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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)
(1906). The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: Cape Cod and Miscellanies.
"If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for — business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business." (p. 457)
(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)
(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)
(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."
(1952). Player Piano.
"Strange business", said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon." (p. 93)
(1954). Tragic Sense of Life.
"To have recourse to those ambiguous words, 'optimism' and 'pessimism', does not assist us in any way, for frequently they express the very contrary of what those who use them mean to express. To ticket a doctrine with the label of pessimism is not to impugn its validity, and the so-called optimists are not the most efficient in action. I believe, on the contrary, that many of the greatest heroes, perhaps the greatest of all, have been men of despair and that by despair they have accomplished their mighty works." (p. 130)
(1956). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
"All I say is, kings is kings, and you got to make allowances. Take them all around, they're a mighty ornery lot. It's the way they're raised."
(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!
(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)
(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)
(1977). The Portable Thoreau.
(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)
(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)
(1985). The New Jerusalem Bible.
The poor is detestable even to a friend, but many are they who love someone rich. One who despises the needy is at fault, one who takes pity on the poor is blessed.
(1989). Catch-22.
(1990). Animal farm : a fairy story.
(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."
(1991). Frankenstein.
(1992). Two Lives.
(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)
(1993). Snow Crash.
Stephenson's dark social satire illustrates what an anti-ROWE future might look like:
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
"You could try to favor a particular station, try to sit there every day, but it would be noticed. Generally you pick the unoccupied workstation that's closest to the door. That way, whoever comes in earliest sits closest, whoever came in latest is way in the back, for the rest of the day it's obvious at a glance who's on the ball in this office and who is—as they whisper to each other in the bathrooms—having problems.
Not that it's any big secret, who comes in first. When you sign on to a workstation in the morning, it's not like the central computer doesn't notice that fact. The central computer notices just about everything....You're only required to be at your workstation from eight to five, with a half-hour lunch break and two ten-minute coffee breaks, but if you stuck to that schedule it would definitely be noticed..." (p. 282)
(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)
(1995). Demons.
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