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Read through the most famous quotes by topic #nation
He imagined her upstairs in her room, lying in bed with her hair spread across the pillow, that nightgown with the pearl buttons down the front tangled around her legs, nothing beneath the delicate fabric but her softness and warmth. Desire pulsed through his body, hungry and hot and needy. It was unbearable to want her with such intensity, unthinkable to need her with such desperate longing, dangerous to believe that she could somehow keep the demons away. He did not want to need her, for in need, there was dependence. He could not trust, for in trust, there was betrayal. Better never to see heaven at all than to catch a glimpse of it, grab for it, and lose it. He went to his room. He slept with his demons, and he woke alone. ↗
A lost bird appeared in the court and was half an hour jumping around between the spikenard. It sang a progressive note, rising an octave at a time, until it became so acute that it was necessary to imagine it. ↗
All words are possible, then, all names. They rain down, all these words, they disintegrate into a powdery avalanche. Belched from the volcano's mouth, they spurt in to the sky, then fall again. In the quivering air, like gelatine, the sounds trace their bubble paths. Can you imagine that? ↗
You will sustain your rage, using time as a defense against fear and indolence. In the great stash of defenses, time is the one least imaginative. ↗
Whether he chooses a 'scholarly' or a 'popular' edition the modern reader is likely to have his judgement influenced in advance. Almost invariably he will be offered an assisted passage. Footnotes, Forewords, Afterwords serve notice that a given text is intellectually taxing—that he is likely to need help. Such apparatus is likely to be a positive disincentive to casual reading. But a cheaper edition may offer interference of another kind. Reminders, in words or pictures, of Julie Christie's Bathsheba Everdene or Michael York's Pip can perhaps create a beguiling sense of accessibility. But they may also pre-empt the imaginative responses of the reader. ↗
True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated. Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election. ↗
#famine #ireland #potato #whigs #imagination
