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“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.”
― Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
― Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
“I told myself, “Everything is a being! The shout that passes into the air is an entity like an animal, since it is born, produces a movement, and is again transformed, in order to die.”
― The Horla
― The Horla
“Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.
The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred
Malignant and implacable! I vow
That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world.
As if a Being, God or Fiend, could reign,
At once so wicked, foolish and insane,
As to produce men when He might refrain!
The world rolls round for ever like a mill;
It grinds out death and life and good and ill;
It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.
While air of Space and Time's full river flow
The mill must blindly whirl unresting so:
It may be wearing out, but who can know?
Man might know one thing were his sight less dim;
That it whirls not to suit his petty whim,
That it is quite indifferent to him.
Nay, does it treat him harshly as he saith?
It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath,
Then grinds him back into eternal death.”
― The City of Dreadful Night
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.
The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred
Malignant and implacable! I vow
That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world.
As if a Being, God or Fiend, could reign,
At once so wicked, foolish and insane,
As to produce men when He might refrain!
The world rolls round for ever like a mill;
It grinds out death and life and good and ill;
It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.
While air of Space and Time's full river flow
The mill must blindly whirl unresting so:
It may be wearing out, but who can know?
Man might know one thing were his sight less dim;
That it whirls not to suit his petty whim,
That it is quite indifferent to him.
Nay, does it treat him harshly as he saith?
It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath,
Then grinds him back into eternal death.”
― The City of Dreadful Night
“The sun burned white, conjugating its colorlessness, it’s fixed, blazing surface, against sand so blank that it induced visions.”
― Zama
― Zama
“Our contemporary Rousseau has a relevant maxim. He argues that true vengeance consists not of killing the antagonist, but forcing him to kill you. I confess that my own spirit is not sufficiently lofty for me to share this view with the sublime sage of Geneva. Yet the idea is strange and novel, and for those who subscribe to it, there is ample room for subtle and rather heroic argumentation, of the kind so frequently sought by our modern thinkers, who love nothing better than recycling paradoxes into aphorisms and vice-versa.”
― The Duel
― The Duel
Classics and the Western Canon
— 4960 members
— last activity May 29, 2026 06:35PM
This is a group to read and discuss those books generally referred to as “the classics” or “the Western canon.” Books which have shaped Western though ...more
Gabriel’s 2025 Year in Books
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