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f3a6267
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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
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life
resignation
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Henry David Thoreau |
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338b081
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It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.
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destination
resignation
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Samuel Beckett |
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1101326
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"Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think... when I get tired enough... I think I'll just sit down"
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peter-mcvries
resignation
tiredness
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Stephen King |
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35f8fff
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We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.
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life
resignation
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Graham Greene |
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0302d53
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He saw it for the first time: on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered e-mails, and in the hovel he called home there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, and unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply and lovers he had not owned up to.
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resignation
procrastination
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Ian McEwan |
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e43e3fd
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What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.
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marriage
love
intersection
life-lines
resignation
married-life
parallels
perspective
matrimony
separation
pride
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Wallace Stegner |
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9ce4164
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"I have lived in this tree, in this same hollow," the owl said, "for more years than anyone can remember. But now, when the wind blows hard in winter and rocks the forest, I sit here in the dark, and from deep down in the bole, near the roots, I hear a new sound. It is the sound of strands of wood creaking in the cold and snapping one by one. The limbs are falling; the tree is old, and it is dying. Yet I cannot bring myself, after so many years, to leave, to find a new home and move into it, perhaps to fight for it. I, too, have grown old. One of these days, one of these years, the tree will fall, and when it does, if I am still alive, I will fall with it."
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resignation
owl
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Robert C. O'Brien |
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72b9cd7
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I was just as black as I had been the day that I was born. Therefore, when I faced a congregation, it began to take all the strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike. When I watched all the children, their copper, brown, and beige faces staring up at me as I taught Sunday school, I felt that I was committing a crime in talking about the gentle Jesus, in telling them to reconcile themselves to their misery on earth in order to gain the crown of eternal life. Were only Negroes to gain this crown? Was Heaven, then, to be merely another ghetto?
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social-justice
resignation
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James Baldwin |
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47b6f0b
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"The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair."
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philosophy
resignation
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P.G. Wodehouse |
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b9d5bdb
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Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small... and you will escape the jealousy of the great.
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subjugation
resignation
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Philip K. Dick |
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5ec26ce
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But she knew, though very vaguely, that she was crying, because hope hurts terribly when it breaks through the resignation in which you have lived for days.
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hope
resignation
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Ursula K. Le Guin |
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d416a27
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When he resigned his boss thought he was asking for more money. 'No,' he said. 'I'm just going to try to be a full-time writer.' Oh, his boss said, you want a more money. 'No, really,' he said. 'This isn't a negotiation. I'm just giving you my thirty days' notice. Thirty-one days from now, I won't be coming in.' Hmm, his boss replied. I don't think we can give you as much money as .
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raises
resignation
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Salman Rushdie |
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7b66f56
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Now, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk. The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else... There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level, and surveys the long windings of destiny.
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resignation
growth
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Edith Wharton |
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81247f0
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She could, she thinks, have entered a different life. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.
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fantasy-life
life-worth-living
exciting-life
ennui
resignation
regret
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Michael Cunningham |
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06d1120
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He sees now that he is rich that these were the [shore] outings of the poor, ending in sunburn and stomach upset. Pop liked crabcakes and baked oysters but could never eat them without throwing up. When the Model A was tucked into the garage and little Mim tucked into bed Harry could hear his father vomiting in a far corner of the yard. He never complained about vomiting or about work, they were just things you had to do, one more regularly than the other.
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rabbit-angstrom
resignation
vacation
class
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John Updike |
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18b31ed
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"His life, for years past, had been mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of them a small tribute of amusement. ("The Triumph Of The Night")"
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resignation
embarrassment
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Edith Wharton |
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c2e8a90
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... behind which the panting dog drooped like a dropped chamois. It was too hot to smoke, but he smoked his pipe anyway. The smoke wreathed a strange smile that Dorrigo later came to realise was fixed; determined to find the world cheery in spite of all the evidence life produced to the contrary.
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optimism
resignation
realisation
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Richard Flanagan |