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

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

The popular Harvard English professor published Under Water this spring.

Author and Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence Terry Tempest Williams finds beauty in the world around us.

Most popular

History of napalm origins at Harvard

A new book traces napalm's invention to Harvard—and its evolution from heroic discovery to pariah

In 2004, a frenzy spread across Harvard Yard in days. Four billion users later, we are only just catching up.

The stakes are high for this husband and wife: one of them will die if they don’t find a cure.

Explore More From Current Issue

A woman with long, wavy hair wearing a white suit, seated in a bright, modern room.

The Harvard graduate’s roundtable talk show touches on hot button issues from religion to sex. 

Three actors perform on stage, with one actor interacting closely with another, set against abstract backgrounds.

The play Spare Parts is a contemporary fable about the quest to live forever.

A woman with curly blonde hair sits casually against a stone wall, wearing a black top and jeans.

Chloe Chapin trains her Broadway costume designer’s eye on the history of men’s fashion.