#boo

Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is “purely descriptive. ↗

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

#metaphilosophy #philosophy #science #the-blue-book #wittgenstein

I think about going to the lake, but I'm so weak that I barely make it to my meeting place with Gale. I sit on the rock where Cressida filmed us, but it's too wide without his body beside me. Several times I close my eyes and count to ten, thinking that when I open them, he will have materialized without a sound as he so often did. I have to remind myself that Gale's in 2 with a fancy job, probably kissing another pair of lips. ↗

— Suzanne Collins

#book #collins #end #everdeen #gale

When someone has been mean to you, why would you want to be good to them?' 'You wouldn't want to. That's what makes it hard. You do it anyway. Being good is hard. Much harder than being bad. ↗

— Jeanne DuPrau

#books-of-ember #city-of-ember #goodness #jeanne-duprau #lina

Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed. ↗

— Anne Rice

#bibliophiles #book-lovers #willful-ignorance #zealotry #enemy

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth. ↗

— Diane Setterfield

#fiction #on-fiction #stories #writing #broken

She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said. "How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked. She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading! "I don't know," she said, shrugging. ↗

— Eleanor Brown

#books #reading #sisters

An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#writing #artists

Personally, I am a hedonistic reader; I have never read a book merely because it was ancient. I read books for the aesthetic emotions they offer me, and I ignore the commentaries and criticism. ↗

— Jorge Luis Borges

#literature #reading #emotion

I've got a book of poetry by the bed, one of these big collections that goes back to the Greeks and Romans. ↗

— Martin C. Smith

#bed #big #book #collections #goes

We can retreat and retreat and let ourselves get backed into corners forever,” she’d said once. “Or we can go out and meet the enemy at the time and place we choose. Not them.” Okay, Tasha, I thought. Let’s see if your advice gets me killed. ↗

— Richelle Mead

#rose-hathaway #tasha-ozera #advice