Most of the world is either asleep or dead. The religious people are, for the most part, asleep. The irreligious are dead. Those who are asleep are divided into two classes, like the Virgins in the parable, waiting for the Bridegroom's coming. The wi...
When you break up with someone, and I’m not talking casual breakups here, it’s hard to take the sudden absence of such an important person in your life. It reminded me of when I’d stopped going to school and the weird uneasy feeling I’d gotte...
Don't we all have a certain number of images that stay around in our head, which we undoubtedly call memories and improperly so, and which we can never get rid of because they return in our sky with the regularity of a comet - torn away also from a w...
About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread : there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The u...
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless and contrived war ...
you cannot be friends either with boy or man unless you give yourself away in the process, and Mr. Pembroke did not commend this. He, for “personal intercourse,” substituted the safer “personal influence,” and gave his junior hints on the set...
A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life: 1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day. 2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself. 3. Never spend your money before you have it. 4. Never buy a thing you do not want, ...
Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passi...
In my isolation, I dreamt of power. My daydreams and fantasies were all about how I could win, how I could be number one, how I could have my cake and eat it too. When those dreams were fulfilled, I felt nothing. The love-sized hole within me grew la...
Please-tame me!' he said. 'I want to, very much,' the little prince replied. 'But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.' 'One only understands the things that one tames,' said the fox. 'Men have no m...
Olga was nice, Olga was nice and loving, Olga loved him, he repeated to himself with a growing sadness as he also realised that nothing would ever happen between them again, life sometimes offers you a chance he thought, but when you are too cowardly...
You are angry at the God you were taught to believe in as a child. The God who is supposed to watch over you and protect you, who answers your prayers and forgives your sins. This God is just a story. Religions try to capture God, but God is beyond r...
At the end of our visit, Fleisher agreed to play something on my piano, a beautiful old 1894 Bechstein concert grand that I had grown up with, my father's piano. Fleisher sat at the piano and carefully, tenderly, stretched each finger in turn, and th...
I am beginning to be sorry that I ever undertook to write this book. Not that it bores me; I have nothing else to do; indeed, it is a welcome distraction from eternity. But the book is tedious, it smells of the tomb, it has a rigor mortis about it; a...
Honestly, Evie," I huffed, flopping back to the centre of my bed and glaring at the ceiling. "Why don't you whine some more instead of actually doing anything?" "Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness," Arianna volunteered, leaning on the f...
My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recor...
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him g...
Almondine Eventually, she understood the house was keeping a secret from her. All that winter and all through the spring Almondine had known something was going to happen, but no matter where she looked she couldn’t find it. Sometimes, when she ent...
Dr. Watson's summary list of Sherlock Holmes's strengths and weaknesses: "1. Knowledge of Literature: Nil. 2. Knowledge of Philosophy: Nil. 3. Knowledge of Astronomy: Nil. 4. Knowledge of Politics: Feeble. 5. Knowledge of Botany: Variable. Well up in...
I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. He's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-" "But-" Tom grabs both my hands in his ...
Nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disa...
