Judith Merkle Riley · 609 pages
Rating: (3.5K votes)
“I could feel something cold stalking my heart. It was fear. They all begin this way, I thought, with pledges of love.”
“When faced with the illogical, one must expand the sphere of logic to include rules of logic for that which is not logic. This is the only possibility in a world that works according to the rules of rationality.”
“Oaths, in my opinion, infernal or not, ought to be short.”
“After all, he meant well. Foreigners never seem to understand how little attraction an island of damp fogs, cut off from civilization, and a provincial little court has for us Parisians, who inhabit the most cultivated, powerful monarchy in the world.”
“Daughter, your presence is a stay and consolation to me. Begin again in the Tenth Book; tell me, how does Aristotle define true happiness?” “Father, he tells us that true happiness is found in contemplation, whereas the common idea of happiness as pleasant amusements is fostered by the courts of tyrants.”
“Why the Romans, Father?” I asked him one afternoon. “Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead,” he answered.”
“Are you aware of the penalties reserved for freethinkers? I could send you to the block. Good.”
“I mistrust mountebanks—especially of the female variety.”
“She could envision a lifetime spent trying to create such flashes of connection.”
“Art, in other words, betrays a sexy mental fitness.”
“A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.”
“They reminded Kyle of a Greek god and goddess straight out of the Percy Jackson books. “Wow,” said Miguel. “Do you think Rick Riordan’s going to be here? That would be so awesome!”
“Four givens are particularly relevant for psycho-therapy: the inevitability of death for each of us and for those we love; the freedom to make our lives as we will; our ultimate aloneness; and, finally, the absence of any obvious meaning or sense to life.”
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