“To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!”
― To the Lighthouse
― To the Lighthouse
“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
― The Iliad
― The Iliad
“While a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire may be not so much to own what we find beautiful as to lay permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies.
Owning such an object may help us realise our ambition of absorbing the virtues to which it alludes, but we ought not to presume that those virtues will automatically or effortlessly begin to rub off on us through tenure. Endeavouring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”
― The Architecture of Happiness
Owning such an object may help us realise our ambition of absorbing the virtues to which it alludes, but we ought not to presume that those virtues will automatically or effortlessly begin to rub off on us through tenure. Endeavouring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.
What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.”
― The Architecture of Happiness
“There I was, cold, isolated and desperate for something I knew I couldn't have.
A solution. A remedy. Anything.
...I hated it. Alone and confused was the last place I wanted to be.
Somehow I knew I deserved this.”
― A Constant Suicide
A solution. A remedy. Anything.
...I hated it. Alone and confused was the last place I wanted to be.
Somehow I knew I deserved this.”
― A Constant Suicide
“It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
Marte’s 2025 Year in Books
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