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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 9542419 | There are times when it is conservative to be a revolutionary, when the world must be turned on its head in order to be stood on its feet. | conservative inspiring revolution revolutionary | Christopher Hitchens | |
| 36dd53a | I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| b953b87 | Every day one reads meretricious babble about 'globalization' and the abolition of frontiers, most of it amounting to little more than celebration of the worldwide availability of . | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| f67dd0b | WHEN I DESCRIBED THE TUMOR IN MY ESOPHAGUS as a "blind, emotionless alien," I suppose that even I couldn't help awarding it some of the qualities of a living thing. This at least I know to be a mistake: an instance of the pathetic fallacy (angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais) by which we ascribe animate qualities to inanimate phenomena. To exist, a cancer needs a living organism, but it cannot ever become a living or.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 484ee30 | Thus , dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined--as I hope--I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through. There are days when I miss my own convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking. | free-thinking | Christopher Hitchens | |
| db96693 | The suspicion that a calamity might also be a punishment is further useful in that it allows an infinity of speculation. After New Orleans, which suffered from a lethal combination of being built below sea level and neglected by the Bush administration, I learned from a senior rabbi in Israel that it was revenge for the evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, and from the mayor of New Orleans (who had not performed his own job wi.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 60f27f4 | Even the great Thomas Paine, a friend to Franklin and Jefferson, repudiated the charge of atheism that he was not afraid to invite. Indeed, he set out to expose the crimes and horrors of the Old Testament, as well as the foolish myths of the New, as part of a vindication of god. No grand and noble deity, he asserted, should have such atrocities and stupidities laid to his charge. Paine's Age of Reason marks almost the first time that frank .. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| c51a9f4 | The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the stead.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 65e956e | Beware of identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| e9175c1 | A terrible thing has now happened to religion. Except in the places where it can still enforce itself by fear superimposed on ignorance, it has become one opinion among many. It is forced to compete in the free market of ideas and, even when it strives to retain the old advantage of inculcating its teachings into children (for reasons that are too obvious to need underlining), it has to stand up in open debate and submit to free inquiry. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 1bd32a3 | Above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man, and woman. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 653f19a | When Dr. Samuel Johnson had completed the first real dictionary of the English language, he was visited by a delegation of respectable old ladies who wished to congratulate him for not including any indecent words. His response--which was that he was interested to see that the ladies had been looking them up--contains almost all that needs to be said on this point. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 06cc96c | There is an old Belfast joke about the man stopped at a roadblock and asked his religion. When he replies that he is an atheist he is asked, "Protestant or Catholic atheist?" | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 01700ac | Scientists have an expression for hypotheses that are utterly useless even for learning from mistakes. They refer to them as being "not even wrong." Most so-called spiritual discourse is of this type." | new-ge religion science spirituality | Christopher Hitchens | |
| f5b598b | as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise? | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 60173d2 | Actual class struggles apart, one of the aesthetic ways you could prove that there was a class system in America was by cogitating on the word, or acronym, 'WASP.' First minted by in his book , the term stood for 'White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.' Except that, as I never grew tired of pointing out, the 'W' was something of a redundancy (there being by definition no BASPs or JASPs for anyone to be confused with, or confused about). 'ASP,' on.. | ethnicity united-states white-anglo-saxon-protestant | Christopher Hitchens | |
| ebbb7c7 | It is a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 0e31b65 | Porcophilia can also be used for oppressive and repressive purposes. In medieval Spain, where Jews and Muslims were compelled on pain of death and torture to convert to Christianity, the religious authorities quite rightly suspected that many of the conversions were not sincere. Indeed, the Inquisition arose partly from the holy dread that secret infidels were attending Mass--where of course, and even more disgustingly, they were pretending.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 6e99b9f | There can be no doubt that the cult of death and the insistence upon portents of the end proceed from a surreptitious desire to see it happen, and to put an end to the anxiety and doubt that always threaten the hold of faith. When the earthquake hits, or the tsunami inundates, or the twin towers ignite, you can see and hear the secret satisfaction of the faithful. Gleefully they strike up: "You see, this is what happens when you don't liste.. | Christopher Hitchens | ||
| 4b148d5 | The world then is the enemy of our souls; first, because, however innocent its pleasures, and praiseworthy its pursuits may be, they are likely to engross us, unless we are on our guard: and secondly, because in all its best pleasures, and noblest pursuits, the seeds of sin have been sown; an enemy hath done this; so that it is most difficult to enjoy the good without partaking of the evil also. | John Henry Newman | ||
| c2d8fc8 | A day or so before his death, Borges called Bioy from Geneva. Bioy said that he sounded infinitely sad. "What are you doing in Geneva? Come home," Bioy said to him. "I can't," Borges answered. "And anyway, any place is good enough to die in." Bioy said that in spite of their friendship, he felt, as a writer, hesitant to touch such a good exit line." | Alberto Manguel | ||
| b74f9ff | There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that traditions had declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we have made ours through instinct, emotion and understanding: suffered through it, rejoiced in it, translated it into our experience and (notwithstanding the layers of readings with which a book come into our hands) essentially become its first discoverers, an experience as astonishing and unexpected. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 40e4776 | Libraries are not, never will be, used by everyone. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| b0136fe | Systematisches Lesen ist kaum von Nutzen. Offizielle Bucherlisten (der Klassiker, der Literaturgeschichte, der zensurierten oder empfohlenen Bucher, der Bibliothekskataloge) konnen per Zufall den einen oder anderen nutzlichen Hinweis geben. Die beste Anleitung bieten personliche Launen - das Vertrauen auf das Lustprinzip und der Glaube an den Zufall -, die uns manchmal in einen provisorischen Zustand der Gnade versetzen, uns ermoglichen, Go.. | books reading | Alberto Manguel | |
| 83787b3 | Every book can be, for the right reader, an oracle, responding on occasion even to questions unasked.. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| d3fc5b8 | Reality deals in specifics under the guise of generalities. Literature does the contrary... | Alberto Manguel | ||
| ec47c59 | ksln ,whn lqw~ ,mtbjH ,mtHdhlq ,md`y lntm l~ lnkhb@ hdhh lSft wGyrh 'lSqt `l~ mr l'ym bl'stdh lshrd ldhhn ,blqry lqSyr lnZr ,wblmwl`yn blktb mdfwn fy lktb ,m`zwl `n `lm lHqy'q wlmt`@ ljsdy@ ,mzwd bsh`wr mn ltrf` `l~ lakhryn ldhyn lyqdrwn qym@ lklmt lmHfwZ@ dkhl Glfyn mGbryn | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 3d65b64 | 'n lHj@ tj`l l'shy tzdhr fy Hyn 'n ltmlk ydhblh | Alberto manguel | ||
| 6ee517d | Then one day, from the window of a car (the destination of that journey is now forgotten), I saw a billboard by the side of the road. The sight could not have lasted very long; perhaps the car stopped for a moment, perhaps it slowed down long enough for me to see, large and looming shapes similar to those in my book, but shapes that I had never seen before. and yet, all of a sudden, I knew what they were; I heard them in my head, they metam.. | Alberto Manguel | ||
| 634d484 | It is possible to think of fragrance existing before a flower was created to contain it, and so it is that God created the world to reveal Himself, to reveal Mercy. Once or twice a year, perhaps three times, a woman visits the garden, her face ancient, the eyes calm but not passive as she approaches the rosewood tree and begins to pick and examine each fallen leaf. Whether she is in possession of her full mental faculties, no one is sure. P.. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| f889b32 | The opposite of war is not peace but civilisation, and civilisation is purchased with violence and cold-blooded murder. With war. | war | Nadeem Aslam | |
| f095567 | The sky is a blue so clean it verges on joy. | sky-blue | Nadeem Aslam | |
| 295e2d6 | If love was the result of having caught a glimpse of another's loneliness, then he had loved Mikal since they were ten years old.... This almost-brother. This blood-love in everything but name. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| 944b16e | Wolves exhibiting strange behaviour -- caught in traps and thrashing about, injured by other creatures or by bullets, pups suffering from epilepsy -- are attacked and killed by their pack members. But here everyone is human and must try to understand each other's mystery. Each other's pain. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| 178984b | But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again--their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of anoth.. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| 09f692c | This is among the few things that can be said about love with any confidence. It is small enough to be contained within the heart but, pull thin, it would drape the entire world. | love-for-humanity | Nadeem Aslam | |
| 1d69503 | We walk past the house with the blue door. It has been made clear to us that we are to walk quietly by this house, never accept an invitation to step inside, never return the smile of the woman of the house, nor glance at the old man who sometimes looks out of the upstairs window; at our peril are we to be tempted by the flowers lying under the eaves, or by the figs that the storms shake loose. But our shadows dare each other. One of them i.. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| 8aec684 | She thought of the boy thrown into the cauldron of war, the girl beset by various bigotries, her life in danger, and saw how unjust it all was, her fury limitless for a few moments. And she felt a sense of shame, something akin to accusation from them towards her and her generation, for not having constructed a better world to welcome and contain their beauty, to house their spirit. -- | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| aaf63de | Only twenty - nine years in the entire human history had been without warfare, and now here he was too, travelling between the episodes of a rapacious civil war. | Nadeem Aslam | ||
| 0eb95cc | Het vieze geheimpje van veel depressies. Eigenlijk is er een ander die gepijnigd en gestraft moet worden, maar omdat die ander onvindbaar is of omdat men beschaafd genoeg is om de ander met rust te laten, straft men zichzelf. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| 4666f84 | De echtgenote gaat voor hem staan en draait een rondje. Op hoge hakken kunnen haar benen de vergelijking met lang geleden doorstaan. Hun eerste kennismaking, de eerste dagen, de eerste weken. De tijd dat je een onbeschreven blad bent voor de ander, de vrijheid die dat met zich meebrengt, het geluk. Ergens in haar benen zit de vrijheid die Hofmeester is kwijtgeraakt, en weer heeft teruggevonden op Schiphol. Maar toen smaakte die vrijheid hem.. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| 3053dbc | Wie van jullie is aan de pil, lieve kinderen? Hand opsteken. Wie van jullie heeft een geslachtsziekte, lieve kinderen? Hand opsteken. Wie van jullie is vandaag op het schoolplein in de reet geneukt, lieve kinderen? Hand opsteken. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| 244ff52 | Sommige mensen lijden omdat ze niet hoeven te leven. Ze hebben alles. Hun natje, hun droogje, een dak boven het hoofd. Maar ze hoeven niet te leven, want ze hebben alles. Als ze een boek waren geweest, zou een recensent vast schrijven: 'Aardig, maar de noodzak ontbreekt'. | Arnon Grunberg | ||
| d082b1b | The inspector knew the mentality of malefactors, criminals and crooks. He knew that you always find some kind of passion at the root of it. | Georges Simenon |