Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness.
(Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)”
― The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
(Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)”
― The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
―
―
“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean”
―
―
“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?”
― Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
― Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
― Letters to a Young Poet
― Letters to a Young Poet
Joel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,369 books
|
275 friends
1,723 books
|
115 friends
3,778 books
|
119 friends
198 books
|
29 friends
654 books
|
75 friends
2,820 books
|
1,202 friends
478 books
|
201 friends
99 books
|
39 friends
More friends…
Polls voted on by Joel
Lists liked by Joel