#mar

  Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy, even some collision with reality, for who will ever be able to lift a finger against Whitaker’s Table of Precedency? The Archbishop of Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody follows somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to know who follows whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you can’t be comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark on the wall.   11   I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#the-mark-on-the-wall #men

...the rule among the human race – a rule that naturally admits of exceptions – is that the reputedly hard are the weak whom nobody wanted, and that the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that gentleness which the vulgar herd mistakes for weakness. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#sodom-and-gomorrah #nature

Wait," I said as Noah slipped a book from a shelf and headed toward the door. "Where are you going?" "To read?" But I don't want you to. "But I need to go home," I said, my eyes meeting his. "My parents are going to kill me." "Taken care of. You're at Sophie's house." I loved Sophie. "So I'm...staying here?" "Daniel's covering for you." I loved Daniel. "Where's Katie?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "Eliza's house." I loved Eliza. "And your parents?" I asked. "Some charity thing." I loved charity. "So why are you going to read when I'm right here? ↗

— Michelle Hodkin

#humor #mara-dyer #noah-shaw #sexy #ya

Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you know that, with women, you're supposed to make conversation?" she added; her half smile was perhaps meant to be ironic, though to Amedeo, who at that moment would have paid anything rather than give up his novel, it seemed downright threatening. ↗

— Italo Calvino

#lectophilia #mixed-marriages-never-work #reading #relationship-nightmare #run-away

People who start a sentence with personally (and they're always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It's a repulsive habit. ↗

— Georgette Heyer

#humor #women #death

For she was of that generation who, having found nothing in religion, had formed themselves through literature. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#marriage

Calvin:"It says here that 'religion is the opiate of the masses.'...what do you suppose that means?" Television: "...it means that Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet ↗

— Bill Watterson

#karl-marx #philosophy #television #religion

This is because Marxism looks at things as a whole and in relation to each other—or tries to, but its limitations are not the point for the moment. A person who has been influenced by Marxism takes it for granted that an event in Siberia will affect one in Botswana. I think it is possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time [written in 1971], outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects and creeds. But it was an attempt. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#whole #religion

How will a person know, Selina, when the soul that has the affinity with hers is near it?" She answered, "She will know. Does she look for air, before she breathes it? This love will be guided to her; and when it comes, she will know. And she will do anything to keep that love about her, then. Because to lose it will be like a death to her. ↗

— Sarah Waters

#love #margaret #selina #death

A purposeless virtue is a contradiction in terms. Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one creature and another. To be good for nothing is just that. If a virtue has been thought a virtue long enough, it must be assumed to have practical justification - though the very longevity that proves its practicality may obscure it. That seems to be what happened with the idea of fidelity... Our age could be characterized as a manifold experiment in faithlessness, and if it has as yet produced no effective understanding of the practicalities of faith, it has certainly produced massive evidence of the damage and disorder of its absence. (pg.115-116, "The Body and the Earth") ↗

— Wendell Berry

#fidelity #marriage #virtue #age