Shannon McDermott > Recent Status Updates

"The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed."

I wouldn't know where to start or end with this. Just ... not good.

"Mr. Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs Elton's beginning to talk to him."

"I must be there; I could not refuse; and I will keep as much awake as I can; but I would rather be at home."

This is a sentiment we have all carried in our hearts.

"She doubted whether she had not transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of Jane Fairfax's feelings to Frank Churchill."

You did, honey.

It is nice to see Emma take a break from complaining that Jane Fairfax is reserved in order to spread rumors that Jane Fairfax is in love with her best friend's husband.

"She wished him very well ... and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most satisfaction."

I have felt this way about people.

This is the second Jane Austen novel I have read in the past year, and the second that features a minister who spends a great deal of time flitting off to Bath and hanging about dinner parties, and I wonder if being a minister of the Church of England does not involve work.

Just finished Chapter 16. I must observe that Anne plays only a minor role in the Age of Anne.

Everyone is being murdered and it makes me sad.

"And on this, to my amazement, he was not quite certain whether he was or was not a member of some secret society."

Some things in life really are unmistakable.

"Who can understand everything in all its infinity?"

This captures, eloquently, something I feel more as I grow older: There is, at the heart of the universe, a final mystery that will never be solved. Many things we will understand. Everything? Never.

This chapter was, I have heard, once suppressed by censors. It's not graphic, but it is harrowing.

"But is it possible to believe in the devil, if one hasn't the slightest belief in God?"

"Oh yes, entirely possible, that's as common as can be."

True, I think, but grim.

"Can you move a mountain or not?"

"If God bids me move it, I can."

"Slaves are bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or equality without despotism ... Absolute submission, absolute loss of individuality, but once in thirty years Shigalov would let them have a shock and they would suddenly all begin eating one another."

All of Pyotr's political ideas sound like a sci-fi dystopia. But maybe dystopian novels are always political ideas.

"Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism."

It is an easier and more common journey than one would think.

"I used to jump out of bed at night and stood crossing myself before the images with nothing but my socks on, praying to God to give me faith; for even then I couldn't be at peace as to whether there was a God or not. It used to fret me so. In the morning, of course, one would amuse oneself and one's faith would seem to be lost again; and in fact I've noticed that faith always seems to be less in the daytime."

Kirillov: "I didn't confess it, I simply said so."

Pyotr Stepanovitch: "Quite so. And it would be absurd to confess such a thing. What a confession! You simply said so. Excellent."

Kirillov: "No, it's not excellent, for you are being tedious."

I have a feeling I'm going to find out horrible things about Kirillov, but I admire him in this exchange.

Dostoevsky began the book by making Stepan Trofimovitch a fool. He's still a fool, but growing to be an admirable one. This is talent.