#o

The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical problem and much more on the intangible human element. [...] In The Moonstone the mystery is finally solved, not altogether by human ingenuity, but largely by accident. Since Collins, the best heroes of English detective fiction have been, like Sergeant Cuff, fallible. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#detective-stories #detectives #mysteries #beauty

Struggling and suffering are the essence of a life worth living. If you're not pushing yourself beyond the comfort zone, if you're not demanding more from yourself - expanding and learning as you go - you're choosing a numb existence. You're denying yourself an extraordinary trip. ↗

— Dean Karnazes

#life #running #inspirational

It's very easy when you have someone in front of you that you can chase. You want to be No. 1 but now I feel like I have to play well because everybody looks at you as a best golfer. So that's why I put more pressure on myself. ↗

— Yani Tseng

#best #chase #easy #everybody #feel

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather than an asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates form we are justified in supposing that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the unit, stiff and sharp, conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and liking for everything self-dependent, anything an ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to attempt through sheer reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from observation, is idle. You cannot make us think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are brilliant, it is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing of pre-eminence. Would you not, minus thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere perculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, the elements, or mildew; but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance without co-ordination? Guarding the infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re- membered too violently, your thorns are the best part of you. ↗

— Marianne Moore

#poem #roses-only #beauty

I mean, I don't know much about the Civil War, but whenever I think of that time—I mean, ever since Gone With the Wind I've had these fantasies about those generals, those gorgeous young Southern generals with their tawny mustaches and beards, and hair in ringlets, on horseback. And those beautiful girls in crinoline and pantalettes. You would never know that they ever fucked, from all you're able to read." She paused and squeezed my hand. "I mean, doesn't it just do something to you to think of one of those ravishing girls with that crinoline all in a fabulous tangle, and one of those gorgeous young officers—I mean, both of them fucking like crazy?" "Oh yes," I said with a shiver, "oh yes, it does. It enlarges one's sense of history. ↗

— William Styron

#history #past #sex #war #beauty

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. ↗

— Barbara Tuchman

#carriers #civilization #crippled #dumb #history

Defence was an afterthought, prompted by necessity; and its introduction as a State function, though effected doubtless with a view to the strengthening of the State, was really and in principle the initiation of the State's destruction. ↗

— Benjamin Tucker

#defence #destruction #doubtless #effected #function

I tell people that stand-up's like golf: you gotta do it every day to get it down - or at least three times a week to get it down. ↗

— Chris Tucker

#down #every #every day #get #golf

All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities. ↗

— Spalding Gray

#desire #despair #diary #longing #monologue

An odd thing about beauty, however, is that it's absence tends not to arouse our sympathy as much as other forms of privation do. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#privation #beauty