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b9a288c
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To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend... I suppose I ought to have realize it's ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.
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Robert Harris |
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dafea55
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To be brave, by definition, one has first to be afraid.
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Robert Harris |
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ce7dba5
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Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin - the desk's too big, the desk's too small, there's too much noise, there's too much quiet, it's too hot, too cold, too early, too late. I had learned over the years to ignore them all, and simply to start.
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Robert Harris |
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e7ea3ee
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Power brings a man many luxuries, but a clean pair of hands is seldom among them.
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power
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Robert Harris |
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d85dcbb
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Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. Especially tonight.
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life
rome
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Robert Harris |
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3bb915c
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What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason
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Robert Harris |
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3fb8225
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But only a fool sails into combat with nature
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Robert Harris |
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dc16a79
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A police state is a country run by criminals
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Robert Harris |
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595c0bc
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it has always been my temperament to prefer a tiny amount of the excellent to a plenitude of the mediocre...
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military
historical-fiction
france
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Robert Harris |
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09e2d46
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People perish. Books are immortal.
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literature
historical
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Robert Harris |
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f3a1b3f
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A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it's halfway to being just like every other bloody book that's ever been written.
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writing
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Robert Harris |
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5945c00
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By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.
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Robert Harris |
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e3fa294
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Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virt..
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Robert Harris |
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ed9ce82
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You can always spot a fool, for he is a man who will tell you he knows who is going to win an election.
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Robert Harris |
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fa65b8d
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But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all.
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robert-harris
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Robert Harris |
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952c2f9
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Another of Cicero's maxims was that if you must do something unpopular, you might as well do it wholeheartedly, for in politics there is no credit to be won by timidity.
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Robert Harris |
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4733bee
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Civilization was a relentless war that man was doomed to lose eventually. - Pg. 195
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man-vs-nature
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Robert Harris |
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92849cd
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The destination of the journey could not be altered, only the manner in which one approached it - whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged complaining through the dust.
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destiny
inspirational
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Robert Harris |
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aa87063
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It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.
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Robert Harris |
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60b07d4
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The natural impulse of men is to follow, he thought, and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate the rest.
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Robert Harris |
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dd09d18
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Surely the greatest mercy granted us by Providence is our ignorance of the future. Imagine if we knew the outcome of our hopes and plans, or could see the manner in which we are doomed to die - how ruined our lives would be! Instead we live on dumbly from day to day as happily as animals. But all things must come to dust eventually. No human being, no system, no age is impervious to this law; everything beneath the stars will perish; the ha..
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cicero
tiro
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Robert Harris |
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d100baf
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Politics? Boring? Politics is history on the wing! What other sphere of human activity calls forth all that is most noble in men's souls, and all that is most base? Or has such excitement? Or more vividly exposes our strengths and weaknesses? Boring? You might as well say that life itself is boring!
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Robert Harris |
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1086020
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What do you do,' he said, 'if you devote your life to discovering criminals, and it gradually occurs to you that the real criminals are the people you work for? What do you do when everyone tells you not to worry, you can't do anything about it, it was a long time ago?' She was looking at him in a different way. 'I suppose you go crazy.' 'Or worse. Sane.
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Robert Harris |
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902c182
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Travel is sold as freedom, but we were about as free as lab rats. This is how they'll manage the next Holocaust, I thought, as I shuffled forward in my stockinged feet: they'll simply issue us with air tickets and we'll do whatever we're told
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Robert Harris |
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558a1f4
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And people would believe it, thought Hartmann, because people believed what they wanted to believe - that was Goebbels's great insight. They no longer had any need to bother themselves with inconvenient truths. He had given them an excuse not to think.
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Robert Harris |
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0db0ead
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This was the problem with drinks parties: getting stuck with a person you didn't want to talk to while someone you did was tantalisingly in view.
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socializing
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Robert Harris |
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b610004
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Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called 'heightened interrogation'. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.
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nazi
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Robert Harris |
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2ad1606
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Right, you see that girl over there, the one in that group that keeps looking right at you?'...'Right, let's say I'm convinced she's wearing black knickers - she looks like a black knickers kind of gal to me - and I'm so sure that's what she's wearing, so positive of that sartorial fact, I want to bet a million dollars on it. The trouble is, if I'm wrong, I'm wiped out. So I also bet she's wearing knickers that aren't black, but are any one..
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finance
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Robert Harris |
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d33d940
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This is what I have learned these past six years, as opposed to what is taught in Oxford: the power of unreason. Everyone said--by everyone I mean people like me--we all said, 'Oh, he's a terrible fellow, Hitler, but he's not necessarily all bad. Look at his achievements. Put aside this awful medieval anti-Jew stuff: it will pass.' But the point is, it won't pass. You can't isolate it from the rest. It's there in the mix. And if the anti-Se..
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Robert Harris |
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2098b9e
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The avenue was designed by Reichsminister Albert Speer and completed in 1957. It is one hundred and twenty-three meters wide and five-point-six kilometers in length. It is both wider, and two and a half times longer, than the Chaps Elysees in Paris. Higher, longer, bigger, wider, more expensive...even in victory, thought March, Germany has a parvenu's inferiority complex. Nothing stands on its own. Everything has to be compared with what th..
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Robert Harris |
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29ebc71
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A crock of shit," Rick had called it. But actually this was worse. Shit, to quote Gore Vidal, has its own integrity. This was a crock of nothing."
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Robert Harris |