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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 221b0b1 | The absurdity of these campaign promises is not an impediment to their effectiveness. On the contrary: Cade keeps producing demonstrable falsehoods about his origins and making wild claims about the great things he will do, and the crowds eagerly swallow them. To be sure, his neighbors know that Cade is a congenital liar. | shakespeare | Stephen Greenblatt | |
| d70eb93 | In ordinary times, when a public figure is caught in a lie or simply reveals blatant ignorance of the truth, his standing is diminished. But these are not ordinary times. If a dispassionate bystander were to point out all of Cade's grotesque distortions, mistakes, and downright lies, the crowd's anger would light on the skeptic and not on Cade. | shakespeare | Stephen Greenblatt | |
| ad5f10b | Although insecurity, overconfidence, and murderous rage are strange bedfellows, they all coexist in the tyrant's soul. He has servants and associates, but in effect he is alone. Institutional restraints have all failed. The internal and external censors that keep most ordinary mortals, let alone rulers of nations, from sending irrational messages in the middle of the night or acting on every crazed impulse are absent. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 2cd7ede | to make their way to the capital, where they aroused wild fears and expectations, particularly among the plebs. A handful of the elite--those more insecure or simply curious--may have attended with something other than contempt to the prophecies from the east, prophecies of a saviour born of obscure parentage who would be brought low, suffer terribly, and yet ultimately triumph. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 0dafb9a | Democritus's atomic theory did, however, come down to us--but on a very slender thread: it was contained in one single volume of Lucretius's great poem, which was held in one single German library, which one single intrepid book hunter would eventually find and save from extinction. That single volume would have an astonishing afterlife: it became a literary sensation, returned atomism to European thought, created what Stephen Greenblatt ha.. | Catherine Nixey | ||
| cff2f12 | one of his letters by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert: "Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone." | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 4fb8d88 | It reflects as well something extraordinary about the mental or spiritual world they inhabited, something noted in one of his letters by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert: "Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone." | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 5c20960 | On the Nature of Things. Indeed, the wealthy patron with philosophical interests could have wished to meet the author in person. It would have been a small matter to send a few slaves and a litter to carry Lucretius to Herculaneum to join the guests. And therefore it is even remotely possible that, reclining on a couch, Lucretius himself read aloud from the very manuscript whose fragments survive. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 959d59e | Human society began not in a Golden Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival. There was no original paradisal time of plenty, as some have dreamed, in which happy, peaceful men and women, living in security and leisure, enjoyed the fruits of nature's abundance. Early humans, lacking fire, agriculture, and other means to soften a brutally hard existence, struggled to eat and to avoid being eaten. There may always.. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 42c9364 | Humans have both consoled and tormented themselves with the thought that something awaits them after they have died. Either they will gather flowers for eternity in a paradisal garden where no chill wind ever blows or they will be frog-marched before a harsh judge who will condemn them, for their sins, to unending misery (misery that somewhat mysteriously requires them after dying to have heat-sensitive skin, an aversion to cold, bodily app.. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 87841ee | John Dryden brilliantly captured Lucretius' remarkable vision: . . . when the youthful pair more closely join, When hands in hands they lock, and thighs in thighs they twine; Just in the raging foam of full desire, When both press on, both murmur, both expire, They grip, they squeeze, their humid tongues they dart, As each would force their way to th'others heart. In vain; they only cruise about the coast. For bodies cannot pierce, nor be i.. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 0f3b2eb | We have only to look attentively at the world around us to grasp that many of the most intense and poignant experiences of our lives are not exclusive to our species. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 893fb79 | It was Sir Thomas More, from whom Shakespeare borrowed so much of his portrait of Richard III, who put the matter most clearly almost a hundred years earlier: "When I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world," More wrote in Utopia, "I can't, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich." | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| f09df22 | Unappeasable desire and the fear of death are the principal obstacles to human happiness, but the obstacles can be surmounted through the exercise of reason. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| 5727d51 | IN DEPICTING THE aspiring tyrant's strategy, Shakespeare carefully noted among the landed classes of his time the strong current of contempt for the masses and for democracy as a viable political possibility. Populism may look like an embrace of the have-nots, but in reality it is a form of cynical exploitation. The unscrupulous leader has no actual interest in bettering the lot of the poor. Surrounded from birth with great wealth, his tast.. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| fe4b739 | How does a figure like Richard III or Macbeth ascend to the throne? Such a disaster, Shakespeare suggested, could not happen without widespread complicity. His plays probe the psychological mechanisms that lead a nation to abandon its ideals and even its self-interest. Why would anyone, he asked himself, be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why,.. | Stephen Greenblatt | ||
| f5e7c48 | although the absurdity of the demagogue's rhetoric was blatantly obvious, the laughter it elicited did not for a minute diminish its menace. Cade and his followers will not slink away because the traditional political elite and the entirety of the educated populace regard him as a jackass. | shakespeare | Stephen Greenblatt | |
| 548199b | There's a lot of blood, sweat and guts between dreams and success. | Bear Bryant | ||
| 6acdd1f | Make ye no truce with Adam-zad--the Bear that walks like a man. | Bears | ||
| b3e2da6 | Some days you get the bear. Some days the bear gets you. | Bears | ||
| 61a79f9 | People with a history of depression often appear happiest right before they commit suicide. Not because their depression has passed, but because they've finally chosen a course of action. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 2702a05 | away from the window and the night descending upon Bakersville's streets. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| b6eaddc | Where are these perfect families? Is it yours? Your friend's, your neighbor's? I don't think you can just point one out. The ones we're most likely to admire are simply the ones with the best-kept secrets. No, the real perfect families, they have warts and bruises and scars. They had to screw up and admit their mistakes. They had to do everything wrong so they could learn how to do a few things right. They had to hate so they could know wha.. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 8f19e49 | A perfect family, I think, is one that's learned how to forgive. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 7c2a7a1 | Where are these perfect families? Is it yours? Your friend's, your neighbor's? I don't think you can just point one out. The ones we're most likely to admire are simply the ones with the best-kept secrets. No, the real perfect families, they have warts and bruises and scars. They had to screw up and admit their mistakes. They had to do everything wrong so they could learn how to do few things right. They had to hate so they could know what .. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 8cbc441 | the same conclusion . . . She found the photo she wanted, a high-res close-up of the recovered shell casing, also dusted and documented at the scene. Like the whiskey bottle, it bore a distinct ridge pattern. D.D. pulled the image, placed it next to the one of the fifth of whiskey. "Advantage of the Amber Alert," D.D. stated now. "I have the city's full investigative and forensic resources at my disposal." Meaning she could demand a rush jo.. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 6c59c40 | five toddlers on this block alone. Two of the girls in Becky's class lived just four blocks over. There were a number of boys as well, though most of them were too young for Danny. Sandy had always thought that was a shame. It was so easy for Becky to find someone to play with, whereas Danny had to be driven to someone's house. That took planning. That took having a parent home to serve as chauffeur. Danny had never complained, though. He s.. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| da43f3d | can't do this. I suck at this. Which is why they're making me go. Not to improve my swimming--who cares about that?--but to work on that whole playing-well-with-others thing. Another one of my broken bits. I don't want to socialize with other kids. I don't trust 'em, I don't like 'em, and best I can tell, the feeling's mutual. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| c6f64a1 | Families aren't built in a day. But they can be destroyed in an instant. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| a3d9ced | study. Something you can write up for the American Society of Shrinks--otherwise known | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 2d28d82 | I don't know who I am," I say. "No one does. Everyone spends their lives figuring that out, even people who've never been kidnapped." | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 7bfb9dd | Warn a kid with oppositional defiant disorder not to do something, and you've pretty much guaranteed the crime. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| cd80f1e | In the wake of the recent shootings, several school districts have implemented 'student profiling.' School administrators have a checklist of 'suspicious' behavior to use to evaluate each student's potential for violence. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 84c2153 | but I'm still the child of an abusive alcoholic and we don't make great parent material. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 04047e7 | Because what is love if not an exercise in faith. Because what is love if not perseverance. Because what is love if not forgiveness. | inspirational love | Lisa Gardner | |
| 3276305 | with his daughter." "Incest?" Rainie looked at Quincy incredulously. "Jesus, SupSpAg, how do you sleep with that mind?" "I can't be sure," Quincy said modestly, "but it has all the classic signs. Domineering father alone with his young daughter for the first thirteen years of her life. Seems very doting on the outside. I'm sure if you conducted further interviews you'd find plenty of neighbors and teachers telling you how 'close' Mr. Avalon.. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 7e890bd | even further, and I shivered inside my wool coat as I trudged back to my car, two grocery bags in hand. I wanted to go home, but I still had the crushed vials. Where could you dispose of broken glass and no one would notice? | Lisa Gardner | ||
| c892605 | Basically, that snapshot the smart fridge took to help you figure out what fruit to buy might also include a view of your ex-husband's dead body, which you'd planned on burying later in the day with the shovel Alexa had ordered for you from Amazon. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 0484a8b | That brought D.D. up short. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| db39b90 | There is no limit to evil, but Bossi is the limit of what can be ugly in the world. | Beatrice Borromeo | ||
| 14ed353 | Je ne veux plus faire de cauchemars. Je ne veux plus chercher a atteindre une petite fille que je ne peux pas sauver. Le monde est cruel. Notre boulot est sans espoir. Je ne sais meme plus comment aimer. J'ai juste besoin de hair. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 5877d20 | Special Agent Quincy had earned his stripes as one of the Bureau's finest profilers. | Lisa Gardner | ||
| 5a63ce6 | And how many episodes of being "not yourself" do you get before people figure out this is who you really are? I" | Lisa Gardner | ||
| c9650cb | couloir etroit en l'aidant a contourner les obstacles, a savoir les cames en | Lisa Gardner |