Classics Without All the Class discussion

It is interesting to be reading this book at the same time as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Both books pose similar paradoxical questions about religion and the loss of faith in God.

Here is a quote that has stuck out to me so far in the book. End of chapter 7.

"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

Such a great analogy for agnostics.

“I love Canada. It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.”

Excerpt From: Martel, Yann. “Life of Pi.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. iBooks.
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"To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."

"I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."

and
"
If you stumble about believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe?"

Jessica wrote: ""I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both."

and
"
If you stumble about believability, what are you livi..."

I love that last quote!!

"Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and a gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud." This is so poignant!

Life of Pi

And so, when she first heard of Hare Krishnas, she didn't hear right. She heard "Hairless Christians", and that is what they were to her for many years. When I corrected her, I told her that in fact she was not so wrong; that Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hindus, and Christians, in their devotion to God, are hat-wearing Muslims.