December 2009
21 posts
You should have seen him at our club when he sat down to cards. His whole figure seemed to exclaim: “Cards! Me sit down to whist with you! Is it consistent? Who is responsible for it? Who has shattered my energies and turned them to whist? Ah, perish, Russia!” and he would majestically trump with a heart.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, Devils
One must not be too hasty in judging men, one must trust them to the point of absurdity, to their very dregs. These foolhardy works often seem to you the product of a mind which is not yet in possession of itself and which perhaps never will possess itself, but who knows what brain thy conceal, what power of life, what mental fever which circumstances alone have reduced. Enough about myself and...
When the world is reduced to a single dark wood for our four eyes’ astonishment—a beach for two faithful children—a musical house for our pure sympathy—I shall find you.
Should there be here below but a single old man, handsome in calm in the midst of incredible luxury, I shall be at your feet.
Should I have realized all your memories—should I be the one who can bind you hand and foot—I...
Quand le monde sera réduit en un seul bois noir pour nos quatre yeux étonnés—en une plage pour deux enfants fidèles—en une maison musicale pour notre claire sympathie,—je vous trouverai. Qu’il n’y ait ici-bas qu’un vieillard seul, calme et beau, entouré d’un luxe inouï—et je suis à vos genoux. Que j’aie réalisé tous vos souvenirs—que je sois celle qui sais vous...
“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if that makes you less unhappy.”
-Forster
In spite of the season, Mrs. Vyse managed to scrape together a dinner-party consisting entirely of the grandchildren of famous people. The food was poor, but the talk had a weary wittiness that impressed the girl. One was tired of everything, it seemed. One launched into enthusiasms only to collapse gracefully, and pick oneself up amid sympathetic laughter.
-Forster
He tied the horse to a tree, kicked it to make it stay quiet, dusted the carriage, arranged his hair, remoulded his hat, encouraged his moustache, and in rather less than a quarter of a minute was ready to conduct her. Italians are born knowing the way. It would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a chessboard, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well...
Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident, for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word ‘accident’ has meaning. Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is merely a type of what is dead, and a very rare type.
-Nietzsche, The Gay Science
though acts don’t matter, I know, I know, or thoughts.
-Beckett, The Unnamable
Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be the first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of the people.
-Deuteronomy 13:8-9
You are going to perform an act of heroic virtue, and you don’t believe in virtue; that’s what tortures you and makes you angry, that’s why you are so vindictive.
-Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.
-Joyce, “The Dead”
I dreamed my left leg wasn’t mine, and woke with a terrible pain.
-Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
“Don’t be a spoilsport—remember, you have a tendency toward wavering that prevents you from being the entire light of my life.”
-Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
in an old book
because it became clear as you looked at the work (it was easy to see what the artist had in mind) that the young man in the painting was not designated for those who love in ways that are more or less healthy, inside the bounds of what is clearly permissible— with his deep chestnut eyes, the rare beauty of his face, the beauty of anomalous charm, with those ideal lips that bring sensual...
This is what happens when you are dead:
You know the living are up there, driving your horses, ploughing your fields, handling your bowls. Eating. The living are always eating; their tongues fossicking among the bones.
They make use of your cloths. Your armour. You sense them, hear their footfalls; almost you can see them. In your mind it is clearer than when you were there but your eyes have...
as much as you can
And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it by too much contact with the world, by too much activity and talk.
Try not to degrade it by dragging it along, taking it around and exposing it so often to the daily silliness of social events and parties, until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.
-C.P. Cavafy
“It was curiosity—the only kind of curiosity, in any case, that is worth acting upon with a degree of obstinacy: not the curiosity that seeks to assimilate what is proper for one to know, but that which enables one to get free of oneself. After all, what would be the value of the passion for knowledge if it resulted only in a certain amount of knowledgeableness and not, in one way or...