Michael Dennis

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The Quest for Sai...
Michael Dennis is currently reading
bookshelves: tbr-2026, currently-reading
Reading for the 3rd time
read in January 2010
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  (page 46 of 451)
May 15, 2026 11:51PM

 
Atlas Shrugged
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  (page 68 of 1080)
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Memories of Ice
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  (page 42 of 1184)
Mar 29, 2026 10:15PM

 
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Barbara W. Tuchman
“It may be taken as axiomatic that any statement of fact about the Middle Ages may (and probably will) be met by a statement of the opposite or a different version. Women outnumbered men because men were killed off in the wars; men outnumbered women because women died in childbirth. Common people were familiar with the Bible; common people were unfamiliar with the Bible. Nobles were tax exempt; no, they were not tax exempt. French peasants were filthy and foul-smelling and lived on bread and onions; French peasants ate pork, fowl, and game and enjoyed baths in the village bathhouses. The list could be extended indefinitely.”
Barbara Tuchman

Samuel Butler
“All our lives long, every day and every hour, we are engaged in the process of accommodating our changed and unchanged selves to changed and unchanged surroundings: living, in fact, is nothing else than this process of accommodation; when we fail in it a little, we are stupid, when flagrantly we are mad, when we give up the attempt altogether we die, when we suspend it temporarily we sleep. In quiet eventless lives the changes internal and external are so small that there is little or no strain in the process of fusion and accommodation; in other lives there is great strain, but there is also great fusing and accommodating power; in others great strain with little accommodating power. A life will be successful or not according as the power of accommodation is equal to or unequal to the strain of fusing and adjusting internal and external changes.”
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

William Shakespeare
“Men shut their doors against a setting sun.”
William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

Augustine of Hippo
“It is according to this Law that the customs of different times and places are shaped to fit their time and place; but the Law itself is everywhere and always, not one thing in one place and another in another. It is according to this Law that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and all those who were praised by the mouth of God, were righteous. It is the naive who judge them unrighteous, judging them in accordance with their brief place in human time, and measuring the moral character of the human race from the direction of their own moral character.”
Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“A greater hazard, built into the very nature of recorded history, is overload of the negative: the disproportionate survival of the bad side--of evil, misery, contention, and harm. In history this is exactly the same as in the daily newspaper. The normal does not make news. History is made by the documents that survive, and these lean heavily on crisis and calamity, crime and misbehavior, because such things are the subject matter of the documentary process-- of lawsuits, treaties, moralists' denunciations, literary satire, papal Bills. No Pope ever issued a Bull to approve of something.”
TUCHMAN BARBARA, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

976576 Jane Austen July 2025 — 1553 members — last activity Aug 11, 2025 11:13AM
Jane Austen July is a month-long readathon, all about reading Jane Austen and related works. ---The Challenges--- 1. Read one of Jane Austen’s six ...more
1158968 The 1900 to 1950 Readathon — 158 members — last activity Oct 26, 2021 07:15PM
Well hullo there, and welcome to the 1900 to 1950 Readathon. The 1900 to 1950 Readathon is a month-long readathon happening 1st to 31st May 2021, all ...more
722891 VICTOBER 2025 — 1922 members — last activity Nov 04, 2025 02:35AM
Greetings all! Victober is a month-long readathon hosted each October all about reading Victorian literature. The Goodreads group remains in place, ...more
220 Goodreads Librarians Group — 324149 members — last activity 0 minutes ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
1195326 The Mega Dickens Readalong — 205 members — last activity Mar 27, 2023 08:13AM
Discorder server: https://discord.gg/zaeZ3HCPSf The Schedule: The Pickwick Papers, 1837: 302,190 words – October and November 2022 Oliver Twist, 18 ...more
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