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Karen

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Karen’s Bookshelves

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mysteries‎ (1817)
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“Almost all languages change. A rare exception is written Icelandic, which has changed so little that modern Icelanders can read sagas written a thousand years ago, and if Leif Ericson appeared on the streets of Reykjavik he could find his way around, allowing for certain difficulties over terms like airport and quarter-pound cheeseburger.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

2 likes

“The bouncer scrutinized my face. “Do I know you?” he asked. No, I thought, but you might remember me from such Saturday-night hits as “Would you please put that punter down I’d like to arrest him,” “You can stop kicking him now, the ambulance has arrived,” and the classic “If you don’t back off right now I’m going to nick you as well.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Moon Over Soho

4 likes

“I think you’re going to find Marcus Aurelius particularly useful.’ ‘For what?’ I asked. Nightingale hesitated. ‘Quoting, mainly,’ he said. ‘And thus maintaining an air of erudition and authority.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, The Furthest Station

12 likes

“Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.”
― Hilaire Belloc

tags: epitaph, politics

13 likes

“I don’t know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. We dismiss peak moments and passionate love affairs as an ephemeral chemical buzz, just endorphins or hormones, but accept those 3 A.M. bouts of despair as unsentimental insights into the truth about our lives.”
― Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

tags: depression, euphoria, happiness, moods, sadness

44 likes

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