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(1871). Æsop's fables.
"A wolf, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea, which should justify to the lamb himself, his right to eat him. He then addressed him: 'Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.' 'Indeed,' bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice: 'I was not then born.' Then said the wolf: 'You feed in my pasture.' 'No, good sir,' replied the lamb: 'I have not yet tasted grass.' Again said the wolf: 'You drink of my well.' 'No, exclaimed the lamb: I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother's milk is both food and drink to me.' Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying: 'Well! I won't remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.'
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny." (p. 2)
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny." (p. 2)
(1962). Letters and papers from prison.
(, Ed.).
"We have been the silent witnesses of evil deeds. Many storms have gone over our heads. We have learned the art of deception and of equivocal speech. Experience has made us suspicious of others, and prevented us from being open and frank. Bitter conflicts have made us weary and even cynical. Are we still serviceable? It is not the genius that we shall need, not the misanthropist, not the adroit tactician, but honest, straightforward men. Will our spiritual reserves prove adequate and our candor with ourselves remorseless enough to enable us to find our way back again to simplicity and straightforwardness?" (p. 34)
(2007). Coffee with Oscar Wilde.
(1962). David Copperfield.
"It is a fact which will long be remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge, and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go 'meandering' about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, "Let us have no meandering." (p. 14)
(1959). Selected Poems and Letters of Emily Dickinson.
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!
(1995). Demons.
(2004). The Brothers Karamazov.
(1922). The Brothers Karamazov: a novel in four parts and an epilogue.
"He did no one any harm, but 'Why do they think him so saintly?' And that question alone gradually repeated gave rise at last to an intense, insatiable hatred toward him. That I believe was why many people were extremely delighted at the smell of decomposition which came so quickly, for not a day had passed since his death." (p. 352)
(1908). The complete works of George Eliot....
"Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of; he had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong, determined soul can learn it—by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering." (p. 309)
(1993). Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.
306. Abstract
"Daddy has been home a lot lately, as there is nothing for him to do at business; it must be rotten to feel so superfluous." (p. 12)
(2005). The Idiot.
(1978). The Scarlet Letter: An Authoritative Text, Essays in Criticism and Scholars.
"A third group—'those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body'—see the letter as a psychic cancer that gradually manifested itself physically." —Roy R. Male (p. 334)
(2000). Beowulf: A New Verse Translation.
(1989). Catch-22.
(1990). The Iliad.
712. Abstract
"Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds, and the will of Zeus was moving towards its end. Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed, Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles."
(1996). Unholy Hungers : Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves and Others.
"We, too, try to emulate the gods, but unlike the Greeks, we seem dangerously ignorant of the peril of hubris. Not that we blindly aspire to godhood from stupidity or arrogance; rather, we aspire to godhood because the modern demigods we revere are themselves mortal, so we quite reasonably feel their enviable fate might just as well be our own. What's more, celebrity in our culture is supposed to be available to all who have the guts to seek it, which implies that those who do not attain it are somehow deficient in the skills of self-reinvention"
(1983). 1984 [nineteen eighty-four] revisited : totalitarianism in our century.
"Orwell came down hard in 1984 against what philosophers call mechanistic theories of knowledge, against the view that the motions of the world report to every man's senses in uniform ways." (p. 64)
(1995). The Metamorphosis, in the Penal Colony, and Other Stories.
"If I had first called the man before me and interrogated him, things would have got into a confused tangle. He would have told lies, and had I exposed these lies he would have backed them up with more lies, and so on and so forth. As it is, I've got him and I won't let him go.—Is that quite clear now?" (The Penal Colony, p. 199)
(Submitted). Herman Melville / David Kirby.
(2009). Billy Budd.
"Now envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable in reason, nevertheless in fact may spring conjoined like Chang and Eng in one birth. Is Envy then such a monster? Well, though many an arraigned mortal has in hopes of mitigated penalty pleaded guilty to horrible actions, did ever anybody seriously confess to envy? Something there is in it universally felt to be more shameful than even felonious crime. And not only does everybody disown it, but the better sort are inclined to incredulity when it is in earnest imputed to an intelligent man. But since its lodgement is in the heart not the brain, no degree of intellect supplies a guarantee against it."
(1949). 1984.
"But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
(1990). Animal farm : a fairy story.
(1993). The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro/The Apology/Crito/Phaedo.
"Present circumstances are quite enough to show that the capacity of ordinary people for doing harm is not confined to petty annoyances, but has hardly any limits once you get a bad name with them." (p. 78)
(1998). Othello (Signet Classic Shakespeare).
"Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something; nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed." (III, iii)
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something; nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed." (III, iii)
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