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6d29d64
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Young Bindo Altovini, looking out from time, made a perfect coalition with the mountains, the sky, and the tall redheaded woman who had bent over just slightly to examine a raging battle that was long over. Alessandro imagined that Bindo Altovini was saying, half with longing, half with delight, "These are the things in which I was so helplessly caught up, the waves that took me, what I loved. When light filled my eyes and I was restless an..
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Mark Helprin |
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ba0d63f
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The abandoned stars were hers for the many rich hours of sparkling winter nights, and, unattended, she took them in like lovers.
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Mark Helprin |
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204cece
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The abandoned stars were hers for the many rich hours os sparkling winter nights, and, unattended, she took them in like lovers. She felt that she looked out, not up, into the spacious universe, she knew the names of every bright star and all the constellations, and (although she could not see them) she was familiar with the vast billowing nebulae in which one filament of a wild and shaken mane carried in its trail a hundred million worlds...
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Mark Helprin |
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1e77fa0
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His name was Peter Lake, and he said to himself out loud, "You're in bad shape when a horse takes pity on you, you stupid bastard,"
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Mark Helprin |
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5b2d4a9
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Then in the darkness and purity of the meadows he began to feel that the world had many secrets, that they were shattering even to glimpse or sense, and that they were not necessarily unpleasant. In certain states of light he could see, he could begin to sense, things most miraculous indeed. Although it seemed self-serving, he concluded nonetheless, after a lifetime of adhering to the diffuse principles of a science he did not know, that th..
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Mark Helprin |
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ae8125a
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Because no windows were open and the air was so still and cold that the trees dared not move for fear of encountering more of it than they had to, Christiana thought that she had entered a city of the dead.
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Mark Helprin |
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5e643b1
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They move, don't they? Who do you think sets things to moving? Nothing that moves lacks a soul.
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Mark Helprin |
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ead77ad
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It's a defining difference, curiosity. I've never known a stupid person who was curious, or a curious person who was stupid.
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Mark Helprin |
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5a57abb
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The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must work.
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Mark Helprin |
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34c50fc
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No matter what it is, if you don't move your eyes and set the pace yourself, your intellect is sentenced to death. The mind, you see, is like a muscle. For it to remain agile and strong, it must work. Television rules that out.
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mind
television
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Mark Helprin |
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8b54d77
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The beauty of the truth is that it need not to 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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3bac533
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He knew that, in the eyes of God, all things are interlinked; he knew that justice does indeed spring in great surprise from the acts and consequences of ages long forgotten; and he knew that love is not broken by time.
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Mark Helprin Winter's Tale |
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cee9446
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Those events which have passed, and which are the foundations of our lives, must be somewhere, he thought. They must be recapturable, even if only in a perfect world. How just it would be if for our final reward we were to be made the masters of time, and if those we love could come alive again not just in memory, but in truth.
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Mark Helprin |
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5312911
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He had known in times of the greatest misery or danger that his dreams of home, in which all things seemed beautiful, were in essence his longing for the woman for whom he had been made. That was how, as a soldier, he had seen it, and it was how he had come through.
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Mark Helprin |
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31f1104
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That's writing, huh. What does it do?" "It's like talking, but it makes no sound."
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Mark Helprin |
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7500b69
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But each time he received an invitation from the Harvard Club to join...he postponed his application for the time when he could do little but rest in the kind of comfortable chair that is to the end of life what a cradle is to the beginning." Pg 55"
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Mark Helprin |
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8ad5de9
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For example, they recently had a piece on a character--I think his name was Ambrosio D'Urbervilles--whose "design statement" was to stuff an entire apartment from floor to ceiling with dark purple cottonballs. He called it "Portrait of a Dead Camel Dancing on the Roof of a Steambath."
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design
humor
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Mark Helprin |
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2d947a9
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Marriages are made in heaven which is why they cause so much trouble on earth.
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Mark Helprin |
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bae3e89
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Harry looked at Margaret and thought that, should a woman grow old, she might still have her deepest charm. Should a woman grow old, she would still be a woman, the essence of being so being so inerasable as never to vanish. And if men were to understand this as they, too, grew old, the world would be a happier place.
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Mark Helprin |
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0d3b691
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You don't want to be content with yourself. People who are, are insufferable, the walking dead. But you don't want to be entirely driven, either, because then you just skate over the world and never touch it.
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Mark Helprin |
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4162517
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If all the months and all their days could be like June weather in New York, there would be paradise on earth. Often, in early June, momentous decisions are made, power waxes strong, quick wars are fought, and love affairs are begun and ended.
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Mark Helprin |
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a86f0ce
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I read. The more you read, the more the world opens up to you... and the happier you are and more comforted you feel. It's up to you. No you is educated who cannot educate himself.
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happiness
reading
reading-books
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Mark Helprin |
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a506036
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He wanted actually to live inside the dream that captured his eye, to spend his days and nights in a fume of burnished gold.
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Mark Helprin |
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e353ea0
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We like it the way it is. We're enjoying the oscillating balances, the ongoing war between good and evil, the wonderful small triumphs of the soul. Perhaps it's too soon to end all that. Perhaps we need some more time to think things out.
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Mark Helprin |
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1993a17
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an old man with a cane may discover that his many years have added nothing to his innocence but proof and explanation, and that, as much as he may have learned in his long life, he cannot see as far as he could see when he was seven
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Mark Helprin |
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d27f65d
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Mortality is like the cold. It cannot be altered by human conceit or solidarity, and at the end you will be on your knees, in shock and amazement, and then you'll have only one sword, one shield, one great thing to carry you through." Alessandro waited to hear what that was, but his father would not say. "If you don't discover it yourself, it will be nothing more than an exhortation from me."
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Mark Helprin |
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7e60e34
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But the long tunnels of art through which I walked in Rome that day had no ragged edges, cowardly colors, or shades of pastel that didn't know what to do with themselves. The wisdom, perfection, and beauty of the colors and forms I passed were more than enough, in their collectivity, to hint at the principles which govern the hereafter, whatever that may be. Indeed, even a detail of one painting can offer solid direction in this regard if o..
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Mark Helprin |
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7dedcc3
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I don't want these. They're mud and they've got no color. Or at least the color is different from what I'm used to. Take any American city, in autumn, or in winter, when the light makes the colors dance and flow, and look at it from a distant hill or from a boat in the bay or on the river, and you will see in any section of the view far better paintings than in this lentil soup that you people have to pedigree in order to love. I may be a t..
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art
color
paintings
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Mark Helprin |
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a1165f6
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And then he was suddenly overwhelmed. It was as if a thousand bolts of lightning had converged to lift him. All he could see was blue, electric blue, wet shining warm blue, blue to no end, everywhere, blue that glowed and made him cry out, blue, blue, her eyes were blue.
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Mark Helprin |
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ab2f36e
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That is, " Harry said, " because the world has never seen - in initiative, imagination, courage, and steadfastness - anything like the American fighting man. Not the Germans, the non-Germans, the semi-German Viennese, the British, the Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish, the Danish, or the Nepalese. You may in the future condemn us for it. You may continue to think that we are savage, disproportionate, and uncivilized. But we saved you the last t..
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Mark Helprin |
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866881f
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The more perfect something is, the less it can be loved -- like a face, a body, voice, tone, color, or music itself. In playing a piece, don't strive for perfection: it will kill the piece in that it will prevent it from entering the emotions. That's the kind of advice you can't do anything with except perhaps later, when you don't even know you're doing it. It's part of the freeze of counterpoint.' 'I've never heard that expression,' she s..
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perfection
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Mark Helprin |
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6875c1a
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I wish that, like you, I could have spent my life transported aloft, as it were, every day, in music. Instead, I've lived like a caffeinated parrot.
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music
parrots
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Mark Helprin |
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62bec61
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Potatoes have much more staying power than caviar.
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simple-life
simple-living
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Mark Helprin |
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eeb5046
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Nobody steals books except kleptomaniacs and university students. In most places you can leave a book on the street and come back for in the next day.
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bookstores
reading
theft
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Mark Helprin |
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987ea49
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The streets of New York and some wards of its venerable institutions were packed with people who, despite being entirely forsaken, had episodes of glory that made the career of Alexander the Great seem like a day in the life of a file clerk.
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Mark Helprin |
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33589d5
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The way she looked at him, and he knew it, it was clear that she was seeking someone she could love, someone who would love her as if she were once again a girl and the world was young. There was no question that he was capable of such a thing. She could see it in his face and read it in his every expression.
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Mark Helprin |
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9533497
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She was not quite as arresting in photographs as she was in the flesh, for her beauty was sprung directly from her soul, and proved that physical features count little unless they are illumined from within.
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inner-beauty
soul
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Mark Helprin |
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76a3398
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And I love you.' she said her heart buoyant. She really did love him, although each time she said it and he could not reply, she loved him perhaps a little less.
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love-not-returned
love-quotes-love-lost
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Mark Helprin |
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be6f941
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Those who are vain have little ability to feel grateful.
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vanity
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Mark Helprin |
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8c502e2
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If you don't have compassion you won't be compelled to help.
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helping-others
helping-people
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Mark Helprin |
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8540968
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Marxists are people whose insides are torn up day after day because they want to rule the world and no one will even publish their letter to the editor.
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Mark Helprin |
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39d1665
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Adversity has its compensations, that in falling, and in failing, we rise. It is as if there is a hand behind us that sets to right all imbalances. Why do you think the saints seldom had the temporal power that we mistakenly identify with the fruits of justice? Do you think they needed it, or cared?
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power
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Mark Helprin |
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33022a7
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Remember, what we are trying to do in this life is to shatter time and bring back the dead. Rise, Virginia. Rise and see the whole world." Virginia"
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Mark Helprin |
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9a41f67
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He wanted more than anything in the world to embrace her. But it seemed out of the question. Then she turned to him and stretched out her arms. And he went to her as if he had been born for it.
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Mark Helprin |