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For the mystery of human being does not solely rest in the desire to live, but in the problem—for what should one live at all?
“This: one thing prevented me from seeing any other; a good action, seen too near, concealed a hundred criminal actions from my eyes; on one side an old man, on the other, children, all this came between me and duty. I forgot the villages burned, the fields ravaged, the prisoners massacred, the wounded murdered, the women shot. I forgot France betrayed to England; I liberated the murderer of his country. I am guilty. In speaking thus, I seem to speak against myself; it is a mistake. I am speaking for myself. When the guilty person confesses his fault, he saves the only thing worth the trouble of saving—honor.”
― Victor Hugo: The Complete Novels
― Victor Hugo: The Complete Novels
“It’s all about understanding. One seeks to understand the world and the other to understand ourselves. But more than that, one seeks to control the world and the other its people.”
― Of Mind Or Matter
― Of Mind Or Matter
“I repeat, in case you missed it, that there is no greater teacher in this world than misery. It gives you character and respectability if you take from it all that it has to offer. A real friend would point out all your faults, but how many true friends do we have in this world? One if we’re lucky. But misery is a friend that we can always count on. It teaches self-control and helps us to distinguish between right, wrong and necessary. It helps us to contemplate the meaning of life, and if we are unable to find that meaning, it helps us to deal with it. The best advice that I could give you, Ballard, is to not be afraid to befriend misery, because it will haunt and torment you until you do.”
― Of Mind Or Matter
― Of Mind Or Matter
“You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about your education, but some good, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education. If a man carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe to the end of his days, and if one has only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may sometime be the means of saving us.”
― The Brothers Karamazov
― The Brothers Karamazov
“Nature is pitiless; she will not consent to withdraw her flowers, her music, her perfumes and her sunbeams from before the face of human abomination; she overwhelms man with the contrast between divine beauty and the ugliness of society; she spares him neither the wing of a butterfly, nor the song of a bird; in the midst of murder, in the midst of vengeance, in the midst of barbarity he must submit to the sight of holy things; he cannot get away from the vast reproach of the universal sweetness and the implacable serenity of the blue sky. The deformity of human laws must be exposed in their nakedness, in the midst of the dazzling beauty of the eternal. Man breaks and crushes, man destroys, man kills; the summer is summer still, the lily is the lily still, the stars of heaven are the stars of heaven still.”
― Victor Hugo: The Complete Novels
― Victor Hugo: The Complete Novels
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Ahmed’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Ahmed’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
988 books
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2,648 friends
483 books
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154 friends
1 book
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2 friends
3 books
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68 friends
4 books
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13 friends
52 books
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116 friends
1 book
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30 friends
0 books
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55 friends
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