“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.”
― Lord Jim
― Lord Jim
“We must come down from our heights, and leave our straight paths, for the byways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts; and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been wrought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice. Two”
― Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea
― Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor's Life at Sea
“Aboard at a ship's helm
A young steersman steering with care.
Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell - O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.
O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her grey sails,
The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gaily and safe.
But O ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.”
―
A young steersman steering with care.
Through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing,
An ocean-bell - O a warning bell, rock'd by the waves.
O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place.
For as on the alert O steersman, you mind the loud admonition,
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking speeds away under her grey sails,
The beautiful and noble ship with all her precious wealth speeds away gaily and safe.
But O ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.”
―
“...in Petushki the jasmine never stops blooming and the birds always sing...”
― Moscow to the End of the Line
― Moscow to the End of the Line
“He looked upon the immortal sea with the awakened and groping perception of its heartless might; he saw it unchanged, black and foaming under the eternal scrutiny of the stars; he heard its impatient voice calling for him out of a pitiless vastness full of unrest, turmoil, and of terror. He looked afar upon it, and he saw an immensity tortured and blind, moaning and furious, that claimed all the days of his tenacious life, and, when life was over, would claim the worn-out body of its slave...”
― The Nigger of the Narcissus
― The Nigger of the Narcissus
Todd’s 2025 Year in Books
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