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One time, when he was a child, in a power-failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and
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“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
― Invisible Cities
― Invisible Cities
“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
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“Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model the longer the tether of our slavery? Then we can enjoy ourselves and frolic in a more spacious arena and die without having come to the end of the tether. Is that, then, what we call liberty?”
― Zorba the Greek
― Zorba the Greek
“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”
― Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
― Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
“I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.”
― No Exit
― No Exit
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