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7d9b247
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The obituary writers drew their incomplete sketches, touring through his life like travelers to England who do not ever see swans, sheep, bicycles, and blue eyes.
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blue-eyes
england
obituary
sheep
swans
travelers
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Mark Helprin |
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351226b
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you can't do anything absolutely by reason. That's because reason depends on postulates. Postulates defy proof and yet they are essential to reason.
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Mark Helprin |
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7bcffb6
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The spark of life is not gain. Nor is it luxury. The spark of life is movement. Color. Love. And furthermore...if you really want to enjoy life, you must work quietly and humbly to realize your delusions of grandeur.
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Mark Helprin |
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f80fdca
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In a thousand years," Alessandro said, "this incident will be remembered. By then, of course, we will have become angels, devils, or a dragon that breathes fire...but we have given this rock a story that will be passed on." "What good is that?" "It isn't to our advantage, if that's what you mean. However, it's pleasurable to cast a line into the future, no matter how tenuously. You never know, the line may be unbroken all the way to the las..
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Mark Helprin |
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17dd456
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Watching the children, he noticed two things especially. A girl of about five, and her sister, who was no more than three, wanted to drink from the pebbled concrete fountain at the playground's edge, but it was too high for either of them, so the five-year-old...jumped up and, resting her stomach on the edge and grasping the sides, began to drink. But she was neither strong enough nor oblivious enough of the pain to hand on, and she began t..
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Mark Helprin |
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f60a68b
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Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orion. There was no finer church, no finer choir, than the stars speaking in silence to the many consumptives silently condemned, a legion upon the dark rooftops. The wind came down from the north like a runner in lacrosse, violent and hard, to batter every living thing. They were there, each one alone in conversation with the stars, mining ephemeral love from cold and distant light.
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nature-as-church
numinous
our-place-in-the-universe
revelation
spirituality
stars
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Mark Helprin |
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abf6c76
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When you die, you know, you hear the insistent pounding that defines all things, whether of matter or energy, since there is nothing in the universe, really, but proportion.
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Mark Helprin |
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07a349e
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In living, one muddles through the years for the sake of those one or two moments which are indisputably great.
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Mark Helprin |
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fec4802
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All these things were shaken about within Peter Lake like pots and pans banging against the side of a peddler's swaybacked horse. It was hard to bear the weight of partial revelations which refused to venture past the tip of his tongue.
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Mark Helprin |
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6c25184
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The best thing in the world is the truth. You find it out anyway, in the end, or sooner.
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Mark Helprin |
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e987059
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The greatest blizzards start with the finest snow.
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Mark Helprin |
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31179d1
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She could hear in the traffic a white sound that threw veils across the present and allowed her to hold the scene to her the way that she held her own children--fighting time, conquered by it, ravished by it. For she believed that only through love can one feel the terrible pain of time, and then make it completely still.
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Mark Helprin |
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70553f7
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They would go about town sighing and talking to themselves. "I love you," they would say to the imagined beloved, though it might have appeared to someone else that they were speaking to a snow shovel or an egg crate."
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Mark Helprin |
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3992ed7
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And he was seldom out of sight of the new bridges, which had married beautiful womanly Brooklyn to her rich uncle, Manhattan; had put the city's hand out to the country; and were the end of the past because they spanned not only distance and deep water but dreams and time.
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Mark Helprin |
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8d40a38
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The ones who are always on your side, or so they think, are the ones who keep you down. Everything they do keeps you down. They'll forgive you for anything. Rob, rape, pillage, and kill, and they'll defend you to yourself. They understand all outrages, and all your failings and faults, too. Perfect! You can go on that way forever. What do they care? Excuse me: they do care. They want it that way. How would they make a living, these servan..
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welfare
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Mark Helprin |
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e83f520
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A cat can outrace the best thoroughbred horse if only it can grasp the idea of racing.
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Mark Helprin |
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f2043ee
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They danced on the shore in marvelous, civilized, humorous reels in which the old contributed wit when they could not contribute grace, and the young listened to their elders, who told them in their dancing to hold on, to love, to be patient, and most of all, to trust.
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Mark Helprin |
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fa9b168
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Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them or watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens, whites, and blues - wild and free - that stopped at the..
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Mark Helprin |
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0bc4e79
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I want nothing more than what I have, for what I have is enough. I'm grateful for it. I foresee no reward, no eternal life. I expect only to leave further pieces of my heart in one place or another, but I love God nonetheless, with every atom of my being, and will love Him until I fall into black oblivion.
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Mark Helprin |
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783a35d
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To be in New York on a beautiful day is to feel razor close to being in love.
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Mark Helprin |
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54e6214
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But, Catherine, everything's that true despite us - the things they're talking about, natural laws - will always remain true despite us. What matters is what's true because of us. That's what's up for grabs. That's where the battle is. One remembers and values one's life not for its objective truths, but for the emotional truths...The only thing that's really true, that lasts, and makes life worthwhile is the truth that's fixed in the heart..
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Mark Helprin |
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dc1d1fe
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Defiance, Catherine, is a gift of God, who is superior to nature. When nature comes to get you, honor God by treating it, as he would, with neither fear nor respect.
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Mark Helprin |
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aa8ca59
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In a life, or a portion of a life illuminated, there's a fullness and a balance that no theory or abstraction can match. Why do people waste so much time on abstraction? The life that is given to us, that we play out, is something that you cannot any more grasp with systems and ideas than you can tame an elephant with tweezers.
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Mark Helprin |
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64db181
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I think it takes some terrible or great event to fuse two people together without inhibition. Without heat or shock, it can't be done. I believe that's why sexual love, which needn't be, is so intensely intertwined with sin.
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event
fuse
love
sex
shock
sin
terrible
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Mark Helprin |
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55134a6
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Many people just like to show that they're thinking the right thoughts. And as the 'right' thoughts change like the wind, so do they.
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Mark Helprin |
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37af007
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I've imagined great victories, and I've imagined great races. The races are better.
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Mark Helprin |
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1115482
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In America, Fredericka, they don't really have trains for people. The trains here are used mainly to transport pigs, television sets, and fruit.
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trains
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Mark Helprin |
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41be089
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Read what you find interesting, and then follow your interests. You'll find that in doing so you always generate enough to illuminate the next step.
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reading
reading-books
reading-habits
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Mark Helprin |
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3ded5a5
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If when she is aged you cannot see in the eyes of a woman the youth she was at eighteen, then it is not she that is old but you that are blind.
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Mark Helprin |
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fd03736
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Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you anticipate that you will be thirsty, and you take water.
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Mark Helprin |
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561a933
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I didn't know the world could be like this ... I've never seen the sky in such a passion of kindness.
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Mark Helprin |
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bfb47dc
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Though the house itself was a fortress, still, Isaac Penn had thought to make sure that anyone who did manage to break in would be kept busy. Thus the vault was not a vault but rather a solid plug of molybdenum steel which extended into the wall for five feet.
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security-system
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Mark Helprin |
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e71f579
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Sometimes love is taken away unjustly, but not until the very end do you stop believing and then it is very bitter. It is bitter because somewhere within you the perfect standard still lives, the pure expectation against which failure and betrayal are contrasted like the dark shadows on a moonlit road.
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breakup-quotes
love
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Mark Helprin |
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4fc362d
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And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold.
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Mark Helprin |
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dfcf498
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When soldiers go home, their first desire, whether they know it or not, is to have children, children being the only antidote for war.
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Mark Helprin |
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3e841a3
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Whatever is, is, and whatever is not, is not
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Mark Helprin |
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f462839
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I wanted the music to be full, to surround us, to lift us like the swell, so I rented a bloody orchestra. You only live once.
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Mark Helprin |
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c25966e
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They glanced over at Catherine, who was dancing with Billy, as only fathers and daughters can dance. No matter how old the daughter may be, the father is dancing, in joy unparalleled, with his child when she was little.
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Mark Helprin |
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e353c3d
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When you're alone you can long so hard for something like an embrace that you mine it from the air. You find it in meanings that you might not otherwise grasp, for which it is helpful to arise early in the morning, when the mind is clear and the heart is gentle.
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Mark Helprin |
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755e452
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Humankind, or at least American-kind, will lose its edge as we produce more and more pipsqueaks and everyone gets nicer. Whole generations of pipsqueaks will be so fucking nice you won't be able to tell a man from a woman...And it will get worse and worse as people mistake nice for good. HItler was nice, supposedly, most of the time. A lot of good that did...
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Mark Helprin |
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92a537c
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They got up steam and proceeded calmly to the north - where there seemed to be no people, but only mountains, lakes, reedy snow-filled steppes, and winter gods who played with storms and stars.
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Mark Helprin |
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1336d8e
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A cat is an excuse for a lonely woman to talk to herself. That's what a cat is.
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Mark Helprin |
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517e982
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It is said that marriage is a long war between ancient families trapped in close proximity by lust.
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Mark Helprin |
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e1686f6
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Because I don't need oxygen. I've already come to all my conclusions. I'm just slowly gliding down. Someday I'll be as light as a feather.
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Mark Helprin |