“Pucetti’s was the generation that was all in favour of sentiment, sharing other people’s pain, voicing compassion for the downtrodden, yet Brunetti often found in them traces of a ruthlessness that chilled his spirit and made him fearful for the future. He wondered if the cheap sentimentality of television and film had sent them into some sort of emotional insulin shock and suffocated their ability to feel empathy with the unappealing victims of the mess that real life created.”
“He remembered enough of his study of logic to recognize a slippery slope when he saw it, even in his own thinking, but still it felt right to suspect that Chiara’s failure to give sympathy might somehow lead to a refusal to give aid.”
“Brunetti had once come across the term ‘compassion fatigue’, but thought that the oh-so-clever press had got it wrong, and the term should really be, ‘horror fatigue’.”
“Exactly what I said: she’s still a child in many ways, so she’s discovering all the fine and noble causes for the first time, and she still sees each one as a discrete unit: she hasn’t seen the connections or contradictions among them; not yet.’ She”
“Then we must consider what an African would want to do with the money to”
“Hic scientia finit: Knowledge Stops Here.”
“We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.”
“Each
day brought just another minute of the things they could not leave behind. Jane Barrington sitting on the
train coming back to Leningrad from Moscow, holding on to her son, knowing she had failed him, crying
for Alexander, wanting another drink, and Harold, in his prison cell, crying for Alexander, and Yuri
Stepanov on his stomach in the mud in Finland, crying for Alexander, and Dasha in the truck, on the
Ladoga ice, crying for Alexander, and Tatiana on her knees in the Finland marsh, screaming for
Alexander, and Anthony, alone with his nightmares, crying for his father.”
“And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me.”
“They entered there into the unconscious philosophy of the town; that life was an incomprehensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it lasted and endured 'like the bridge on the Drina'.”
“But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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