She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that so frustrated Olivier and which Julien had only ever gras...
Still less, despite appearances, will it have been a collection of three “essays” whose itinerary it would be time, after the fact, to recognize; whose continuity and underlying laws could now be pointed out; indeed, whose overall concept or mean...
The schools wear the blank faces of war buildings, their windows blown blind by rocks or guns or mortars. Their plaster is an acne of bullet marks. The huts and small houses crouch open and vulnerable; their doors are flimsy pieces of plyboard or sac...
Your perception is riveting, Amal," he says in a bored and sarcastic tone, dropping the note down on my desk. "It's comforting to know that there are people in my class who have the maturity and intelligence to make derogatory comments about other pe...
He knew by heart every last minute crack on its surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds, and fishes. He made ma...
I have realized that part of being Dauntless is being willing to make things more difficult for yourself in order to be self-sufficient. There's nothing especially brave about wandering dark streets with no flashlight, but we are not supposed to need...
Okay. Then...I can talk. Ask me something." "Okay." He laughs shakily in my ear. "Why is your heart racing Tris?" I cringe and say, "Well, I...I barely know you. I barely know you and I'm crammed up against you in a box, Four, what do you think?"... ...
I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, sudde...
Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can...
Sully suffers from a stutter, simple syllables will clutter, stalling speeches up on beaches like a sunken sailboat rudder. Sully strains to say his phrases, sickened by the sounds he raises, strings of thoughts come out in knots, he solves his sente...
There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they...
Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of so- called economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend w...
Do you like to slide?" His voice was eager. Stair rails! Did he suspect me? I forced a sigh. "No, Majesty. I'm terrified of heights." "Oh." His polite tone had returned. "I wish I could enjoy it. This fear of heights is an affliction." He nodded, a s...
A farm regulated to production of raw commodities is not a farm at all. It is a temporary blip until the land is used up, the water polluted, the neighbors nauseated, and the air unbreathable. The farmhouse, the concrete, the machinery, and outbuildi...
He still heard his mother's voice--"Davey"--rise like whisper-dust from unseen corners in the house, but it was no longer the only voice he heard. His ears were also filled with the voices of others--his father and Primrose and Refrigerator John and ...
Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the...
Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind? First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less! Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than...
Sai bene che quando l’amore si spegne è più freddo della morte. Il problema è che le due parti in causa non si spengono contemporaneamente e quando sei la parte ancora accesa, preferiresti essere morto.
was born at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire, 1642: a weakly and diminutive infant, of whom it is related that, at his birth, he might have found room in a quart mug. He died on March the 20th, 1727, after more than eighty-four years of mo...
The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the ne...
History resists an ending as surely as nature abhors a vacuum; the narrative of our days is a run-on sentence, every full stop a comma in embryo. But more: like thought, like water, history is fluid, unpredictable, dangerous. It leaps and surges and ...
