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“Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time, sit in a teahouse watching the passers-by, stand in a corner of the market, go for a haircut. You pick up a thread – a word, a meeting, a friend of a friend of someone you have just met – and soon the most insipid, most insignificant place becomes a mirror of the world, a window on life, a theatre of humanity.”
― A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
― A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
“Haverá um ano em que haverá um mês, em que haverá uma semana em que haverá um dia em que haverá uma hora em que haverá um minuto em que haverá um segundo e dentro do segundo haverá o não-tempo sagrado da morte transfigurada.”
― Un souffle de vie
― Un souffle de vie
“I own my shame.”
― Growing Children
― Growing Children
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall?
Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of
conditions in which all vital organic elemental events occur. And the botanist who says that the apple feel because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says that the apple fell he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction...
In historic events the so-called great men are labels
giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.”
― War and Peace
Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of
conditions in which all vital organic elemental events occur. And the botanist who says that the apple feel because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says that the apple fell he wanted to eat it and prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his destruction...
In historic events the so-called great men are labels
giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.”
― War and Peace
“We must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
Emily’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Emily’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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