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“Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.”
―
―
“I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.”
― Middlemarch: York Notes Advanced
― Middlemarch: York Notes Advanced
“Perché la vita, per tutte le sfacciate assurdità, piccole e grandi, di cui beatamente è piena, ha l'inestimabile privilegio di poter fare a meno di quella stupidissima verosimiglianza, a cui l'arte crede suo dovere obbedire. Le assurdità della vita non hanno bisogno di parer verosimili, perché sono vere. All'opposto di quelle dell'arte che, per parer vere, hanno bisogno d'esseri verosimili. E allora, verosimili, non sono più assurdità. Un caso della vita può essere assurdo; un'opera d'arte, se è opera d'arte, no. Ne segue che tacciare d'assurdità e d'inverosimiglianza, in nome della vita, un'opera d'arte è balordaggine. In nome dell'arte, sì; in nome della vita, no.”
― Il fu Mattia Pascal
― Il fu Mattia Pascal
“First and best victory is to conquer self. To be conquered By self is, of all things. the most shameful and objectionable.”
― The Republic
― The Republic
“What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists, and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? I’d have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his guts; but not now. It so happens that they need him. They need him so that the great moronic mass that you admire can sleep soundly in their beds at night. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me.”
― The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
― The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Reading the 20th Century
— 1567 members
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Welcome to 'Reading the 20th Century', a friendly and inclusive group that explores and discusses the literature, history, culture and music of the ye ...more
The Short Story Club
— 560 members
— last activity 3 hours, 28 min ago
The purpose of this group is to read and discuss one short story a week. For the the first couple of years, we read from specific anthologies, but fro ...more
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