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881d589
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He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.
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truth
innocence
horse
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Mark Helprin |
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6528d8a
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If it weren't for music, I would think that love is mortal.
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music
power-of-music
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Mark Helprin |
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68e4f3a
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As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.
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inspirational
believe
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Mark Helprin |
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68cce63
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Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, suppose..
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Mark Helprin |
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afbe6b9
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Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.
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laughter
loneliness
lonely-people
intensity
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Mark Helprin |
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60fba8a
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Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain.
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miracles
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Mark Helprin |
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e37110c
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The shelf was filled with books that were hard to read, that could devastate and remake one's soul, and that, when they were finished, had a kick like a mule.
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Mark Helprin |
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bd40cc6
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They gave themselves up to the stars the way swimmers can surrender to the waves, and the stars took them without resistance.
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Mark Helprin |
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462b6bd
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No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile. I didn't bring you up only to move across sure ground. I didn't teach you to think that everything must be within our control or understanding...
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science
uncertainty
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Mark Helprin |
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c2b37d2
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To be mad is to feel with excruciating intensity the sadness and joy of a time which has not arrived or has already been. And to protect their delicate vision of that other time, madmen will justify their condition with touching loyalty, and surround it with a thousand distractive schemes. These schemes, in turn, drive them deeper and deeper into the darkness and light (which is their mortification and their reward), and confront them with ..
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Mark Helprin |
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ec19a70
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Give me a night by the fire, with a book in my hand, not that flickering rectangular son of a bitch that sits screaming in every living room in the land.
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Mark Helprin |
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eef8031
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He could say nothing. He had no right to be there, he had already been profoundly changed, he was no good at small talk, she was half naked, it was dawn and he loved her.
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Mark Helprin |
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8f04490
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Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking.
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Mark Helprin |
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ccda70b
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They're not just dreams. Not anymore, I dream more than I wake now, and, at times, I have crossed over. Can't you see? I've been there.
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Mark Helprin |
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678e27c
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All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
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Mark Helprin |
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ba93c4c
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Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branche..
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winter
seasonal
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Mark Helprin |
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922e8cc
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If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined; it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined.
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Mark Helprin |
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444dccb
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She felt as if she knew the stars, and had been among them, or would be.
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Mark Helprin |
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dcf21c2
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And how does God speak to you?" "In the language of everything that is beautiful."
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Mark Helprin |
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e8175d9
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All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.
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Mark Helprin |
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fcd66a1
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Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.
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travel
train
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Mark Helprin |
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0f37355
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For what can be imagined more beautiful than the sight of a perfectly just city rejoicing in justice alone.
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Mark Helprin |
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81672a2
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She died on a windy gray day in March when the sky was full of darting crows and the world lay prostrate and defeated after winter. Peter Lake was at her side and it ruined him forever. It broke him as he had not ever imagined he could have been broken. He would never again be young, or able to remember what it was like to be young. What he had once taken to be pleasures would appear to him in his defeat as hideous and deserved punishments ..
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love
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Mark Helprin |
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e5e1bea
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A good river is nature's life work in song.
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song
river
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Mark Helprin |
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1945dd7
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to be paid for one's joy is to steal.
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Mark Helprin |
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047a494
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He hated it as if he were about to love it--unforgivingly, irrationally, sadly.
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Mark Helprin |
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0ce0256
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They were dancing around the fountain, arm in arm, in an old Dutch dance, their cheeks touching, their hands entwined. They had no music; they hummed. And there was no reason for them to be dancing that Peter Lake could see, except that it was an exceptionally beautiful night.
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Mark Helprin |
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a259c16
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I'm not afraid," Rafi said. "Why not?" "If I die tomorrow it will have been useless to have been afraid today."
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Mark Helprin |
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0f48f41
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When] he's here, he's always reading. He says books stop time. I myself think he's crazy...Don't tell anyone, but when he reads something that he likes he gets real happy, turns on the music, and dances by himself, or with a broom sometimes.
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time
reading
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Mark Helprin |
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40e5860
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I see no justice in that plan." "Who said," lashed out Isaac Penn, "that you, a man, can always perceive justice? Who said that justice is what you imagine? Can you be sure that you know it when you see it, that you will live long enough to recognize the decisive thunder of its occurrence, that it can be manifest within a generation, within ten generations, within the entire span of human existence? What you are talking about is common sens..
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Mark Helprin |
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aa11744
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And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.
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Mark Helprin |
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a6055ad
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The beauty of truth is that it need not be proclaimed or believed. It skips from soul to soul, changing form each time it touches, but it is what it is, I have seen it, and someday you will, too.
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Mark Helprin |
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928b74b
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Shall I show you the half-dozen other rooms in this hospital where these scenes are repeated? And what of the other hospitals? Printing House Square is small and tame. Even in the private institutions uptown you can see a show just like this: there is nothing as disgusting as an obese cadaver in which all the futile pleasures of many years finally arise to fill it full-blown with stinking rotten gases. The city is burning and under siege. A..
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Mark Helprin |
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53eb764
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Why do people resist [engines, bridges, and cities] so? They are symbols and products of the imagination, which is the force that ensures justice and historical momentum in an imperfect world, because without imagination we would not have the wherewithal to challenge certainty, and we could never rise above ourselves.
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mankind
imagination
cities
justice
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Mark Helprin |
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8bc42af
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and even when I was broken the way sometimes one can be broken, and even though I had fallen, I found upon arising that I was stronger than before, that the glories, if I may call them that, which I had loved so much and that had been darkened in my fall, were shinning even brighter and nearly everytime subsequently I have fallen and darkness has come over me, they have obstinately arisen, not as they were, but brighter.
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Mark Helprin |
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b4aeaa5
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Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider, and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when, for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.
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Mark Helprin |
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676bbdc
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Perhaps he was a fool, but he thought that if a work were truly great you would only have to read it once and you would be stolen from yourself, desperately moved, changed forever.
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Mark Helprin |
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6ece07f
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Not surprisingly, he began to sing, and because no one in the world could hear him, and he sang without inhibition, he sang well.
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Mark Helprin |
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0d6467b
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He knew very well that love could be like the most beautiful singing, that it could make death inconsequential, that it existed in forms so pure and strong that it was capable of reordering the universe. He knew this, and that he lacked it, and yet as he stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Venezia, watching diplomats file quietly out the gate, he was content, for he suspected that to command the profoundest love might in the end be far le..
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Mark Helprin |
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b397d22
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The child was left alone to die in the hallway. Here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with Peter. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and..
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Mark Helprin |
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e019054
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You can't expect anyone to trust revelation if he hasn't experienced it himself. Those who haven't only know reason. And since revelation is a thing apart, and cannot be accounted for reasonably, they never will believe you. This is the great division of the world and always has been. When reason and revelation run together, why, then you have something great, a great age.
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spiritual
wisdom
seek-and-you-shall-find
numinous
solace
knowledge
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Mark Helprin |
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d8fc037
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When faced with something I fear, I tend to eat spaghetti.
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humor
spaghetti
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Mark Helprin |
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c366996
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Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even ..
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Mark Helprin |
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762d54e
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As the clockwork of the millennia moved a notch in front of their eyes, it had taken their thoughts from small things and reminded them of how vulnerable they were to time.
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Mark Helprin |