun some years before in the East, where it deprived countless beings of their lives before it headed to the West, spreading ever-greater misery as it moved relentlessly from place to place. ([Location 1218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1218)) > Against it all human wisdom and foresight were useless. ([Location 1219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1219)) > Perhaps the nature of the disease was such that no remedy was possible, or the problem lay with those who were treating it, for their number, which had become enormous, included not just qualified doctors, but women as well as men who had never had any training in medicine, and since none of them had any idea what was causing the disease, they could hardly prescribe an appropriate remedy for it. ([Location 1231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1231)) > Moreover, what made this pestilence all the more virulent was that it was spread by the slightest contact between the sick and the healthy just as a fire will catch dry or oily materials when they are placed right beside it. In fact, this evil went even further, for not only did it infect those who merely talked or spent any time with the sick, but it also appeared to transfer the disease to anyone who merely touched the clothes or other objects that had been handled or used by those who were its victims. ([Location 1236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1236)) > Some people were of the opinion that living moderately and being abstemious would really help them resist the disease. ([Location 1250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1250)) > maintained that the surest medicine for such an evil disease was to drink heavily, enjoy life’s pleasures, and go about singing and having fun, satisfying their appetites by any means available, while laughing at everything and turning whatever happened into a joke. Moreover, they practiced what they preached ([Location 1255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1255)) > Most houses had thus become common property, and any stranger who happened upon them could treat them as if he were their rightful owner. ([Location 1260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1260)) > In the midst of so much affliction and misery in our city, the respect for the reverend authority of the laws, both divine and human, had declined just about to the vanishing point, ([Location 1262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1262)) > Others, choosing what may have been the safer alternative, cruelly maintained that no medicine was better or more effective against the plague than flight. ([Location 1269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1269)) > what is even worse, and almost unbelievable, is that fathers and mothers refused to tend to their children and take care of them, treating them as if they belonged to someone else. ([Location 1280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1280)) > And yet, while performing these services, they themselves often lost their lives along with their wages. ([Location 1286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1286)) > The common people and most of those of the middling sort presented a much more pathetic sight, for the majority of them were constrained to stay in their houses either by their hope to survive or by their poverty. Confined thus to their own neighborhoods, they got sick every day by the thousands, and having no servants or anyone else to attend to their needs, they almost invariably perished. ([Location 1308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1308)) > stowed layer upon layer like merchandise in ships, ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1327)) > they consumed what they already had on hand, neglecting what they might get in the future from their animals and fields and from all their past labors. ([Location 1333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1333)) > How many valiant men, how many beautiful women, how many lovely youths, whom Galen, Hippocrates, and Aesculapius—not to mention others—would have judged perfectly healthy, dined in the morning with their families, companions, and friends, only to have supper that evening with their ancestors in the next world!4 ([Location 1344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1344)) > For the rules concerning pleasure, which are rather strict today, were then, for the reasons I have already given, very lax, not just for women of their age, but even for those who were much older. ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1354)) > once condemned and sent into exile for their misdeeds by the authority of the civil law, ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1374)) > And as for the few people still around, they make no distinction, as I have often heard and seen for myself, between what is honest and what is not, and prompted only by their appetites, they do what promises them the most pleasure, both day and night, alone and in groups. Moreover, I am not speaking only of laymen, but also of those cloistered in monasteries, who ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1384)) > Although the peasants are dying there in the same way that the city dwellers are here, our distress will be lessened if only because the houses and the people are fewer and farther between. ([Location 1402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1402)) > Ser Cepparello deceives a holy friar with a false confession and dies, and although he was one of the worst of men during his life, he is reputed after his death to be a saint and is called Saint Ciappelletto.1 ([Location 1537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1537)) > Abraham the Jew, urged on by Giannotto di Civignì, goes to the court of Rome, and after having seen the wickedness of the clergy, returns to Paris and becomes a Christian.1 ([Location 1774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1774)) > “I’m telling you this, because, if I’m any kind of judge, I saw no holiness there, no devotion, no good works or models of life—or of anything else—in any member of the clergy. Instead, it seemed to me that lust, avarice, gluttony, fraud, envy, pride, and the like, and worse, if anything worse is possible, had such power over everyone that I consider the place a forge of diabolical works rather than divine ones. ([Location 1835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1835)) > illustrious, I think I’m right to conclude that the Holy Spirit must indeed be its foundation and support, for it is truer and holier than any other. ([Location 1841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1841)) > By means of a banquet consisting entirely of hens, plus a few sprightly little words, the Marchioness of Monferrato curbs the foolish love of the King of France.1 ([Location 1969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1969)) > Three young men squander their wealth and are reduced to poverty. Later, a nephew of theirs, returning home in despair, falls in with an Abbot who he discovers is really the daughter of the King of England. After she takes him as her husband, she makes up what his uncles lost and restores all of them to their proper social station.1 ([Location 2572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=2572)) > Andreuccio da Perugia comes to buy horses in Naples where, during a single night, he is caught in three serious misadventures, manages to extricate himself from all of them, and returns home with a ruby.1 ([Location 2811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=2811)) > The Sultan of Babylon sends one of his daughters to be married to the King of Algarve, and in a series of misadventures spanning a period of four years, she passes through the hands of nine men in various places, until she is finally restored to her father as a virgin and goes off, as she was doing at the start, to marry the King of Algarve.1 ([Location 3290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=3290)) > Deceived by Ambruogiuolo, Bernabò of Genoa loses his money and orders his innocent wife to be killed. She escapes, however, and dressed like a man, enters the service of the Sultan. Having located the deceiver, she lures her husband to Alexandria, where Ambruogiuolo is punished and she dresses like a woman again, after which she and her husband, rich once more, return to Genoa.1 ([Location 3944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=3944)) > There may be some of you who will perhaps claim that I have employed too much license in writing these stories, because sometimes I had ladies say things, and quite often had them listen to things, that are not very suitable for virtuous women to say or hear. ([Location 14989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=14989)) > that is freer than might seem appropriate to prudish women who attach more weight to speech than to deeds and make more of an effort to seem good than to be good, then I say that it was no more improper for me to have written them than for men and women generally to go around all day long saying “hole” and “rod” and “mortar” and “pestle” and “sausage” and “mortadella” and lots of other things like that. ([Location 14997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=14997)) > Moreover, it is perfectly clear that these stories were not told in a church, about whose affairs we should speak with the greatest reverence both in our hearts and in our words, although one can find many things in its sacred stories that go well beyond what you encounter in mine. Nor were they rehearsed either in the schools of philosophy where decency is required no less than anywhere else, or in any locale frequented by clergymen and philosophers. ([Location 15004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=15004)) - Note: Good as we actually live. > All things, in themselves, are good for some purpose, but if they are wrongly used, they will cause a great deal of harm. ([Location 15019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=15019)) # The Decameron  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Giovanni Boccaccio]] - Full Title:: The Decameron - Category: #books ## Highlights > Dante deliberately places his pilgrimage in his thirty-fifth year: his journey thus occurs at the biblical midpoint of his life, a key moment when he finds himself in between his own sinful past and his redeemed future. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=299)) > Black Death had struck Florence in 1348, ([Location 303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=303)) > Leonardo Bruni, ([Location 320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=320)) > periods. In its emphasis on worldly pleasures, its embrace of sex and the body, and its investment in things material, the Decameron anticipates the increasingly worldly and secular side of the Renaissance. ([Location 336](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=336)) > Teseida (The Thesiad, 1339–40), an epic also on the theme of unhappy love, which was to form the basis for Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale. ([Location 367](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=367)) > 1348 Florence was struck by the worst plague in European history, ([Location 381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=381)) > By thus increasing the number of stories to one hundred, Boccaccio made his text more closely resemble the Divine Comedy with its one hundred cantos. ([Location 406](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=406)) > there are ten of them in all, including seven women and three men. ([Location 500](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=500)) > The number seven had many important associations in late medieval thinking, including the days of the week, the seven (known) planets, the seven virtues, and the seven liberal arts. ([Location 501](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=501)) > The plague has essentially destroyed the civilization of Florence. The social, political, and religious institutions and hierarchies that served to organize and direct people’s life have all broken down. ([Location 540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=540)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Of course, to be trapped in such a deadly vicious circle is precisely the punishment meted out to the damned in Dante’s Inferno, ([Location 563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=563)) > They are, in fact, even more organized than they would have been at home, perhaps in order to compensate for the utter chaos created there by the plague. ([Location 585](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=585)) > As they tell their stories, the group sits in a symbolic circle: they turn their backs to the outside world and face one another, reinforcing their connectedness by looking at and listening to the other members of the group. ([Location 596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=596)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The Decameron, after all, is not Utopia; it is not a discursive exploration of social alternatives. ([Location 613](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=613)) > Decameron contain many examples of women cleverly deceiving men, ([Location 716](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=716)) > Instructively, as Boccaccio’s storytellers head back to Florence, they do not return with plans for building some brave new world, even though the social thinking they have done in their stories has opened up new ways for people to conceive of the traditional social order. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=884)) > And thus, just as happiness at its limit turns into sadness, so misery is ended by the joy that follows it. ([Location 1209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1209)) > begun some years before in the East, where it deprived countless beings of their lives before it headed to the West, spreading ever-greater misery as it moved relentlessly from place to place. ([Location 1218](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1218)) > Against it all human wisdom and foresight were useless. ([Location 1219](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1219)) > Perhaps the nature of the disease was such that no remedy was possible, or the problem lay with those who were treating it, for their number, which had become enormous, included not just qualified doctors, but women as well as men who had never had any training in medicine, and since none of them had any idea what was causing the disease, they could hardly prescribe an appropriate remedy for it. ([Location 1231](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1231)) > Moreover, what made this pestilence all the more virulent was that it was spread by the slightest contact between the sick and the healthy just as a fire will catch dry or oily materials when they are placed right beside it. In fact, this evil went even further, for not only did it infect those who merely talked or spent any time with the sick, but it also appeared to transfer the disease to anyone who merely touched the clothes or other objects that had been handled or used by those who were its victims. ([Location 1236](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1236)) > Some people were of the opinion that living moderately and being abstemious would really help them resist the disease. ([Location 1250](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1250)) > maintained that the surest medicine for such an evil disease was to drink heavily, enjoy life’s pleasures, and go about singing and having fun, satisfying their appetites by any means available, while laughing at everything and turning whatever happened into a joke. Moreover, they practiced what they preached ([Location 1255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1255)) > Most houses had thus become common property, and any stranger who happened upon them could treat them as if he were their rightful owner. ([Location 1260](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1260)) > In the midst of so much affliction and misery in our city, the respect for the reverend authority of the laws, both divine and human, had declined just about to the vanishing point, ([Location 1262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1262)) > Others, choosing what may have been the safer alternative, cruelly maintained that no medicine was better or more effective against the plague than flight. ([Location 1269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1269)) > what is even worse, and almost unbelievable, is that fathers and mothers refused to tend to their children and take care of them, treating them as if they belonged to someone else. ([Location 1280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1280)) > And yet, while performing these services, they themselves often lost their lives along with their wages. ([Location 1286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1286)) > The common people and most of those of the middling sort presented a much more pathetic sight, for the majority of them were constrained to stay in their houses either by their hope to survive or by their poverty. Confined thus to their own neighborhoods, they got sick every day by the thousands, and having no servants or anyone else to attend to their needs, they almost invariably perished. ([Location 1308](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1308)) > stowed layer upon layer like merchandise in ships, ([Location 1327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1327)) > they consumed what they already had on hand, neglecting what they might get in the future from their animals and fields and from all their past labors. ([Location 1333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1333)) > How many valiant men, how many beautiful women, how many lovely youths, whom Galen, Hippocrates, and Aesculapius—not to mention others—would have judged perfectly healthy, dined in the morning with their families, companions, and friends, only to have supper that evening with their ancestors in the next world!4 ([Location 1344](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1344)) > For the rules concerning pleasure, which are rather strict today, were then, for the reasons I have already given, very lax, not just for women of their age, but even for those who were much older. ([Location 1354](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1354)) > once condemned and sent into exile for their misdeeds by the authority of the civil law, ([Location 1374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1374)) > And as for the few people still around, they make no distinction, as I have often heard and seen for myself, between what is honest and what is not, and prompted only by their appetites, they do what promises them the most pleasure, both day and night, alone and in groups. Moreover, I am not speaking only of laymen, but also of those cloistered in monasteries, who ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1384)) > Although the peasants are dying there in the same way that the city dwellers are here, our distress will be lessened if only because the houses and the people are fewer and farther between. ([Location 1402](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1402)) > Ser Cepparello deceives a holy friar with a false confession and dies, and although he was one of the worst of men during his life, he is reputed after his death to be a saint and is called Saint Ciappelletto.1 ([Location 1537](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1537)) > Abraham the Jew, urged on by Giannotto di Civignì, goes to the court of Rome, and after having seen the wickedness of the clergy, returns to Paris and becomes a Christian.1 ([Location 1774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1774)) > “I’m telling you this, because, if I’m any kind of judge, I saw no holiness there, no devotion, no good works or models of life—or of anything else—in any member of the clergy. Instead, it seemed to me that lust, avarice, gluttony, fraud, envy, pride, and the like, and worse, if anything worse is possible, had such power over everyone that I consider the place a forge of diabolical works rather than divine ones. ([Location 1835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1835)) > illustrious, I think I’m right to conclude that the Holy Spirit must indeed be its foundation and support, for it is truer and holier than any other. ([Location 1841](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1841)) > By means of a banquet consisting entirely of hens, plus a few sprightly little words, the Marchioness of Monferrato curbs the foolish love of the King of France.1 ([Location 1969](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=1969)) > Three young men squander their wealth and are reduced to poverty. Later, a nephew of theirs, returning home in despair, falls in with an Abbot who he discovers is really the daughter of the King of England. After she takes him as her husband, she makes up what his uncles lost and restores all of them to their proper social station.1 ([Location 2572](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=2572)) > Andreuccio da Perugia comes to buy horses in Naples where, during a single night, he is caught in three serious misadventures, manages to extricate himself from all of them, and returns home with a ruby.1 ([Location 2811](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=2811)) > The Sultan of Babylon sends one of his daughters to be married to the King of Algarve, and in a series of misadventures spanning a period of four years, she passes through the hands of nine men in various places, until she is finally restored to her father as a virgin and goes off, as she was doing at the start, to marry the King of Algarve.1 ([Location 3290](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=3290)) > Deceived by Ambruogiuolo, Bernabò of Genoa loses his money and orders his innocent wife to be killed. She escapes, however, and dressed like a man, enters the service of the Sultan. Having located the deceiver, she lures her husband to Alexandria, where Ambruogiuolo is punished and she dresses like a woman again, after which she and her husband, rich once more, return to Genoa.1 ([Location 3944](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=3944)) > There may be some of you who will perhaps claim that I have employed too much license in writing these stories, because sometimes I had ladies say things, and quite often had them listen to things, that are not very suitable for virtuous women to say or hear. ([Location 14989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=14989)) > that is freer than might seem appropriate to prudish women who attach more weight to speech than to deeds and make more of an effort to seem good than to be good, then I say that it was no more improper for me to have written them than for men and women generally to go around all day long saying “hole” and “rod” and “mortar” and “pestle” and “sausage” and “mortadella” and lots of other things like that. ([Location 14997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=14997)) > Moreover, it is perfectly clear that these stories were not told in a church, about whose affairs we should speak with the greatest reverence both in our hearts and in our words, although one can find many things in its sacred stories that go well beyond what you encounter in mine. Nor were they rehearsed either in the schools of philosophy where decency is required no less than anywhere else, or in any locale frequented by clergymen and philosophers. ([Location 15004](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=15004)) - Note: Good as we actually live. > All things, in themselves, are good for some purpose, but if they are wrongly used, they will cause a great deal of harm. ([Location 15019](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00CNEO9IU&location=15019))