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Thomas Murphy
https://www.goodreads.com/thomaspmurphy
“As long as we're young, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the scene, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you've come to. There's no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you've lived this long, it's because you've squashed any poetry you had in you.”
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“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”
― Selected Writings
― Selected Writings
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Pensées
― Pensées
“To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.”
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“A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything.... Thereby he shows himself unworthy of his ancestor: the need for novelty is the characteristic of an alienated gorilla.”
― The Trouble With Being Born
― The Trouble With Being Born
The Year of Reading Proust
— 1632 members
— last activity Mar 29, 2025 09:41AM
2013 was the year for reading—or re-reading—Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu or In Search of Lost Time for many of us. However, these th ...more
Literary Darkness
— 4721 members
— last activity 11 hours, 30 min ago
This group is dedicated to an appreciation of important works of literature, both classic and contemporary... that happen to fall into the category of ...more
The BURIED Book Club
— 937 members
— last activity Oct 09, 2025 06:06PM
TODAY BOOKS ARE NOT BURNED. THEY ARE BURIED. WE SHALL UNEARTH THEM.
James Joyce Reading Group
— 323 members
— last activity May 10, 2024 05:52AM
A discussion group dedicated to the writings of James Joyce.
Thomas’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Thomas’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
672 books
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117 friends
821 books
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191 friends
2,475 books
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535 friends
3,356 books
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4,240 friends
356 books
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72 friends
2,462 books
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2,946 friends
7,862 books
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313 friends
25 books
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1,816 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
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