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335c447
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Inside, the doctor filled an eyedropper with goat milk and began to drip it into the back of the marten's throat. It filled him with immense medical satisfaction when eventually it urinated on the knee of his trousers. This indicated healthy renal functioning.
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Louis de Bernières |
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2f64cb0
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He read his own obituary and an editorial lamenting his demise and praising his fortitude and immediately began to think up witty ways of writing to the paper to announce his continued and uninterrupted existence. The other two joined in the game with enthusiasm, and soon all three of them were howling with laughter and emptying bottles at a rate which would have alarmed even a depressed Scandinavian.
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Louis de Bernières |
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1eaec7e
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That is morality,I make myself imagine that it is personal.
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personal
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Louis de Bernières |
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1d8749b
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no one is more truly themselves than when they are sick or injured. That's when the qualities come out.
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Louis de Bernières |
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788b02c
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She was beginning to understand that it is not enough to love someone deeply; you also have to learn to love them well.
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Louis de Bernières |
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6abbbae
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All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimisers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors.
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Louis de Bernières |
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4248cb8
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There was between 1821 and 1913 a prolonged and atrocious holocaust which we have chosen to forget, and from which we have learned absolutely nothing. In 1821, between 26 March and Easter Sunday, in the name of liberty, the southern Greek Christians tortured and massacred 15,000 Greek Muslim civilians, looted their possessions, and burned their dwellings. The Greek hero Kolokotronis boasted without qualm that so many were the corpses that h..
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Louis de Bernières |
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6d5bf0c
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Dionisio arose reluctantly from his bed, went to the window to see what kind of day it was, and went to the telephone to call the police.
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Louis de Bernières |
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4e3ee33
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Laska je prechodne silenstvi, vybuchne jako sopka a potom opadne. A kdyz opadne, musis se rozhodnout. Musis zjistit, zdali je vase koreny propleteny takovym zpusobem, ze vas rozchod neni vubec myslitelny. Protoze prave tohle je laska. Laska neni ta bezdechnost, neni to vzruseni, nejsou to halasne sliby vecne vasne, neni to touha parit se ctyriadvacet hodin denne a neni to, kdyz v noci zustanes vzhuru a predstavujes si, ze liba kazdy zahyb t..
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Louis de Bernières |
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dce8c3e
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It sometimes happens that in relatively powerless and impoverished countries there arise men of enormous vision who are frustrated and offended by the limitations of their lives and seek to reach out for the stars on behalf of themselves and their nations.
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Louis de Bernières |
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cb12936
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A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish ... well, God knows. Anyway,
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Louis de Bernières |
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19e335c
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The dead can read tears.
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Louis de Bernières |
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d99377f
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You can't be pretty forever, you know that? But you can always be beautiful.
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Louis de Bernières |
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fb087cd
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Quite often the dolphins save the lives of those who are drowning, and sometimes they dolphins make a mistake and try to save those who are not drowning at all but are really diving for turtles. That is something that one just has to put up with from time to time, and it serves to prove how simpatico the animals are.
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Louis de Bernières |
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f894b0e
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There comes a point in life where each one of us who survives begins to feel like a ghost that has forgotten to die at the right time,
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Louis de Bernières |
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301eb28
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There is only one thing worse than losing the one you love, and that is losing them without knowing why. If you are a dog, then your master is like a god to you, and the pain of losing him is greater still.
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loss
love
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Louis de Bernières |
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3c2962a
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for the bird that cannot soar, God has provided low branches.
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Louis de Bernières |
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e4bcb36
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He felt his throat constrict. and was overcome with an emotion that he could not name. because it was a mixture of so many.
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Louis de Bernières |
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e286cab
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Do you know the strangest thing about being a soldier? It is that you are repeatedly ordered to commit suicide. and you obey.
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Louis de Bernières |
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9dfdcd6
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No one is every only one thing. Inside one person there are so many different people, and quite often they're at war with each other, and sometimes one of them is winning, and sometimes another. We're all so hard to understand, aren't we? I don't even understand myself.
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self-reflection
conflict
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Louis de Bernières |
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ff623be
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Eventually, in an historic feat of compromise, democracy was restored by the abolition of elections..
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Louis de Bernières |
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473254d
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There is nothing at all wrong with our laws and institutions and our constitution, which are all democratic and enlightened. What is wrong is that they are enforced by people who do not consider themselves bound by them.
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Louis de Bernières |
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530c4d4
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Lord Jesus, Son of God,' he prayed. 'If you're not going to do anything, I will.
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Louis de Bernières |
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739f915
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Christmas is such a trial,' said Mrs McCosh. 'I do most sincerely wish the Lord had been born at some other time.
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Louis de Bernières |
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6fe1c32
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What's the news of the war?' The doctor twisted the ends of his moustache and said, 'Germany is taking everything, the Italians are playing the fool, the French have run away, the Belgians have been overrun whilst they were looking the other way, the Poles have been charging tanks with cavalry, the Americans have been playing baseball, the British have been drinking tea and adjusting their monocles, the Russians have been sitting on their h..
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Louis de Bernières |
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9ceecb1
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Soldiers planted like vegetables waiting for the day of harvest. ... everything is more intense at night, perfectly beautiful, and when the wind shifts and the reek of rotting meat vanishes for a few blessed minutes you can smell the sweet scent of the countryside.
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Louis de Bernières |
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8370053
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few sagging houses whose stones had lost their mortar and were held together only by gravity and habit,
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Louis de Bernières |
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c9589e6
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Only an island as lackadaisical as this would allow itself to be infested by such troupes of casual and impertinent goats.
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Louis de Bernières |
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5f92db5
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The oligarchy was divided into Liberals and Conservatives, who were united in their terror of communism after the success of the Cuban Revolution, especially since many of them had had interests in the brothels and casinos of Havana; others had had interests in pharmaceutical companies that manufactured drugs to cure the diseases spread by the former, and some in supplying guns to be used by gangs struggling for control of the latter. Howev..
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Louis de Bernières |
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bc3c857
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to believe there's so many dogs that all look the same.' Nancy smiled to herself. Red Dog was everybody's dog now,
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Louis de Bernières |
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fb4fd91
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Distinguee? In what sense might a maid be distinguee?
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Louis de Bernières |
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419302f
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as the human race is incapable of learning anything from history.
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Louis de Bernières |
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8ac27cb
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One is only young once, but in her case it was once too often.
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Louis de Bernières |
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13fe6ee
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joy,
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Louis de Bernières |
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7a44975
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Their trade was not life, but death. They have eaten the fruit of the tree they grew for others to eat.
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Louis de Bernières |
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fc9e912
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And the priest will say, 'This is a matter of the Devil and not of God,' and I will reply, 'Did God not make the Devil? Is He not omniscient? How can I be blamed for what He knew would occur from the very commencement of time?
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Louis de Bernières |
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215a42a
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If you have been embroiled in a war in which you confidently expected to die, what were you supposed to do with so much life unexpectedly left over? There were so many ways of passing the peace, and you would never know what they would have been like, those roads not taken.
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war
path-not-taken
road-not-taken
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Louis de Bernières |
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ceb1302
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the general trouble with ignorance is always that ignorant people have no idea that that's what they are. You can be ignorant and stupid and go through your whole life without ever encountering any evidence against the hypothesis that you're a genius. If you're stupid you can always blame miscalculation on bad luck.
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stupidity
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Louis de Bernières |
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9a1eb79
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It was said that there was a smile at the corners of his lips from the moment of his birth, and from early boyhood he was a specialist in in appropriate interjections.
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Louis de Bernières |
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b57bbcf
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You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs,' quoted Kokolios, looking at Stamatis significantly. 'I don't like your omelette,' said Stamatis. 'It's made with bad eggs, it tastes foul, and it makes me shit.' (62)
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Louis de Bernières |
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43ca1c6
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We live in a perpetual daze. The snow has made everything unrecognisable so that we never know where we are. Is this the escarpment we were told to take? Is that a stream in that valley floor, somewhere six feet below the shimmering cloak of white? What mountain is that? Someone strip away the cloud, for the love of God, so that we can tell. Is this a road we are floundering upon, or a river? Don't worry, we'll know when we reach the source..
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Louis de Bernières |
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148d70c
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He was like one of those saprophytic orchids that can create harmony and wonder even as it grows and blossoms on a pile of shit, in a place of skulls and bones. He let his rifle rust, and even los it once or twice, but he won battles armes with nothing but a mandolin. (195-196)
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Louis de Bernières |
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87d9c95
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The half-forgotten island of Cephallonia rises improvidently and inadvisedly from the Ionian Sea; it is an island so immense in antiquity that the very rocks themselves exhale nostalgia and the red earth lies stupefied not only by the sun, but by the impossible weight of memory.
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Louis de Bernières |
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b6f62e5
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One should not, after
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Louis de Bernières |