Jasmine > Recent Status Updates

One thing is fixed, by eternal law arranged;
Nothing which comes to be remains unchanged.
(Book 2, Chapter 3)

What do the Rosetta Stone and the EU regulations have in common?
Chapter 33, Rosetta Stone: "...to read the whole content (on the Rosetta Stone) is about as thrilling as reading a new EU regulation written in several languages. It is bureaucratic, priestly and dry." (p. 212). It seems that bureaucracy has a long tradition...

"On every side, and far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other, and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly, form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air." (p.335)

"Dickens has often been censured by serious critics for failing to create individuals with the depth of George Eliot's and Conrad's, or for bringing in unnecessary new characters to revive a flagging plot, but what does that matter to ordinary readers when Dickens can generate a whole world and populate it at will for our pleasure?" (from the introduction by Peter Washington)

"...the past is open to interpretation, and since our culture and our personal identity and how we address the future are all to some extent shaped by how we read the past, it's especially important to keep an eye out both for how historians shape the stories they tell and also for what they may have left out." (p.156)

"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs." (p.308)

"The instinctive act of human-kind here was to stand, and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chanted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the note, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south to be heard no more." (p.9)

Sospinti dal cosiddetto vento greco del pomeriggio, i lunghi cavalloni venivano avanti a ranghi serrati e successivi. Prima che cominciassero a ridurre l'altezza dei loro cimieri di schiuma sino a farli sparire quasi del tutto negli ultimi metri, pareva che si precipitassero all'assalto della terraferma. Sdraiato sulla chaise longue, sentivo il sordo urto delle ondate contro la riva. (p.51)

Electronics and anthropology -- distant cousins whom late modernity has drawn together and bound in marriage. The child of that coupling was Adam. (p. 13)

Ich plädiere daher im Kontext der Familienbeziehungen für einen Perspektivenwechsel: weg vom transaktionalen Modell der Moral, bei dem Austausch in Familien vor allem durch Transaktionen von Schulden oder Dankbarkeit geregelt wird, und hin zu einem relationalen Modell der Moral, bei dem die Pflichten und die Gründe, die wir in Beziehungen haben, allein in der Beziehung selbst wurzeln. (p 72)

Sich der eigenen Familie auf eine Weise zu nähern, wie ich es in diesem Buch tue -- mit kritischem Blick und ergebnisoffen, aber immer am Verstehenwollen dieses komplexen Verhältnisses orientiert --, ist zugegebenermassen eine Luxussituation. In ärmeren Ländern, die über keinen ausgebauten Sozialstaat verfügen, wie wir ihn gewohnt sind, in Katastrophengebieten oder auf der Flucht zählt oft allein die Familie. (p. 19)

The world, Lady Slane, is pitiably horrible. It is horrible because it is based upon competitive struggle -- and really one does not know whether to call the basis of that struggle a convention or a necessity. Is it some extraordinary delusion, or is it a law of life? (p. 66)

'Are you positive you aren't a man?' he would ask anxiously, and she would echo, 'Can it be possible you're not a woman?' and then they must put it to the proof without further ado. (p.179)

Her modesty as to her writing, her vanity as to her person, her fears for her safety all seem to hint that what was said a short time ago about there being no change in Orlando the man and Orlando the woman, was ceasing to be altogether true. (p.131)

Orlando had become a woman -- there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. (p.98)

It was the fatal nature of this disease to substitute a phantom for reality, so that Orlando, to whom fortune had given every gift -- plate, linen, houses, men-servants, carpets, beds in profusion -- had only to open a book for the whole vast accumulation to turn to mist. (p.53)

For the philosopher is right that nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy; and he goes one to opine that one is twin fellow to the other; and draws from this the conclusion that all extremes of feeling are allied to madness;... (p. 31)

Die auf Gleichheit basierende Balance der Geschlechter, die auch die Grundlage bildete für das Cooperative Breeding, war das Erfolgsrezept des Homo sapiens. Auf diese Weise lebten unsere Vorfahren mindestens zwei, drei Jahrtausende lang (vielleicht auch schon bedeutend länger) -- und eroberten damit noch die unwirtlichen Regionen des Planeten. (p.192)

Es gibt weder eine natürliche Bestimmung des Menschen noch der Geschlechter. Biologische Gegebenheiten legen weder menschliches Verhalten fest, noch wohnt ihnen die geringste normative, moralische Verbindlichkeit inne. Sie legitimieren nichts! (p.25)

'What on earth is going on?' he thought irritably. Have I gone mad, really gone mad?' He turned and went on his way, quickening his stride the whole time and trying his level best to avoid thinking of anything at all. To this end he even closed his eyes. Suddenly, through the howling of the wind and noise of the storm , he again heard the sound of someone's footsteps very close by. (p.43)