Post a random quote from a book you're reading

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Prometheus18
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07 Apr 2019, 6:27 pm

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who would want to read one.

Peter Hitchens - Abolition of Britain, 1999, quoting Mr Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death.



IsabellaLinton
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21 Apr 2019, 8:30 pm

“I am not an angel, and I will not be one until I die. I will be myself.”

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (1847).

---
I'm not currently reading Jane Eyre, but I'm posting in honour of Charlotte's 203rd birthday.
Charlotte is an angel now. Rest in peace. :heart:



sidetrack
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22 Apr 2019, 12:39 am

Quote:
Is it possible that Euclid said as little as he did because he understood that he stood to gain nothing by saying more. Why make trouble?.
--p.38

The king of infinite space: Euclid and his elements by David Berlinski

"Nempe nullas vias hominbus patere ad cognitionem certam vertatis praeter evidentem intuitum, et necassariam deductionem. (There are only two routes open to human beings to arrive at sound knowledge of the truth, evident intuition and necessary deduction)."--Rene Descartes.



IsabellaLinton
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25 May 2019, 9:00 am

Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.



Excerpt from "The Prisoner", Emily Brontë (undated)



IsabellaLinton
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03 Jun 2019, 10:46 am

Dimly she realised one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after effects have to be encountered at their worst.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence (1928)

For all of us who struggle with trauma.
#Freedom09



dragonsanddemons
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03 Jun 2019, 9:14 pm

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die


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Yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage. For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
-H. P. Lovecraft, "The Outsider"


Magna
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03 Jun 2019, 10:50 pm

IsabellaLinton wrote:
Dimly she realised one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after effects have to be encountered at their worst.

Lady Chatterley's Lover, DH Lawrence (1928)

For all of us who struggle with trauma.
#Freedom09


Very true indeed.



Kraichgauer
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04 Jun 2019, 12:03 am

"You wouldn't hit me if I was a man!"
"Of course I wouldn't hit you if you were a man!"


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IsabellaLinton
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09 Jun 2019, 2:47 pm

In all we do and hear, and see,
Is restless Toil and Vanity,
While yet the rolling earth abides,
Men come and go like ocean tides;
And ere one generation dies,
Another in its place shall rise,
That, sinking soon into the grave,
Others succeed, like wave on wave.


Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas
Anne Brontë



Trogluddite
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09 Jun 2019, 9:05 pm

Rebecca [...] was pressed into a variety of workshops and classes, as part of our Developmental and Cognitive Drive. [...]

It didn't work with Rebecca, it didn't work with most of them. It was not, I came to think, the right thing to do, because what we did was to drive them full-tilt upon their limitations, as had already been done, futilely, and often to the point of cruelty, throughout their lives.

We paid far too much attention to the defects of our patients, as Rebecca was the first to tell me, and far too little into what was intact and preserved. To use another piece of jargon, we were too concerned with 'defectology' [...]

Oliver Sacks - The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - 1985


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IsabellaLinton
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09 Jun 2019, 9:11 pm

Trogluddite wrote:
We paid far too much attention to the defects of our patients ... and far too little into what was intact and preserved. To use another piece of jargon, we were too concerned with 'defectology' [...]


Brilliant!



Trogluddite
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09 Jun 2019, 9:21 pm

^^ Some of his prose has some pretty cringeworthy language from its time, and by his own admission both neurology and his own ideas progressed since the writing of the book, but I've never read any other "expert" on neurological conditions who has such compassion for his patient's well-being as experienced by them insofar as he can imagine it, and he's always conscious of the limitations of that imagining. When I first discovered him, I was astounded that case histories could be so poignant and moving.


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IsabellaLinton
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09 Jun 2019, 9:28 pm

Trogluddite wrote:
^^ Some of his prose has some pretty cringeworthy language from its time, and by his own admission both neurology and his own ideas progressed since the writing of the book, but I've never read any other "expert" on neurological conditions who has such compassion for his patient's well-being as experienced by them insofar as he can imagine it, and he's always conscious of the limitations of that imagining. When I first discovered him, I was astounded that case histories could be so poignant and moving.


Thanks for the review and recommendation. I just ordered it! :heart:



sidetrack
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15 Jun 2019, 6:36 am

An addendum to a '01 Mar 2019, 11:23 am' entry made on this thread

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/852 ... human-race

Quote:
Sep 29, 2011 knig rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: blancmange-of-ideas

..And so, the debate whether life is worth living rages on. Ligotti acknowledges that most people by default find life enjoyable and good and worth living, because believing otherwise would lead to madness. How disappointing then his chapter on Buddhism: which he equates with the pessimism. 130 million people have accepted that suffering is a way of life, but in the West our home grown pessimists have no such following. Why is that, he asks? Well, for goodness sakes, man. On yer bike, as the going says, and get ye to southern India, China and Sri Lanka: I can recommend some good hotels. Whilst I was there it became evident to me that regardless what Buddhist THEORY may postulate, the population on the ground has most certainly not accepted suffering as a way of life at all. Whilst they are good to repeat some of the tenets as mantra, this is more an affirmation of knowing rather than accepting. I found a complete dichotomy between doing and saying on the ground. Which would seem to reaffirm Zapffe (and Ligotti’s ) premise that otherwise would be following the road to madness..



IsabellaLinton
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23 Jun 2019, 6:42 pm

Emily could be paralysed by timidity when in the company of people she did not know. It has been said that sometimes when people spoke to her she would stand in complete silence, unable to speak or move.

From In Search of Anne Brontë, Nick Holland, 2016



Redxk
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23 Jun 2019, 6:50 pm

^ :!: