“My father worked on a farm - and his father. They both got very near to ninety, I believe. They were hardy old sorts. They never had a thing amiss with them. They worked and lived, and then kind of toppled over at the end. I should have been like them but my accident made the difference to me. The horses ran away with me on the farm. It was only two fields away from this house. It was a terrible accident; it jagged me all to pieces. The horses bolted in the field and ruined me. We were using the self-binder at the time. It was the second year I was in this village and thirty-eight year ago or more. I was at the top of the field whole and then at the bottom of the field, broken, and all in minutes. I should not have come here.”
― Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
― Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
“That man seems to have a particular talent for being on the spot whenever there is something picturesque to be done.”
― Nostromo
― Nostromo
“There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests. They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only in a moral principle.”
― Nostromo
― Nostromo
“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.”
― La vieillesse
― La vieillesse
“People look to education now in the same way as they once looked to religion. Are you save? Have you got your O-levels? It’s the same thing – salvation.”
― Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
― Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village
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