Vera Marsova > Recent Status Updates

"Ich lebe nach der Devise: Lieber fünf Mal nachgefragt als einmal nachgedacht."

Truly, a marvelous description of Paris:
"People love Paris, but they forget it smells like a urinal. Being there is like paying someone to be rude to you and deciding to like it."

Problematic Teacher of the Century

I'm on a roll with the Irish literature

What is with the beautiful epigraphs in my life lately:

I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
—Whitman

The most delightful writing I have encountered in a long time.

Alright, so, seeing as we have five days left of 2021, I'm going to try and remember what books I read this year and then put off logging, mostly because I feel like if I procrastinate on this any longer, it's never going to happen.
Wish me luck 😅

You know this feeling when you just know that the story isn't going to end well, and the main heroine isn't going to make smart choices, but you have to keep going anyway – torture.

I'm one chapter in and so far I am thoroughly impressed with the thorough exquisiteness of writing!

"Написанная мысль меньше давит, хотя иная - как раковая опухоль: выразишь, вырежешь, и опять нарастает хуже прежнего."

“В моих снах мир оживал, становясь таким пленительно важным, вольным и воздушным, что потом мне уже бывало тесно дышать прахом нарисованной жизни.”

"Wie sinnlos ist alles, was je geschrieben, getan, gedacht wurde, wenn so etwas möglich ist! Es muß alles gelogen und belanglos sein, wenn die Kultur von Jahrtausenden nicht einmal verhindern konnte, daß diese Ströme von Blut vergossen wurden, daß diese Kerker der Qualen zu Hunderttausenden existieren. Erst das Lazarett zeigt, was der Krieg ist."

"[Der Regen] rinnt auf unsere Köpfe und auf die Köpfe der Toten vorn, auf den Körper des kleinen Rekruten mit der Wunde, die viel zu groß für seine
Hüfte ist, er rinnt auf das Grab Kemmerichs, er rinnt auf unsere Herzen."

"The people of this town are as kind as they can be cruel and they have a natural sense of justice and a desire to do that which is right. But cruelty had entered into the lines and also drunkenness or the beginning of drunkenness and the lines were not as they were... in Spain drunkenness, when produced by other elements than wine, is a thing of great ugliness and the people do things that they would not have done."

“If you have not seen the day of revolution in a small town where all know all in the town and always have known all, you have seen nothing.”

"The Spanish secret police had some of the spirit of the Gestapo, but not much of its Competence."

"It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one’s heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war is glorious after all."

"Cuando una mujer hiere el corazón de otra, deja pocas veces de encontrar
el lado sensible, y la herida es incurable."

"Amor no es en el hombre más que una preferencia que sirve a lo sumo para aumentar un placer que otro objeto tal vez entibiaría pero no podría destruir; en tanto que en las mujeres es un sentimiento profundo, que no sólo anula todo deseo extraño sino que más fuerte que la naturaleza y sustraída a su influjo no le deja experimentar más que repugnancia y disgusto allí donde le parecía que debía nacer la voluptuosidad."

"Confieso que el dinero no hace la felicidad; pero es preciso convenir que la facilita mucho."

"Yo me alegro mucho de ver que la franca coquetería se ha defendido más que la austera virtud."

"There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all."

"And since the revolution had got to be crushed, it greatly simplified things to pretend that no revolution had happened. In this way the real significance of every event could be covered up; every shift of power from the trade unions to the central Government could be represented as a necessary step in military reorganization."
I can see where the inspiration for 1984 came from...

" In this war everyone always did miss everyone else, when it was humanly possible."
I don't think Orwell has a good opinion of the Spanish standard of marksmanship xD

"In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last."

"War, to me, meant roaring projectiles and skipping shards of steel; above all it meant mud, lice, hunger, and cold. It is curious, but I dreaded the cold much more than I dreaded the enemy."

"In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself." xD