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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 7732181 | She said, the Puritan Milton, on the contrary, makes the moment of the Nativity the moment of the death of Nature--at least, he calls on the old tradition that Greek travellers heard the shrines cry out on that night Weep, Weep, the great god Pan is dead. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 89b1c05 | in almost all stories of promises and prohibitions, the promises and prohibitions carry with them the inevitability of failure, of their own breaking. | promise stories | A.S. Byatt | |
| 63b2899 | It is as though our dreams were watching us and directing our lives with external vigour whilst we simply enact their pleasures passively, in a swoon. | lives pleasures reality | A.S. Byatt | |
| a5e00cf | The practitioners of 'dry' art admire myth and symbol, precision and coherence; they would, theoretically, be more excited by an interpretation of one of Shakespeare's plays which offered them a beautifully plotted, 'containing' framework of themes and recurrent symbols, than by one which placed its main emphasis on Shakespeare's skill in reproducing the accidental, the idiosyncratic happenings of life, or his power to arouse in the audienc.. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 31baf6a | He made the analogy, sometimes, almost bitterly, between Harald's collection of wing-cases and empty ribcages, elephant's feet and Paradise plumes, and Harald's interminably circular book on Design, which rambled on from difficulty to difficulty, from momentarily illuminated clearing to prickling thicket of honest doubt. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 9ce2300 | The aspect of this transcendent reality upon which, both in terms of liberal morals, and of the art of the novel, Miss Murdoch lays most emphasis, is what she calls the 'opacity of persons'. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 8cb19aa | And she was angry because she knew she was capable of many things she couldn't even define to herself, so they seemed like bad dreams - that is what she told me. She told me she was eaten up with unused power and thought she might be a witch - except, she said, if she were a man, these things she thought about would be ordinarily acceptable. | man power suppressed witch woman | A.S. Byatt | |
| 096cd75 | What do you hope? Desire is a dowsed fire True love a lie To a dusty shelf we aspire, I crave to die | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 9a4690c | Still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all. Narcissism, the unstable self, the fractured ego, Maud thought, who am I? A matrix for a susurration of texts and codes?It was bot.. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| afd4d1d | We run with milk and blood What we would give we spill The hungry mouths are raised We spill we fail to fill This cannot be restored This flow cannot redeem This white's not wiped away Though blanched we seem Howe'er I wipe and wipe Howe'er I frantic-scour The ghost of my spilled milk Makes my Air sour. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 9d573c3 | he was always, as far as we can tell, the preux chevalier. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 8283412 | Metamorphoses" he said, "are our way of showing, in riddles, that we know we are part of the animal world" | A.S. Byatt | ||
| ece43dc | This is were I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the midpoint, to which everything ran, before and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| d42e21a | Most of all, he saw her waist, just where it narrowed, before the skirts spread. He remembered her nakedness as he knew it, and his hands around that narrowing. He thought of her momentarily as an hourglass, containing time, which was caught in her like a thread of sand, of stone, of specks of life, of things that had lived and would live. She held his time, she contained his past and his future, both now cramped together, with such ferocit.. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| be5455c | It is in the nature of the human frame to tire. Fortunately. Let us collude with necessity. Let us play with it. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 3ca9ca1 | Too much meaning is bad at Toussaint." "Reason must sleep," said Christabel. "The stories come before the meanings," I said. "As I said, reason must sleep," she said again. I do not believe all these explanations. They diminish. The idea of Woman is less than brilliant Vivien, and the idea of Merlin will not allegorise into male wisdom. He is Merlin" | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 24fe678 | The words men used to describe the gods were the words they used for fetters or bonds, things which held the world together, within bounds, preventing the breakout of chaos and disorder. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 8e4ed07 | All Fitzgerald's books are the product of maturity, reflection, the quickly touched depth of accumulated knowledge and long experience. Their creation reflects the new sense of opportunity that may come with the bereavements and displacements of later life. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 2ccda22 | Above all, though, we don't want a weakly habit of constant complaint. As a rough guide, remember that while the average man is ill for four days a year, a grown woman must expect to spend one fourth of her life in actual pain." Daisy felt a rush of admiration. So far she herself had done nothing like her fair share." | women | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| b72c716 | persevering secretary of the Society for Providing Public Access to Places of Interest and Beauty, | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 6067704 | La antiguedad no es lo mismo que el interes historico --dijo--. De lo contrario, nosotros dos seriamos mas interesantes de lo que somos. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 3de3d89 | Hojear libros es parte de la tradicion de una libreria --le dijo Florence--. Debes dejar que se queden y toquen los libros. | bookshop librería libros | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| 234a160 | She was in love, as she quite saw, with a middle - aged man who said the same thing to all the girls, who had been a prince for an evening which he'd most likely forgotten already, who had given her a ring with a redcurrant in it and who cared, to the exclusion of all else, for his work. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| f581269 | Open the doors, the Russians say, here comes trouble. On | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| f275a18 | You have come to Cambridge to study the interdependence of matter and energy. Please remember that energy and matter are in no way something distinct from yourselves. Remember, too, that scientists are not dispassionate. Your judgement and your ability to do good work will be in part dependent on your digestion, your prejudices and above all, your emotional life. You must face the fact that if another human being, whose welfare means consid.. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 56b2248 | The professor urged upon Fred that to base one's calculations on unobservables - such as God, such as the soul, such as the atom, such as the elementary particle - was nothing more than a comforting weakness. 'I don't deny that all human beings need comfort. But scientists should not indulge themselves on quite this scale. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| a5e7259 | That was what he wanted to tell his audience at Cambridge. He divided classical satirists into two classes--fierce men starving in garrets, and renouncing popularity and circulation to dwell in tubs, and calm good-livers "who tell amusingly the kind of truth that no one has ever denied." But for the present century the right spirit, he believed, was self-satire, the ability to see humor in the constant small defeats of life, and "the power .. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| c77e3fc | You can borrow my Blackbird, if you like,' said Ben. This was his new fountain pen, which troubled him. It was guaranteed not to leak, but writers and schoolchildren knew better. Ben wished to be relieved of the responsibility of the Blackbird, without losing his own dignity. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 19874c7 | En ese momento se dio la vuelta, como movida por una rafaga de viento. | historical-fiction | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| 6a07c1a | Llevar una oficina no es tan dificil, le dijo Just. Basicamente consiste en saber, en primer lugar, que entra; en segundo lugar, que queda pendiente; en tercer lugar, que asuntos han sido gestionados y estan listos para salir; y en cuarto lugar, que es lo que ya ha salido. Todos los asuntos deben encontrarse en una de estas cuatro etapas, y de este modo no se puede poner la excusa de que se ha traspapelado algun documento. Para cada transac.. | historical-fiction | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| bc3613c | Hojear libros es parte de la tradicion de una libreria -le dijo Florence-. Debes dejar que se queden y toquen los libros. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 4846a99 | Ein gutes Buch ist der kostbare Lebenssaft eines meisterlichen Geistes, einbalsamiert und aufbewahrt zum Zweck eines Lebens uber das Leben hinaus (...) | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| b378cf1 | El corage y la perseverancia son inutiles si no se ponen a prueba | perseverancia voluntad | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| d2e0b8e | But he also saw himself as a geognost, a natural scientist, who, as he put it, had come 'to an entirely new land, and dark stars'. The mining industry, it seemed to him, was not a science, but an art. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 4b2a2e9 | Wat ik het meest in mensen waardeer is de enige deugd die ze met goden en dieren gemeen hebben, en die je daarom eigenlijk geen deugd kunt noemen. Ik heb het over moed. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 47683b9 | La fuerza de voluntad es inutil si no se va a algun lado | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 0183526 | Un buen libro es la preciosa savia del alma de un maestro, embalsamada y atesorada intencionadamente para una vida mas alla de la vida. | libros | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| d6f190a | An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow. | Merriment | ||
| 618b70f | As an institution that could not tell a lie, they were unique in the contrivances of gods and men since the Oracle of Delphi. As office managers, they were no more than adequate, but now, as autumn approached, with the exiles crowded awkwardly into their new sections, they were broadcasting in the strictest sense of the word, scattering human voices into the darkness of Europe, in the certainty that more than half must be lost, some for the.. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 83ac243 | Igual que seguia considerando que la gravedad es una fuerza que atrae las cosas hacia si, y no una simple cuestion que se encarga de las que menos resistencia opongan a ella, estaba segura de que el caracter era una lucha entre las buenas y las malas intenciones. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 08dc962 | Ninguna de las dos estaba preparada para reconocer que le gustaria proteger a la otra. Habria sido como permitir que el miedo entrara en la habitacion. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| 0092b74 | Es un buen libro y, por lo tanto, deberia intentar venderselo a los habitantes de Hardborough. No lo entenderan, pero sera mejor asi. Entender las cosas hace que la mente se vuelva perezosa. | Penelope Fitzgerald | ||
| bcf291b | Surely if one doesn't find sex tiresome in life, it won't be tiresome in fiction,' said the Junior Dean. 'I do find it tiresome in life,' Dr Matthews replied. 'Or rather, I find other people's concern with it tiresome. One is told about it and told and told! | tiresome | Penelope Fitzgerald | |
| 72f9cdc | Salvatore threw up his hands. "What's to become of us? We can't go on like this." "Yes, we can go on like this," said Cesare. "We can go on exactly like this for the rest of our lives." | Penelope Fitzgerald |