“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”
― The Count of Monte Cristo
― The Count of Monte Cristo
“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
― The Mill on the Floss
― The Mill on the Floss
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
― The Call of Cthulhu
― The Call of Cthulhu
“I have looked upon all the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.”
― The Call of Cthulhu
― The Call of Cthulhu
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
― The Prince
― The Prince
Sharing Thoughts about Books with Others (STBO)
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We use Good Reads to keep track of our books, sort of an easier way to inventory our reading materials. But there are a lot of people worldwide who ar ...more
Ursa’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ursa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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