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Sean
https://www.goodreads.com/billy_ruffian
TO AN EAGLE OR to an owl or to a rabbit, man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse.
Sean liked this
“Nonetheless, Braudel’s definitional opposition of capitalism and market economy is misleading. Even in the early modern era, and even in its “upper echelon,” the kind of capitalism taking shape was characterized by a great deal of competition, profit and loss, rise and fall, opportunity and risk. It was rooted in the market economy and, as a rule, contributed not to the elimination of markets but to their becoming more universal. Essentially, this remains true to this day.”
― Capitalism: A Short History
― Capitalism: A Short History
“the necessary thing from the socialists’ point of view is not egalitarian economic outcomes, but state control.”
― Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
― Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism
“Qua story, it can only have one merit: that of making the audience want to know what happens next. And conversely it can only have one fault: that of making the audience not want to know what happens next.”
― Aspects of the Novel
― Aspects of the Novel
“If accuracy, fidelity, and the strictest attention to the letter of the text, be supposed to constitute the qualities of an excellent version, this of all versions, must, in general, be accounted the most excellent. Every sentence, every word, every syllable, and every letter and point, seems to have been weighed with the nicest exactitude; and expressed, either in the text, or margin, with the greatest precision”
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“Our reaction against the sentimentality embodied in Victorian and post-Victorian writing was so resolute writers came to believe that the further from sentimentality we got, the truer the art. That was a mistake. ...if you are not risking sentimentality, you are not close to your inner self.”
― The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
― The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
Sean’s 2025 Year in Books
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