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“The Yirkalla aborigines of Arnhem Land in Australia hear sacred song words in the babbling of babies. To them, songs are never composed but only discovered: all songs exist already.”
― The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
― The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
“Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
― The Picture of Dorian Gray
“When an apple ripens and falls—what makes it fall? Is it that it is attracted to the ground, is it that the stem withers, is it that the sun has dried it up, that it has grown heavier, that the wind shakes it, that the boy standing underneath wants to eat it?”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
“Or we could buy the French Barracuda design with its nuclear power plant rather than go to the trouble and risk of developing a conventionally powered version.”
― How to Defend Australia
― How to Defend Australia
“was the condition of the first man’s blessedness before his fall. The love of idleness remained the same in fallen man, but the curse still weighs on man, and not only because we must win our bread in the sweat of our face,1 but because our moral qualities are such that we are unable to be idle and at peace. A secret voice tells us that we should feel guilty for being idle. If man could find a condition in which, while idle, he felt that he was being useful and was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one side of primordial blessedness.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
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Ben Connolly’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ben Connolly’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
426 books
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84 friends
361 books
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52 friends
499 books
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18 friends
473 books
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50 friends
793 books
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50 friends
3,229 books
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177 friends
2,493 books
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367 friends
408 books
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56 friends
More friends…
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