Chapter & Verse

Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words...

Ken Bresler requests a source for “God looks down and judges.”

“Tyranny of the left versus that of the right…dogs and cats” (March-April). Thomas Owen forwarded this unattributed anecdote from Leo Tolstoy (1946; page 651), by Ernest J. Simmons: “When asked ‘Is there not a difference between the killing that a revolutionist does and that which a policeman does?’ Tolstoy answered: ‘There is as much difference between cat-shit and dog-shit. But I don’t like the smell of either one or the other.’”

“Carving nature at her joints” (May-June). Lydia Kirsopp Lake was the first to identify Plato as the ultimate source of this concept, seen (in Harold N. Fowler’s translations for the Loeb Classical Library) in Phaedrus 265 d-e, “dividing things again by classes, where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of a bad carver,” and in Statesman 287c, “Let us divide them, then, like an animal that is sacrificed, by joints.”

Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to chapterandverse@harvardmag.com.

You might also like

America’s Past, Opera's Future: 11 New Books from Harvard Authors

These newly released novels, histories, and memoirs grapple with identity in all its forms.

The Year a Beat Poet Squatted at Harvard

In 1954, Gregory Corso moved into Eliot House. How he stayed there is a literary legend.

How Adam Ehrlich Sachs Writes Absurd and Beautiful Fiction

The Gretel and the Great War author on how the Lampoon derailed his science career—and set him on a literary path.

Most popular

To Promote Healthy Habits in Patients, Start with the Doctors

Why Harvard Medical School is training physicians to think more like coaches

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Historian Alexander Keyssar on why the unpopular institution has prevailed 

Three Harvard Unions Move Toward Strikes

Dining employees, academic workers unions join graduate students in threatening a walkout.

Explore More From Current Issue

Colorful illustration of a split-level house showing various activities in different rooms.

Can the College do more to prepare students for the real world?

Panoramic view of Harvard University with autumn foliage and a river under a cloudy sky.

The University is expanding industry ties and investing its own funds to support research, but neither will replace lost federal dollars.

A smiling man in a brown plaid suit stands outdoors with greenery in the background.

The professor and former Harvard College dean is the next president of Harvard Magazine’s Board of Directors