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JoAnna
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When I was a young stay-at-home mom, the internet was a lifeline. From the comfort (and isolation) of my kitchen table, I’d read the news headlines, keep in touch with friends, browse the latest fashion trends, and discover better ways of
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“He was not yet in the Church, but already a sin without a name had occurred to him. Ordinarily, the thought might give him pleasure. He remembered Nunes saying that a man must come into the Church on his own intellectual level. And in a horror, remote but clear, saw that the more intelligent a man was, the more various the sins he was capable of committing.”
― Dayspring
― Dayspring
“It was such a nice feeling to know that someone was looking after you... that someone wanted you... that you were important to someone.”
― Anne of Ingleside
― Anne of Ingleside
“The individual citizen had no chance to voice his protest or his opinion, not even his fear. He could only leave the country - and so people did. Those who used 'I' instead of 'we' in their language had to escape. It was this fatal difference in grammar that divided them from the rest of their compatriots. As a consequence of this 'us', no civic society developed. The little there was, in the form of small, isolated, and marginalised groups, was soon swallowed up by the national homogenisation that did not permit any differences, any individualism. As under communism, individualism was punished - individuals speaking out against the war, or against nationalism, were singled out as 'traitors'.
How does a person who is a product of a totalitarian society learn responsibility, individuality, initiative? by saying 'no'. But this begins with saying 'I', thinking 'I' and doing 'I' - in public as well as in private. Individuality, the first-person singular, always existed under communism, it was just exiled from public and political life and exercised in private. Thus the terrible hypocrisy with which we learned to live in order to survive is having its backlash now: it is very difficult to connect the private and public 'I'; to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. There is still too big a danger that the citizen will withdraw into an anonymous, safe 'us'.”
― Café Europa: Life After Communism
How does a person who is a product of a totalitarian society learn responsibility, individuality, initiative? by saying 'no'. But this begins with saying 'I', thinking 'I' and doing 'I' - in public as well as in private. Individuality, the first-person singular, always existed under communism, it was just exiled from public and political life and exercised in private. Thus the terrible hypocrisy with which we learned to live in order to survive is having its backlash now: it is very difficult to connect the private and public 'I'; to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. There is still too big a danger that the citizen will withdraw into an anonymous, safe 'us'.”
― Café Europa: Life After Communism
“Even at his age he knew that there are basically two categories of people in a society: those who have, and those who have not. But according to the egalitarian principles of any communist society, those 'haves' should share with the 'have nots.' And because there is not much to share anyway, in the end that egalitarianism boils down to the equal distribution of poverty.”
― Café Europa: Life After Communism
― Café Europa: Life After Communism
“He let his mind go, following its apparently new logic: it came to a matter of self-control, something laughed at by himself and virtually all the people he knew in the universities. He personally associated it with being a Boy Scout. In something not unlike terror, he saw how the great truths had been made banal for the popular taste; how the oversimplifying of them was a danger to himself and others dedicated to the complex and subtle. The terror became real in him as he saw for a second time, with a clarity equivalent to physical sight, how much more difficult it was for an intelligent person to be saved.”
― Dayspring
― Dayspring
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NTLTRC will help you find your love of Classcis! Find intrigue, well-developed characters, prose that is complex and beautiful, compelling stories tha ...more
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