“... je t'emmènerais dans une contrée resplendissante et prospère, au foyer d'une famille aristocratique des lettrés, fastueux domaine où abondent les fleurs et les saules, terroir de la douceur, de richesse et d'honneurs, pour t'installer dans la joie et en toute sécurité.
Cao Xueqin, "Le Rêve dans le pavillon rouge", trad, fr. par Li Tche-Houa, J. Alézaïs, révision par A. D'Hormon, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", 1981, vol. 1, p. 8.”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from A Dream of Red Mansions
“I was doing science," Giddon said. "He threw a bean."
"I was testing the impact of a bean upon water," Bann said.
"That's not even a real thing."
"Perhaps I'll test the impact of a bean upon your beautiful white shirt.”
― Kristin Cashore, quote from Bitterblue
“A pointless, senseless death.’
‘They’re all pointless and senseless, friend. Until the living carve meaning out of them. What are you going to carve, Gruntle, out of Harllo’s death? Take my advice, an empty cave offers no comfort.’
‘I ain’t looking for comfort.’
‘You’d better. No other goal is worthwhile, and I should know. Harllo was my friend as well. From the way those Grey Swords who found us described it, you were down, and he did what a friend’s supposed to do – he defended you. Stood over you and took the blows. And was killed. But he did what he wanted – he saved your hide. And is this his reward, Gruntle? You want to look his ghost in the eye and tell him it wasn’t worth it?’
‘He should never have done it.’
‘That’s not the point, is it?”
― Steven Erikson, quote from Memories of Ice
“Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words, Hitler's words---people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history---sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church's inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Island
“Silence is a mirror. So faithful, and yet so unexpected, is the relection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if ever its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, hummin, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it come to that, the clandestine cannonry of their own farting. Only in sleep is silence tolerated, and even there, most dreams have soundtracks. Since meditation is a deliberate descent into deep internal hush, a mute stare into the ultimate looking glass, it is regarded with suspicion by the nattering masses; with hostility by buisness interests (people sitting in silent serenity are seldom consuming goods); and with spite by a clergy whose windy authority it is seen to undermine and whose bombastic livelihood it is perceived to threaten.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
“God of Gods. Destroyer of Evil. Passionate lover. Fierce warrior. Consummate dancer. Charismatic leader. All-powerful, yet incorruptible. A quick wit, accompanied by an equally quick and fearsome temper. Over the centuries, no foreigner who came to our land – conqueror, merchant, scholar, ruler, traveller – believed that such a great man could possibly have existed in reality. They assumed that he must have been a mythical God, whose”
― Amish Tripathi, quote from The Immortals of Meluha
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