Found in the print edition of the newspaper Die Zeit, a mind-boggling quote by German philosopher Novalis (wikipedia):
Wir suchen immer das Unbedingte und finden doch nur Dinge.
A verbatim translation of the quote runs along the lines of:
I’ll go out on a limb and supply another, more construed version, which I actually prefer:
However, as English isn’t my mother tongue, both versions have to be taken with a grain of salt.
While probably not among his best, The Sleeper Awakes (wikipedia) is still one of my favourite books by socialist science fiction writer H.G. Wells (wikipedia).
What I like about the book is the way the seemingly personal utopia of one man turns into an social dystopia. Being written before both World Wars, that dystopia happens out of normal human progress, which somehow makes it even more devastating than the many after-war scenarios brought forward in other dystopias (e.g. 1984 by George Orwell or Brave New World by Aldous Huxley).
Below a quote I marked when I first had read the book:
Our array of angry virtues and sour restraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. The Stoic, the Puritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. In the old days man was armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure. There lies the difference. Civilization has driven pain and danger so far off - for well-to-do people.
I’ve just stumbled upon DaveQat’s write-up on everything2.com, I pity a a man with no scars (link). Somehow, it struck a chord with me, so here it is:
I pity a man who hasn’t seen midnight,
because he doesn’t know the beauty of the dawn.I pity a man who hasn’t known failure
because he doesn’t know the exultation of success.I pity a man who hasn’t tasted filth
because he doesn’t know the sweetness of honey.I pity a man with no scars
because he doesn’t know the ease of healingI pity a man who has never seen death
because he doesn’t know the joy of life.
From personal experience, I pity a man who hasn’t lost himself
because he doesn’t know the bittersweet joy of finding and reinventing oneself.
Joseph Conrad (wikipedia) is one of my favourite authors. The stories of his books are always fascinating, which is greatly due to his ability to portray all his characters and their motives and backgrounds in an insightful and compelling way.
I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon (on the always interesting Thought Experiments blog) the following great quote from his novel Under Western Eyes:
For the use of reason is to justify the obscure reasons that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices and follies, and also our fears.
I was sorting through my book collection and stumbled upon Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night (wikipedia). It is about the most depressing and grim book I’ve ever read. The excerpt below is a good example of its deep agony:
The worst part is wondering how you’ll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you’ll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it’s treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst.
Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.
Do not read this book unless you are in good mental shape.
From Bill Clinton’s speech (source) at the Democratic National Convention in Denver:
People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.
I’ve just read The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin (wikipedia). It’s no match for the likes of the recently featured WE, yet it’s a pleasent read which I quite enjoyed for its writing style:
The sight of a gentleman gesticulating with a gun could not fail to attract the attention of the promenading public.
… for all of the witnesses repeated more or less the same thing, differing from each other only in their degree of perspicacity: some affirmed that the young man’s appearance had instantly filled them with alarm and foreboding (’The moment I looked into his crazy eyes, I went cold all over,’ stated Titular Counsellor’s wife Khokhrayakova, who went on, however, to testify that she had only seen the young man from the back); [...]
Even though I enjoyed reading The Winter Queen overall, I have a few specific issues with the book; I’d like to highlight them in a separate blog post.
