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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 55b4b4d | Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petain and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an Americ.. | arafat bill-clinton christians extortion george-stephanopoulos israeli-palestinian-conflict ohio philippe-petain vox-populi white-house yitzhak-rabin edward-said united-states corruption francois-duvalier arabs territory new-york | Christopher Hitchens | |
| b748b4b | Edward had a personal horror of violence and never endorsed or excused it, though in a documentary he made about the conflict he said that actions like the bombing of pilgrims at Tel Aviv airport 'did more harm than good,' which I remember thinking was (a) euphemistic and (b) a slipshod expression unworthy of a professor of English. | violence tel-aviv euphemism | Christopher Hitchens | |
| be4faff | Then all at once our personal and political quarrels were made very abruptly to converge. In the special edition of the published to mark the events of September 11, 2001, Edward painted a picture of an almost fascist America where Arab and Muslim citizens were being daily terrorized by pogroms, these being instigated by men like Paul Wolfowitz who had talked of 'ending' the regimes that sheltered Al Quaeda. Again, I could hardly credit t.. | politics friendship al-quaeda lrb muslims paul-wolfowitz pogroms quarrel september-11-attacks edward-said united-states fascism arabs | Christopher Hitchens | |
| d9aa55a | I was hungry when I left Pyongyang. I wasn't hungry just for a bookshop that sold books that weren't about Fat Man and Little Boy. I wasn't ravenous just for a newspaper that had no pictures of F.M. and L.B. I wasn't starving just for a TV program or a piece of music or theater or cinema that wasn't cultist and hero-worshiping. I was . I got off the North Korean plane in Shenyang, one of the provincial capitals of Manchuria, and the airpor.. | theatre literature television books music airports cinema cults hero-worship manchuria shenyang totalitarianism tourism-in-north-korea pyongyang hunger kim-il-sung kim-jong-il north-korea propaganda newspapers food tourism | Christopher Hitchens | |
| e878e69 | I am so made that I cannot believe. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| b92f26c | Christian reformism arose originally from the ability of its advocates to contrast the Old Testament with the New. The cobbled-together ancient Jewish books had an ill-tempered and implacable and bloody and provincial god, who was probably more frightening when he was in a good mood (the classic attribute of the dictator). Whereas the cobbled-together books of the last two thousand years contained handholds for the hopeful, and references t.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 7a28f40 | This surrender, by a man of the Enlightenment and a man of truly revolutionary and democratic temperament, is another reminder that history is a tragedy and not a morality tale | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 050a61b | Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| bb4eee0 | If you will devote a little time to studying the staggering photographs taken by the Hubble telescope, you will be scrutinizing things that are far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful--and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding--than any creation or "end of days" story. If you read Hawking on the "event horizon," that theoretical lip of the "black hole" over which one could in theory plunge and see the past and the future (excep.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| b87e10e | The level of intensity fluctuates according to time and place, but it can be stated as a truth that religion does not, and in the long run cannot, be content with its own marvelous claims and sublime assurances. It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 29d2c62 | One of the juiciest pleasures of life is to be able to salute and embrace, as elected leaders and honored representatives, people whom you first met when they were on the run or in exile or (like Adam) in and out of jail. I was to have this experience again, and I hope to have it many more times in the future: it sometimes allows me to feel that life is full of point. | politics life dissent | Christopher Hitchens | |
| f7bd275 | Whatever view one takes of the outcome being affected by morale, it seems certain that the realm of illusion must be escaped before anything else. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| d27f029 | Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes humans objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created to be sick and commanded to be well. --CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS | Lawrence M. Krauss | ||
| 04a942d | To paraphrase the late Christopher Hitchens, religion was mankind's first and therefore worst tool for understanding the world. Yet for all that, | Ray Russell | ||
| 767a06e | When the bones of prehistoric animals began to be discovered and scrutinized in the nineteenth century, there were those who said that the fossils had been placed in the rock by god, in order to test our faith. This cannot be disproved. Nor can my own pet theory that, from the patterns of behavior that are observable, we may infer a design that makes planet earth, all unknown to us, a prison colony and lunatic asylum that is employed as a d.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 7297851 | I'm with Christopher Hitchens on this one. Heaven sounds like North Korea -- an eternity of mindless conformity spent singing the praises of a powerful tyrant. | Greta Christina | ||
| 905dec4 | this is what I have been telling writing classes for years. You must feel not that you want to but that you have to. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 1f51e38 | Government regulations required that an elevator be installed for the use of the disabled. Mother would not allow an elevator. The city offered to pay for the elevator. Its offer was refused. After all the negotiations and plans, the project for the poor was abandoned because an elevator for the handicapped was unacceptable. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| b45d43a | Cruelty to animals is as if man did not love God . . . there is something so dreadful, so satanic, in tormenting those who have never harmed us, and who cannot defend themselves, who are utterly in our power." --Cardinal John Henry Newman" | Will Tuttle | ||
| 4202141 | From My Life's Work by Cardinal Newman | job-hunting life-mission perplexity | John Henry Newman | |
| cd9dad1 | But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love, and it is fear. | John Henry Newman | ||
| abbbb2d | Certainly a liberal education does manifest itself in a courtesy, propriety, and polish of word and action, which is beautiful in itself, and acceptable to others; but it does much more. It brings the mind into form,--for the mind is like the body. | John Henry Newman | ||
| 17600d5 | It is beautiful in a picture to wash the disciples' feet; but the sands of the real desert have no lustre in them to compensate for the servile nature of the occupation. | service | John Henry Newman | |
| a2bb392 | I have no feeling of guilt regarding the books I have not read and perhaps will never read; I know that my books have unlimited patience. They will wait for me till the end of my days. They don't require that I pretend to know them all, nor do they urge me to become one of the "professional book-handlers" ... who greedily collect books but do not read them...." | Alberto Manguel | ||
| f8d61a1 | I think I read in at least two ways. First, by following, breathlessly, the events and the characters without stopping to notice the details, the quickening pace of reading sometimes hurtling the story beyond the last page <...>. Secondly, by careful exploration, scrutinizing the text to understand its ravelled meaning, finding plesasure merely in the sound of the words or in the clues which the words did not wish to reveal, or in what I su.. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 51e7582 | The categories that a reader brings to a reading, and the categories in which that reading itself is placed - the learned social and political categories, and the physical categories into which a library is divided - constantly modify one another in ways that appear, over the years, more or less arbitrary or more or less imaginative. Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 06f3ae7 | Libraries, whether my own or shared with a greater reading public, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic, which suggests that reason (if not art) rules over a cacophonous arrangement of books. I feel an adventurous pleasure in losing myself among the crowded stacks, superstitiously confident that any established hierarchy of letters or numbers will lea.. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 7a5b21e | Hb lmktbt mthl 'kthr lmHbWt, ynbGy 'n yktsb blt`lm, mmn 'Hd ykhTw 'wl mr@ dkhl Grf@ mlyy'@ blktb, wbmknh 'n y`rf blGryz@ kyf ytSrf, mdh sytwq`? wm ldhy synlh, wmhw lmtH? qd ytmlk lmr lr`b bsbb lfwD~ wlSmt wlmrqb@, wltdhkyr lskhr b'n lnsn l y`rf kl shy | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 515fb31 | God is just a name for our wonder. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| cc1db7d | Mijn indruk is helemaal niet dat patienten alleen maar genezen willen worden, ze willen ergens mee kunnen leven, dat verschilt fundamenteel van genezen. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| 00c84de | Alle waarheid deed pijn, maar wel steeds meer, elk jaar een beetje meer. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| c8614bc | Is dat niet uiteindelijk de enige opdracht van de mens? Je moet worden wat de anderen in je wensen te zien. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| 7f9bbad | Ce n'est pas possible d'eplucher des pommes de terre et de gratter des carottes en combinaison. | Georges Simenon | ||
| 0ee0382 |
Questa volta lui fu incapace di girare la testa dall'altra parte, tanto il suo volto lo affascinava. Mai neppure nei momenti in cui i loro corpi erano stati piu uniti, l'aveva trovata cosi bella, cosi raggiante. Mai aveva visto sulla sua bocca carnosa un sorriso che esprimesse cosi intensamente il trionfo dell'amore. Mai, con un solo sguardo, si era impossessata di lui in modo cosi totale. <|
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Georges Simenon |
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| e319034 | They never addressed each other by name, nor were they in the habit of exchanging endearments. What was the point, since both felt that, in many ways, they were one person? | Georges Simenon | ||
| 02d9437 | And Boucard desisted, probably because like everyone else he was deeply impressed by this man who had laid all ghosts, who had lost all shadows, and who stared you in the eyes with cold serenity. | Georges Simenon | ||
| 622cc93 | Lesson number 1b in Bibwit's carefully planned curriculum: For most of the universe's inhabitants, life is not all gummy wads and tarty tarts; it is a struggle against hardship, unfairness, corruption, abuse, and adversity in all its guises, where even to survive - let alone survive with dignity- is heroic. To soldier through the days in a wake of failure is the corageous act of many. To rule benevolently, a queen should be able to enter in.. | Frank Beddor | ||
| b4c1b5e | Redd stared at the bald head bent down before her. How refreshing Vollrath's sacrifice was. He didn't beg for his life. He didn't embarrasss himself with groveling or sniveling, or appeals to her nomexistent mercy. | Frank Beddor | ||
| cba7e12 | Redd's lact of knowledge astounded the tutor. Did she really understand so little about how a Wonderland princess became queen? She doesn't know what she doesn't know," he mumbled, and then: "Your Imperial Viciousness, perhpas we should speak face-to-face, without this velvet barrier between us. Are you decent?" I'm never decent!" | Frank Beddor | ||
| b932a84 | Jody had watched other classmates, including many in college prep, enter such a life with an impatient fatalism. They got pregnant or arrested or simply dropped out. Some boys, more defiant, filled the junkyards with crushed metal. Crosses garlanded with flowers and keepsakes marked roadsides where they'd died. You could see it coming in the smirking yearbook photos they'd left behind. | Ron Rash | ||
| ce8bba9 | The lift of her heart she'd felt on the outcrop she now felt again, and it wasn't just love. She'd felt love before, known its depths when her mother died. This was something rarer. Happiness, Laurel thought, that must be what this is. | love | Ron Rash | |
| c4a3200 | There Peter was, looking straight into the very eyes of God, walking the Sea of Galilee and then all of the sudden up to his neck in water. Some would argue he lacked the true believing, I say he had enough faith to go it a ways, and when he couldn't go farther Christ fetched him up. What am I saying? I'm saying that the walk to God ain't easy for the best of us. Now some would say, Preacher, if Peter had misdoubts there in the very glory o.. | heaven sorrow hope peter walk-on-water seek | Ron Rash | |
| 8de80b0 | We are not saying that Evolution exist, only that it is guided by His Noodly Appendage. | fsm | Bobby Henderson | |
| 4aa0bfa | You have a wife?" Caxton demanded. "I killed a vampire twenty years ago, and another one last night. I had to keep myself busy in the meantime," he told her." | David Wellington |