I've never heard of this book. Who wrote it and when?Originally Posted by Scheherazade
I've never heard of this book. Who wrote it and when?
'But that perfect happiness is a contemplative activity will appear from the following consideration as well. We assume the gods to be above all other beings blessed and happy; but what sort of actions must we assign to them? Acts of justice? Will not the gods seem absurd if they make contracts and return deposits, and so on? Acts of a brave man, then, confronting dangers and running risks because it is noble to do so? Or liberal acts? To whom will they give? It will be strange if they are really to have money or anything of the kind. And what would their temperate acts be? Is not such praise tasteless, since they have no bad appetites? If we were to run through them all, the circumstances of action would be found trivial and unworthy of gods. Still, every one supposes that they live and therefore that they are active; we cannot suppose them to sleep like Endymion. Now if you take away from a living being action, and still more production, what is left but contemplation? Therefore the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness.'
"Now, we have noticed that judges usually so arrange matters that the day upon which they hold court is also the day on which they are out of temper, in order that they may always have some one upon whom to vent their rage, in the name of the king, law and justice."
I was amazed at how well this 178-year-old quote described one of the judges before whom I practice law
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
Book One: Italy:
"How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thin and doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise. On top, there is a sweet tomato sauce that foams up all bubbly and creamy when it melts the fresh buffalo mozzarella, and the one sprig of basil in the middle of the whole deal somehow infuses the entire pizza with herbal radiance, much the same way one shimmering movie star in the middle of a party brings a contact high of glamour to everyone around her."
Book Two: India:
"I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water."
Book Three: Bali:
' "Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?" I asked my medicine man...He replied, "Bhuta ia, dewa ia."
"What does that mean?"
"Man is demon. Man is god. Both true." '
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its' own reason for existing." ~ Albert Einstein
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." Buckaroo Bonzai "Some people say I done alright for a girl." Melanie Safka
Two quotes from Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
"All that was the matter with her was nothing but loneliness, not the unhappiness of life itself, but only a seasonal attack of loneliness."
"The real troubles in the world tend to settle on the misalignment between men and women."
I could apply the second quote to "the misalignment between money and time."
Walk, meditate, forget - Victor Hugo
Life is bigger than literature - Michael Cunningham
How is that book? I should read it, but haven't gotten around to it.
I would compare that with the book Middlemarch by George Eliot, but shorter, less number of characters and events. It is about the whole life of Daisy Goodwill who marries two times and becomes a successful columnist on gardening and others. The author describes well Daisy's inner developments. I would disappoint you if I say, except a few quotes and events, I may not read it again. I will remember it with warmth.
Walk, meditate, forget - Victor Hugo
Life is bigger than literature - Michael Cunningham
The Name of the Rose was written in the 14th century by Umberto Eco. It was originally written in Italian, and it is a murder-mystery type of book set at a monastery.
(that my be over-reducing it a bit-- but it gives you an idea.)
"generally we call cruelty that which we do not have the heart to endure, while that which we endure easily, which is ordinary to us, does not seem cruel. thus what we call cruelty is always that of others, and not being able to refrain from cruelty we deny it as soon as it is ours. such weakness suppress nothing but make it a difficult task for anyone who seeks in these byways the hidden movement of the human heart."
"this is not an apology for horrible things, it is not a call for their return. but in this inexplicable impasse where we move in vain, these interruptions - which are only seemingly promises of resolution, which in the end promise us nothing but to be caught in the trap - contain all the truth of emotion in the instant of ravishment: that is, emotion, if the sense of life is inscribed therein, cannot be subordinated to any useful end. emotion that is not tied to the opening of horizon but to some nearby object, emotion within the limits of reason only offers us a compressed life. burdened by our lost truth, the cry of emotion rises out of disorder, such as it might be imagined by the child contrasting the window of his bedroom to the depths of the night. art, no doubt, is not restricted to the representation of horror, but its movement puts art without harm at the height of the worst and reciprocally, the painting of horror reveals the opening onto all possibility. that is why we must linger in the shadows which art acquires in the vicinity of death."
georges bataille - the cruel practice of art
Those were great quotes and I will add that book in my reading list. I just started rereading Death in Venice by Mann.
Introduction by Michael Cunningham to "Death in Venice by Thomas Mann"
"A novel in its earliest form, before it begins to be rendered into language, is a cloud of sorts that hovers over the writer's head, a mystery born with clues to its own meanings but also, at its heart, insoluble. One hopes- a novel is inevitably an expression of unreasonable hopes- that the finished book will contain not only characters and scenes but a certain larger truth, though that truth, whatever it may be, is impossible to express fully in words. It has to do with the fact that writer and reader both know, beneath the level of active consciousness, something about being alive and being mortal, and that that something, when we try to express it, inevitably eludes us. We are creatures whose innate knowledge exceeds that which can be articulated. Although language is enormously powerful, it is concrete, and so it can't help but miniaturize, to a certain extent, that which we simply know. All the writers I respect want to write a book so penetrating and thorough, so compassionate and unrelenting, that it can stand unembarrassed beside the spectacle of life itself. And all writers I respect seem to know (though no one likes to talk about it) that our efforts are doomed from the outset. Life is bigger than literature."
Walk, meditate, forget - Victor Hugo
Life is bigger than literature - Michael Cunningham
check this out: http://www.sauer-thompson.com/essays...elPractice.pdf
ive heard a lot about death in venice, the book. i did watch the movie and was very disappointed at the acting, though.
"A degenerate. A filthy degenerate! Arthus, please, for my sake. I know. I know. Leave your brother alone. Please. Brother???) -- O god, theyll bug me. They know I cant stay down. They know it. Nothing to see. To look at. Why me? Why wont somebody help me. I dont want to be alone. I cant stand it. Please help me. At least Goldie has bennie. I cant stay down. Always alone. O jesus, jesus jesus...why me??? Mommy? Mommy? O god I need something. Those sick johns. Always? I dont want to be straight. I just need something. I/ll go crazy. Theyre keeping me down. Down. Why do they want to kill me?"
-Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby, Jr.
(All punctuation is straight out of the book--I had to backspace so many times to type it correctly!)
I've been reading "Heart of Darkness" these past few days. The description at the beginning of the book struck me as being very beautiful:
"The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun"
- god, i wish i could write like that! It just brings the most vivid, beautiful images to mind.
Happy people exist too. Why should not they?
...
You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception.
...
The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that - well, lucky you.
from American Pastoral by Philip Roth
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
"I consider anybody who borrows a book instead of buying it, or lends one, a twerp. When I was a student at Shortridge High School a million years ago, a twerp was defined as a guy who put a set of false teeth up hes rear end and bit the buttons off the back seats of taxicabs.
But I hasten to say, should some impressionable young person here tonight, at loose ends and from a dysfunctional family, resolve to take a shot at being a real twerp tomorrow, that there are no longer buttons on the back seats of taxi-cabs. Times change!"
Armageddon Revisited, Kurt Vonnegut
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