“The centripetal force on our planet is still fearfully strong, Alyosha. I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves you know sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. Here they have brought the soup for you, eat it, it will do you good. It’s first-rate soup, they know how to make it here. I want to travel in Europe, Alyosha, I shall set off from here. And yet I know that I am only going to a graveyard, but it’s a most precious graveyard, that’s what it is! Precious are the dead that lie there, every stone over them speaks of such burning life in the past, of such passionate faith in their work, their truth, their struggle and their science, that I know I shall fall on the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them; though I’m convinced in my heart that it’s long been nothing but a graveyard. And I shall not weep from despair, but simply because I shall be happy in my tears, I shall steep my soul in emotion. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.”
― Nausea
― Nausea
“The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“People don’t change to suit their god; they change their god to suit them.”
― Toll the Hounds
― Toll the Hounds
“There are many fools in the world and I must count myself among them.
Who could be righteous in this midst of failings, these seething flaws hiding behind every familiar mask? And what of this delusion, that the mind of the nefarious, the criminal, was a stranger's mind, with sensibilities alien and malign? We are cheaters one and all. I see the proof of that in myself. Even as I long for and, indeed, demand virtues among others—I am hunted by my own vices, and would elude the bite of reason and make of propriety nothing more than a public front.
And now I fear that I am not unusual, not cursed into some special maze of my own making. I fear that we are all the same, eager to make strangers of the worst that is in each of us, and by this stance lift up the banners of good against some foreign evil.
But see how they rest against one another, and by opposition alone are left to stand. This is flimsy construction indeed. And so I make masks of the worst in me and fling them upon the faces of my enemies, and would commit slaughter on all that I despise in myself. Yet, with this blood soaking the ground before me, see my flaws thrive in this fertile soil.”
― Forge of Darkness
Who could be righteous in this midst of failings, these seething flaws hiding behind every familiar mask? And what of this delusion, that the mind of the nefarious, the criminal, was a stranger's mind, with sensibilities alien and malign? We are cheaters one and all. I see the proof of that in myself. Even as I long for and, indeed, demand virtues among others—I am hunted by my own vices, and would elude the bite of reason and make of propriety nothing more than a public front.
And now I fear that I am not unusual, not cursed into some special maze of my own making. I fear that we are all the same, eager to make strangers of the worst that is in each of us, and by this stance lift up the banners of good against some foreign evil.
But see how they rest against one another, and by opposition alone are left to stand. This is flimsy construction indeed. And so I make masks of the worst in me and fling them upon the faces of my enemies, and would commit slaughter on all that I despise in myself. Yet, with this blood soaking the ground before me, see my flaws thrive in this fertile soil.”
― Forge of Darkness
Eli’s 2025 Year in Books
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