“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating other. Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time that someone else. Hours in which honesty is permitted have become rare, and when they arrive one is tired and does not only want to "let oneself go" but actually wishes to stretch out as long and wide and ungainly as one happens to be... Soon we may well reach the point where people can no longer give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience.”
― The Gay Science
― The Gay Science
“Mario, what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"
"I give."
"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”
― Infinite Jest
"I give."
"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”
― Infinite Jest
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”
―
―
“What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.”
― Infinite Jest
― Infinite Jest
“I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk.”
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Frankie’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Frankie’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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