288 books
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883 voters
“No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.”
― On the Heights of Despair
― On the Heights of Despair
“Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way. The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. There is nothing ready made for him. He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out. Probably it will be something laughable.”
― On Being Ill
― On Being Ill
“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.”
― Waiting for Godot
― Waiting for Godot
“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.”
― The Consolation of Philosophy
― The Consolation of Philosophy
“Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.”
― The Trouble With Being Born
― The Trouble With Being Born
Ahmed’s 2025 Year in Books
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