“Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.”
― The Power and the Glory
― The Power and the Glory
“I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis.”
― Flaubert in Egypt
― Flaubert in Egypt
“To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.”
― Suicide and the Soul
― Suicide and the Soul
“Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses indurate. Both go mouldy.”
― Flaubert's Parrot
― Flaubert's Parrot
“Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.”
― "I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.”
― "I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare
Abyr’s 2025 Year in Books
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