Margaret MacMillan · 570 pages
Rating: (8.7K votes)
“The delegates to the peace conference after World War I "tried to impose a rational order on an irrational world.”
― Margaret MacMillan, quote from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
“The glories of the past compensated for the imperfections of the present.”
― Margaret MacMillan, quote from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
“In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.”
― Margaret MacMillan, quote from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
“Wilson agreed reluctantly to their attempts: “I don’t much like to make a compromise with people who aren’t reasonable. They will always believe that, by persisting in their claims, they will be able to obtain more.”
― Margaret MacMillan, quote from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
“There are only two perfectly useless things in the world,” he quipped. “One is an appendix and the other is Poincaré!”
― Margaret MacMillan, quote from Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
“If you need anything, let me know,’ he said. Stop talking to me.”
― Durjoy Datta, quote from Our Impossible Love
“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Uljas uusi maailma
“From the time I met Anne ten years earlier, I knew in my heart I wanted to be with her. Now that I’m out of college and pitching pro ball, there’s no reason to wait. I start by visiting an independent diamond dealer in Arkansas. My agent knows him and tells me I can trust him. I don’t trust easily, but as a man who would have a hard time telling the difference between the Hope diamond and dime-store zirconium, what choice do I have? I pick out a rock and the setting, and pray that it’s not a fake. When it’s all finished, the dealer mails it to me in Tennessee.”
― quote from Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball
“It's laughable, looking back, to see the processes I went through, pretending to make a reasoned decision. No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse, the initial desire which is innate and incontrovertible. All the time, I knew where I was going, the elements of my fulfillment or ruin were always present; I only had to work my way into that seam of desire and find the hidden vein of dross or gold. It's not a question of predestination, it's just that free will and destiny are illusions, false opposites, consolations. In the end, they are one and the same: a single process. You choose what you choose and it could not have been otherwise: the choice is destiny. It was there all along, but any alternative you might have considered is an absurd diversion, because it is in your nature to make one choice rather than another. That is identity. To speak of freedom or destiny is absurd because it suggests there is something outside yourself, directing your life, where really it is of the essence: identity, the craftwork of the soul.”
― John Burnside, quote from The Dumb House
“The landing stage stood on its high crooked stilts with only one person watching the boat disappear round the bend of the river—a girl of twelve called Ada, the wet-nurse’s eldest child. As”
― Jane Gardam, quote from Old Filth
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