Quotes About Sittings

The old series of sittings with Mrs. Piper convinced me of survival for reasons which I should find it hard to formulate in any strict fashion, but that was their distinct effect.

Then again, perhaps the true subject of a portrait is the interchange between painter and subject – what the sitter consciously or unconsciously reveals, and the artist picks up. Out of the sittings comes, with luck, a new entity: a picture that succeeds and fails – that is, lives on in human memory or disappears – according to its power as a work of art. …

During this and the next six sittings, starting with a quavering voice that grew stronger with time, Jacqueline unburdened herself as the tape machine also picked up the sounds of her lighting cigarettes, of ice cubes in glasses, dogs barking in the distance, trucks rumbling down N Street, and jets roaring overhead.

Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it. Read then some commentary, like Pollock's Spinoza, or Martineau's Study of Spinoza, or better, both. Finally, read the Ethics again; it will be a new book to you. When you have finished it a second time you will remain forever a lover of philosophy.

But the Judiciary Act did not provide for judges to staff the circuit courts. Instead, the circuits would be staffed during their two annual sittings by two Supreme Court justices and one district judge.