Megan Farve > Recent Status Updates

“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised… as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms… so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”

"A stone can endure, it can change, it can harm, it can heal. It can make you rich, it can make you poor, it can become an enemy, a friend, and a teacher. It can carry your memories and your dreams. It can build empires and bury cities. It can reveal the history of the universe… It can change the course of nature. It can change its own nature. It can empty the world of time."

“Reality in the North is thinner than anywhere else, like a wool sweater worn out at the elbows, and the other world shines through it.”

“International folklore contains countless tales in which a child or adult slips through an imaginary door and passes hours, days, or years in another world… ‘Between every two pines is a door leading to a new life,” wrote John Muir in the 189s.”

“Fantasy allows us to see the world’s wonders again, to ‘look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue,’ Tolkien wrote. It lets us ‘clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blue of triteness or familiarity-from possessiveness.’”

This is very long. I need a break.

“My friends wanted Germany purified. They wanted it purified of the politicians, of all the politicians. They wanted a representative leader in place of unrepresentative representatives. And Hitler, the pure man, the antipolitician, was the man, untainted by “politics,” which was only a cloak for corruption.”

“Ordinary people—and ordinary Germans—cannot be expected to tolerate activities which outrage the ordinary sense of ordinary decency unless the victims are, in advance, successfully stigmatized as enemies of the people, of the nation, the race, the religion.”

“And so, just as there is when one man dreads the policeman on the beat and another waves “Hello” to him, there are two countries in every country.”

“Decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now… it was a naked, total tyranny which degraded its adherents and enslaved its opponents and adherents alike… a frontal attack upon the worth of the human person and the rights which that worth implies.”

I’m halfway through this book and I’m not engaged like I was with the Thursday Murder Club series. The writing is good and the narrator of the audiobook is enjoyable. I’m simply disengaged with the story.

“The strength and endurance of a company does not come from products or services but from how well their people pull together.”

“Leadership deals with people and their dynamics, which are continually changing. The challenge of leadership is to create change and facilitate growth.”

“If you push yourself to dream more expansively, to imagine your organization one size bigger, to make your goals at least a step beyond what makes you comfortable, you will be forced to grow.”

“The true measure of success is succession- what happens after you’re gone.”