“Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others. Indeed, it will teach him the way”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Money is sacred as everyone knows... So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Love does not stand still, as everyone knows; it is always adding to its own shape whether by advance or retreat. Wounds can be absorbed, but only like elements embodied in a story; they are always there, part of the meaning.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“A man may go through life and remain ignorant of himself he may think himself as other than he truly is and he may die with this illusion still intact because no circumstance of his life has obliged him to revise it.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Only way to live here is day by day, same as anywhere.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“But what a man sees still must depend on what he looks for. While I have eyes of my own, I shall not need to borrow yours.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“There are no stronger fetters than those we forge for ourselves.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The mind is constituted to accept the god of the more powerful. If you have to choose between the god of the slave owner and the god of the enslaved, naturally you will choose the former . . .”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The flood of cheap manufactures, for which the people have no need,destroys their industries. They become dependent on this trade and the demand for goods can only be met by enslaving their fellows.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The kneading of memory makes the dough of fiction, which, as we know, can go on yeasting for ever...”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer. Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days. In Short, sir, there has been a leap in bribes.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“I was born for better things.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing he had.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The successful cannot be unhappy -- it was a contradiction in terms.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Grief works its own perversions and betrayals; the shape of what we have lost is as subject to corruption as the mortal body...”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Sometimes in storm weather the shore had fluttered with disabled swallows. They crouched lower for his approach, without strength to escape. In his hands they pulsed with that same pulse. He had taken a bird and warmed it between his hands or inside his jacket, brought the life back until it was able to fly. Sometimes, released from his hands, they circled once around him before flying away; in gratitude, or so the child had believed--and the belief had survived all the man's science.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“At the same time he could hardly believe what he had been reading. It struck him as verging on madness. This wild confession, this owing to a crime so outlandish, so totally different from the true ones of mating and theft of the negroes, outraged him with its insolence and perversity. In the conflict of these feelings Erasmus was swept by doubt and loneliness. His whole being seemed under threat of dissolution. What became of law, of legitimacy, of established order, if a man could assume such attitudes of private morality, decide for himself where his fault lay? It turned everything upside down. He could think of nothing more damnable. And yet… He remembered suddenly the second, rarer smile his cousin had, the one that came slowly, transforming his face. Briefly, unwillingly, Erasmus glimpsed the possibility of freedom.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“It is everyone's bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin' you try to make it into four shillin' . . . there is no end to it.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“But that sacred hunger we spoke of justifies all.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The heart is a vital organ, but it is a faulty guide to conduct. It is the mind makes judgements and comparisons, furnishes evidence on which ideas of truth can be founded.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Those confiding their pain cannot know at the outset how much they will be required to relive it.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“No latitude makes any difference to what men will do to other men, whether for gain or in the name of justice.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“It is always through arbitrary combinations that experience enslaves the memory.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“A little bit of kindness goes a long way with women.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Wilson had been killed by everybody. It was this that made his death special, the children had been told. It was justice, it was all the people showing how much they hated this crime. Killing was justice when everybody joined in.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“A man can live free and not seek to limit the freedom of others so long as no one seeks to limit his.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“When you in de right you heart strong you no 'fraid nottin'.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Useful thing a warrant. Murder and theft change their names if you have one.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge - much older than the desire for truth - to command attention, dominate one's fellows.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
“Justice is a mighty fine thing.”
― Barry Unsworth, quote from Sacred Hunger
Barry Unsworth
Born place: in Wingate, The United Kingdom
Born date August 8, 1930
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“(...) You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?”
“We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking of, and you know it.”
“You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish.”
(...)
“Is that another hint? Are you saying I’m destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I’m going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?”
“Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions. (...) If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness.”
“I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere.”
“While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man’s mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead.”
“How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be stupid.”
“Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others.”
― quote from The Golden Age
“She sat down on the edge of the bed and accepted the plate from me. She inhaled and groaned. "Pancakes! Are you freaking kidding me? I could kiss you!" "But you won't," Maggie said and pointed with a cocked brow. "Not right now," Beck said laughing. "I'm in no position to fight sleep, let alone a whole other person. You're safe for now, college boy.”
― Shelly Crane, quote from Independence
“Still, I look down, and the grass is so green, I cannot understand how it does not wither and die with sorrow.
~Song of the Sparrow”
― Lisa Ann Sandell, quote from Song of the Sparrow
“Bold words, befitting the mistress of the Montgomery clan,” Graeme said in approval. “Come, wife. Let’s go home. I have a need to show my lass just how much her laird loves her.”
― Maya Banks, quote from Never Seduce a Scot
“Hard. That was what he looked like. That was what you first noticed about him: a hard, chiselled face, like that that of some ancient Greek statue.”
― Robert Thier, quote from Storm and Silence
Beneath This Man
Thief of Time
Sundays at Tiffany's
Doctor Sleep
Virals
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