Elizabeth Finch

We all pursue what we think is best for us, even if it means our extinction. Sometimes, especially if it means that.

why should we expect our collective memory – which we call history – to be any less fallible than our personal memory?

For a woman, love has historically been a matter of possession followed by sacrifice: that’s to say, of being possessed and then of being sacrificed.

that old question which has become known as the Mozart dilemma: is life beautiful, but sad; or sad, but beautiful?

And remember, whenever you see a character in a novel, let alone a biography or history book, reduced and neatened into three adjectives, always distrust that description.

But if you think that only what is yours is yours, and that what is not your own is, just as it is, not your own, then no one will ever coerce you, no one will hinder you, you will blame no one, you will not accuse anyone, you will not do a single thing unwillingly, you will have no enemies, and no one will harm you, because you will not be harmed at all.

Know thy enemy… even thy dead enemy, for he may easily resuscitate.

They say things are determined by genetics, by parenting, by heredity, by climate, by diet, by geography, by time spent in the womb, by nature, by nurture. They fail to hear the elephant in the room, trumpeting away: history.

For a woman, fidelity is a virtue; for a man, it’s hard work.

Be approximately satisfied with approximate happiness. The only thing in life which is clear and beyond doubt is unhappiness

In other words, in order to believe in what we think our nation stands for, we must constantly, every day, in small acts or thoughts and large, deceive ourselves,

Beware of dreams,” Elizabeth Finch replied. “Also, as a general rule, beware of what most people aspire to.

Well, getting our history wrong is part of being a person.

And secondly, reducing the diversity between people didn’t result in harmony within. The narcissism of small differences ensured this.

OK, then, well, are you a feminist?’ She smiled at me. ‘Naturally – I am a woman.

Once, we were talking about public reaction to some political scandal, and I suggested that it was normal for people to need someone to blame. ‘Normal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,’ she answered.

One secret of the Christian religion’s success was always to employ the best moviemakers

Enforced monogamy is as much to say enforced happiness, which we know is not possible. Unenforced monogamy might seem possible. Romantic monogamy might seem to be desirable. But the first normally collapses back into a version of enforced monogamy, while the second is liable to become obsessive and hysterical. And thereby lies close to monomania. We should always distinguish between mutual passion and shared monomania.

Niektoré veci sú v našej moci a niektoré nie. V našej moci sú naše názory, naše želania, túžby, averzie - skrátka čokoľvek, čo súvisí s naším konaním. Vo svojej moci nemáme svoje telá ani majetok, ani svoju reputáciu či verejné funkcie, teda to, čo nevytvárame sami. To, čo je v našej moci, je svojou podstatou slobodné, neobmedzené a nepodlieha prekážkam, je nám vlastné. Avšak to, čo v našej moci nie je, je slabé, zotročené, obmedzené, cudzie. Takže si pamätajte: ak budete pokladať to, čo je od prírody zotročené, za slobodné, a to, čo je cudzie, za svoje vlastné, vaše plány sa zmaria a budete nepokojní, zarmútení a budete reptať na bohov aj na ľudí. Ale ak budete pokladať za svoje len to, čo je vaše, a za cudzie to, čo naozaj cudzie je, presne tak ako to je, potom vás nikto nebude môcť nútiť, nikto vás nebude môcť obmedzovať a vy nebudete nikoho obviňovať, neurobíte nič proti svojej vôli, nebudete mať nepriateľov, nikto vám neublíži, lebo sa vám nebude dať ublížiť.

Korean woman who had escaped from the North to the South. She was talking about love. ‘If you grow up in the West,’ she said, ‘you may think romance occurs naturally, but it does not. You learn how to be romantic from books and movies, or from observation. But there was no model to learn from in my parents’ time. They didn’t even have the language to talk about their feelings. You just had to guess how your beloved felt from the look in his eyes, or the tone of her voice as she spoke to you.

In the case of George and the Dragon – an encounter in which the dice were theologically loaded – any morally sentient human being must surely sympathise with the poor dragon.

We must certainly consider, not just in this class, but outside it, in our own turbulent and fretful lives, the element of chance. The number of people we deeply meet is strangely few. Passion may mislead us furiously. Reason may mislead us just as much. Our genetic inheritance might hamstring us. So might previous events in our lives. It is not just soldiers in the field who later suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. It is often the inevitable consequence of a seemingly normal sublunary existence.

When I tell people that she was the most grown-up person I have known, I suppose what I mean is that there were principles very close behind, if not actually embedded in, all her actions and thoughts.

Monoglot, the sign of an enclosed and self-deluding country.

From what I did and what I said Let them not seek to find who I was

—And then there is the inevitable third stylisation—of posthumous memory. Leading to the moment when the last living person to remember you has their very last thought about you. There ought to be a name for that final event, which marks your final extinction.

And then there is the inevitable third stylisation—of posthumous memory. Leading to the moment when the last living person to remember you has their very last thought about you. There ought to be a name for that final event, which marks your final extinction.

There can be a complacency to failure as much as a complacency to success.