Mark André > Recent Status Updates

I feel excited; but I do not want to be, for that is not right. I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, . . . and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, . . . the lost eagerness of my youth.

So I confine myself to telling him a few amusing things. But he wants to know whether I have had a hand-to-hand fight. I say “No,” and get up and go out.

I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?

For the better making it out it might perhaps be requisite to invoke the aid of the muses, to whom the poets devoutly apply themselves upon far more slender occasions. Come then and assist, ye Heliconian lasses, while I attempt to prove that there is no method for an arrival at wisdom, and consequently no track to the goal of happiness, without the instructions and directions of Folly.

Can it be true, as I have read in the Lives of the Saints, that the devil takes on the form of a woman?

Can it be true, as I have read in the Lives of the Saints, that the devil takes on the form of a woman?

If any one in a play-house be so impertinent and rude as to rifle the actors of their borrowed clothes, make them lay down the character assumed, and force them to return to their naked selves, would not such a one wholly discompose and spoil the entertainment? And would he not deserve to be hissed and thrown stones at till the pragmatical fool could learn better manners?

most things being really in themselves far different from what they are in appearance to others:

For the two greatest lets and impediments to the issue of any performance are modesty, which casts a mist before men's eyes; and fear, which makes them shrink back, and recede from any proposal: both these are banished and cashiered by Folly, and in their stead such a habit of fool-hardiness introduced, as mightily contributes to the success of all enterprizes.

And indeed it is by such wheedles that the common people are best gulled, and imposed upon.

Why does the whole world, with all its delights, exist if it is sinful and must be renounced?

His life in solitude was hard . . . an inner conflict he had not at all anticipated. The sources of that conflict were two: doubts, and the lust of the flesh. And these two enemies always appeared together. It seemed to him that they were two foes, but in reality they were one and the same. As soon as doubt was gone so was the lustful desire. But thinking them to be two different fiends he fought them separately.

The invention of all arts and sciences are likewise owing to the same cause: for what sedentary, thoughtful men would have beat their brains in the search of new and unheard-of-mysteries, if not egged on by the bubbling hopes of credit and reputation?

At Carnival time,... a merry company of rich people, men and women from a neighbouring town, made up a troyka-party..., The company consisted of two lawyers, a wealthy landowner, an officer, and four ladies. One lady was the officer’s wife, another the wife of the landowner, the third his sister—a young girl—and the fourth a divorcee, beautiful, rich, and eccentric, who amazed and shocked the town by her escapades.

And so Sergius became a hermit.

He had previously experienced a great consolation and spiritual exaltation when receiving communion, and now when he himself officiated, the performance. . . . But subsequently that feeling became more and more deadened, and once when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt that the influence produced on him by the service would not endure. And it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.

Then he took to reading, . . .

And indeed the whole proceedings of the world are nothing but one continued scene of Folly, all the actors being equally fools and madmen; and therefore if any be so pragmatically wise as to be singular, he must even turn a second Timon, or man-hater, and by retiring into some unfrequented desert, become a recluse from all mankind.

Finally, when it is the main and essential part of happiness to desire to be no other than what we already are; this expedient is again wholly owing to self-love, which so flushes men with a good conceit of their own, that no one repents of his shape, of his wit, of his education, or of his country;

. . . so he would make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, . . . . Thus every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own trull; and the hob-nailed suiter prefers Joan the milk-maid before any of my lady's daughters. These things are true, and are ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is hence only that all societies receive their cement and consolidation

. . . although vapourish mists were being driven swiftly across the moon.

It would certainly be very dull to die before they have discovered
whether there is life in Mars,” Miss Allan added.

Poor creature! it would be kinder to kill it.” But nobody seemed disposed to rouse himself in order to kill the moth.

As the thunder showed no signs of withdrawing, but seemed massed right overhead, while the lightning aimed straight at the garden every time, an uneasy gloom replaced the first excitement.

The room grew suddenly several degrees darker, for the wind seemed to
be driving waves of darkness across the earth.

It’s coming!” was said simultaneously in many different languages.

There must be some reason why such things happen, she thought to
herself, as she shut the door. Only at first it was not easy to understand what it was.

She turned her hands over and over in her lap and looked at them curiously; her old hands, that had done so much work for her. There did not seem to be much point in it all; one went on, of course one went on. . . .

Downstairs they could hear the thud of his feet on the floor, as he struggled to break free; and twice they heard him shout, . . .

It’s been wretched without you,” he said.