“Knowing that there are no victorious causes, I have a liking for lost causes: they require an uncontaminated soul”
― The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
― The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“The frost which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvests of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten races and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to new men. There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters a rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order. The sharpest evils are bent into that periodicity which makes the errors of planets, and the fevers and distempers of men, self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without enemies, no hero.”
― The Conduct of Life: By Ralph Waldo Emerson
― The Conduct of Life: By Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is no doubt that as one nears the penultimate depths of depression—which is to say just before the stage when one begins to act out one’s suicide instead of being a mere contemplator of it—the acute sense of loss is connected with a knowledge of life slipping away at accelerated speed. One develops fierce attachments. Ludicrous things—my reading glasses, a handkerchief, a certain writing instrument—became the objects of my demented possessiveness. Each momentary misplacement filled me with a frenzied dismay, each item being the tactile reminder of a world soon to be obliterated.”
― Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
― Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness
“Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.”
― Existentialism is a Humanism
― Existentialism is a Humanism
Hassan’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Hassan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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