shixuan

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about shixuan.


The Priory of the...
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (page 60 of 848)
Apr 19, 2025 09:03AM

 
Your Money or You...
shixuan is currently reading
bookshelves: currently-reading
Rate this book
Clear rating

progress: 
 
  (page 158 of 400)
Dec 29, 2024 05:16PM

 
The Good Soldier:...
Rate this book
Clear rating

 
See all 15 books that shixuan is reading…
Loading...
Milan Kundera
“Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.”
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
tags: love

Vladimir Nabokov
“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
Vladimir Nabokov

Anton Chekhov
“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”
Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels

“With bronze as a mirror one can correct one's appearance; with history as a mirror, one can understand the rise and fall of a state; with good men as a mirror, one can distinguish right from wrong.”
Li Shimin, Tang Emperor Taizong

Donna Tartt
“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
Donna Tartt, The Secret History

year in books
tarbg
444 books | 12 friends

Michael...
243 books | 6 friends

Charlotte
1,081 books | 8 friends

ssherylc
464 books | 9 friends

grace shen
212 books | 25 friends

chelsea♡
308 books | 4 friends

vinnie
126 books | 14 friends

Christine
139 books | 21 friends

More friends…



Polls voted on by shixuan

Lists liked by shixuan