Book excerpts

Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.

Charles Dickens, A tale of Two Cities

“Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about “the Centre of Truth:” holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth—which did not need much demonstration—but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on—and it did a world of good which never became manifest.”

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tell-son's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

IT was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age
belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books. (I don't think there was much passionate love in Marion Crawford, and only a shadow of it in Walter Scott.)”

Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt

"Your uncle was a bookmaker known as Jo," Aunt Augusta said.
"A very fat man. I don't know why I say that, but I have always liked fat men. They have given up all unnecessary effort, for they have had the sense to realize that women do not, as men do, fall in love with physical beauty. Curran was stout and so was your father.
It's easier to feel at home with a fat man. Perhaps travelling with me, you will put on a little weight yourself. You had the misfortune to choose a nervous profession."

Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt

"Uncle Jo," I said, "was lucky to have no currency restrictions.
He couldn't have afforded to die like that on a tourist allowance."
"They were great days," Aunt Augusta said.
"How are we going to manage on ours?" I asked. "With fifty pounds each we shall not be able to stay very long in Istanbul."
"Currency restrictions have never seriously bothered me," my aunt said. "There are ways and means."
"I hope you don't plan anything illegal."
"I have never planned anything illegal in my life," Aunt Augusta said. "How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?"

Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt

When Sonja was done, she left Larkin his pad and pencils as usual, and went to bed herself. That night she had a dream that she and Gustav were looking at a house by the seaside which the water had flooded to its windowsills. In the morning she awoke later than normal and went to Larkin's room. She found his newest drawing on the nightstand, of a boy flying over London Bridge, but when she turned down his blanket to wake him, only his body was lying there.

Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden

Indeed, the pieces here speak of Eugene in tones of voice and turns of phrase that one would normally reserve for saints or prophets. And so it was this that compelled me to the rook with more and more determination, to the point where, I must admit, for the last several days of my journey it has become precisely what I had resolved it shouldn't—an outright destination, and so the distance between us a mere obstacle, a nuisance, a means best undertaken without attention, like the turning of a page.

Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden

Simply, Virchow was a determinist. He believed that life could ultimately be reduced to a set of physical laws, like mechanics, and that man's reason could therefore someday penetrate and explain all its mysteries. Consequently, he regarded the course of human history as being one of overall enlightenment, and he desired both as a scientist and as a political thinker to be a part of that process, of finding out what was true and ridding from men's minds what wasn't.
Uyterhoeven, on the other hand, was a vitalist. He recognized life to be a fundamentally spontaneous and creative phenomenon, subject to no law beyond an apparently indomitable will to grow and to ex-pand. Physics and chemistry did well to record her habits, in other words, but provided no explanation as to the vital force which still evidently charged the universe.

Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden

Great ability is not required so much as little usefulness.
Brains are at a discount in the married state. There is no demand for them, no appreciation even. Our wives sum us up according to a standard of their own, in which brilliancy of intellect obtains no marks. Your lady and mistress is not at all impressed by your cleverness and talent, my dear reader-not in the slightest.

Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

For everything looms pleasant through the softening haze of time. Even the sadness that is past seems sweet. Our boyish days look very merry to us now, all nutting, hoop, and ginger-bread. The snubbings and toothaches and the Latin verbs are all forgotten
—the Latin verbs especially. And we fancy we were very happy when we were hobbledehoys, and loved; and we wish that we could love again. We never think of the heartaches, or the sleepless nights, or the hot dryness of our throats, when she said she could never be anything to us but a sister-as if any man wanted more sisters!

Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift, as did the German Minnesingers, long before them, and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece.
From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now, if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine, and take the rain good-temperedly.

Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; and "Forward!" is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building: it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life, thinking of what might have been, and forgetting the maybe that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.

Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured
Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be able to be at ease in the world, the abomination of the annihilation is never extinguished. Faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again.

Jean Amery, as quoted by Primo Levi in The Drowned and the Saved

We also tend to simplify history; but the pattern within which events are ordered is not always identifiable in a single unequivocal fashion, and it may therefore happen that different historians understand and construe history in ways that are incompatible with one another. Nevertheless, perhaps for reasons that go back to our origins as social animals, the need to divide the field into 'we' and 'they' is so strong that this pattern, this bi-partition - friend-enemy - prevails over all others. Popular history, and also the history taught in schools, is influenced by this Manichean tendency which shuns half-tints and complexities: it is prone to reduce the river of human occurrences to conflicts, and the conflicts to duels - we and they, Athenians and Spartans, Romans and Carthaginians.

Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved

Have we - we who have returned - been able to understand and make others understand our experience? What we commonly mean by ‘understand' coincides with ‘simplify’; without profound simplification the world around us would be an infinite, undefined tangle that would defy our ability to orient ourselves and decide upon our actions. In short, we are compelled to reduce the knowable to a schema: with this purpose in view we have built for ourselves admirable tools in the course of evolution, tools which are specifically the property of the human species - language and conceptual thought.

Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved