Jonas Jonasson · 419 pages
Rating: (33.7K votes)
“Life, here I come!' he said. And was immediately and fatally run over by a bus.”
“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. Winnie-the-Pooh”
“The more I see of men, the more I like my dog. MADAME DE STAËL”
“The world went on revolving around its sun at the constant speed and with the inconstant temper it always had.”
“Bücher hatten einfach etwas Sympathisches, ihre bloße Existenz war erfreulich.”
“All that’s left is the rest,”
“George W. Bush in Washington decided that Nobel Peace Prize winner and ex-president Nelson Mandela could probably be taken off the U.S. list of terrorists).”
“The overworked man was tired of everything, and he only kept going because he had long since forgotten that life could consist of anything else.”
“An exciting follow-up to this event was the many ups and downs when the most developed country in the world made such a mess of its own presidential election that it took several weeks for the Supreme Court to decide 5–4 that the candidate with the most votes had lost. With this, George W. Bush became the president of the United States, while Al Gore was reduced to an environmental agitator whom not even the anarchists in Stockholm paid much attention to. Incidentally, Bush later invaded Iraq in order to eliminate all the weapons Saddam Hussein didn’t have.”
“Nombeko said that she was South African, and that she thought it sounded laborious to hate all Americans, given how many of them there were.”
“We’ll just change your name – I’m sure the assistant can’t tell one black from the next.’ Said the fourteen-year-old who looked twelve.”
“Present—that part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope. AMBROSE BIERCE”
“We all need someone to share our innermost thoughts with,”
“With the new antiterrorism laws, the government could call anyone a terrorist and lock him or her up for as long as they liked, for any reason they liked. Or for no reason at all.”
“have never once in my life seen a fanatic with a sense of humor. AMOS OZ”
“The engineer’s head was spinning. So he was supposed to receive a guest the president didn’t want to meet. He would tell the guest the truth of the matter without saying anything, and in the middle of all this the president, who didn’t want to meet the guest, would show up to meet the guest.
The engineer realized he was getting into a situation in which one might make a fool of oneself. Other than that, he didn’t understand anything beyond that he must immediately invite the president to the dinner the president himself had just decided should take place.”
“THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMED FORCES RECEIVED EVER-HIGHER amounts of funding from an economy that couldn’t afford it. In the end, a fifth of the country’s hopelessly unbalanced budget was going to the military, all while the rest of the world came up with new embargoes.”
“The pillow entrepreneur, who knew the true nature of the distributor, thought that it might take longer than that.”
“Het verschil tussen domheid en genialiteit is dat genialiteit haar grenzen kent. - een onbekende denker”
“The weekly show View on Africa was what first gave her the insight that there was a world outside Soweto. It wasn’t necessarily more beautiful or more promising. But it was outside Soweto. Such”
“It was true that the Sweden Democrats had only received a tenth of a per cent of the vote in the last parliamentary election, but their rhetoric was based on fear, and Nombeko believed that fear had a bright future ahead of it; it always had.”
“Ingmar riuscì ad intrecciarsi a tal punto col filo del telefono che per liberarsi strappó il cavo e tutto l'apparecchio dalla parete.”
“If you don't think you have enough problems, you should acquire a mammal in Sweden just hours before you're about to fly home to the other side of the world, and then insist that the animal must come along in your luggage.”
“the most developed country in the world made such a mess of its own presidential election that it took several weeks for the Supreme Court to decide 5–4 that the candidate with the most votes had lost.”
“Bush later invaded Iraq in order to eliminate all the weapons Saddam Hussein didn’t have.”
“the most part all the politicians on earth were idiots or Communists, and all of their decisions were either idiotic or Communistic. And when they were Communistic, they were also idiotic.”
“dismantling process in secret, behind the backs of the president and the government. Anyway, he didn’t know how”
“Visually Agincourt is a pre-Raphaelite, perhaps better a Medici Gallery print battle - a composition of strong verticals and horizontals and a conflict of rich dark reds and Lincoln greens against fishscale greys and arctic blues.”
“That’s up to you, Jack, but part of doing this kind of work is the willingness to put on blinders. Deal with what’s in front of you. Every terrorist has a mother and father. Maybe kids, maybe people that love him. Hell, six days out of seven he might be a decent citizen, but on that one day he decides to pick up a gun or plant a bomb, he’s a threat. And if you’re the guy standing between him and innocent lives, the threat is all you can afford to worry about. You get what I’m saying?”
“ما أصلح هذه السيدة!
الحق يقال انها تعيش في زهد وورع؛
ولكنه التقدم في السن هو الذي دفعها الى ذلك.
إنها تتنسك ولا تسمح لأحد بأن يمس جسدها.
لقد تمتعت بمحاسنها ما استطاعت أن تجذب القلوب وتغريها؛
ولكنها حين رأت ذبول عينيها وزوال بهجتها
زهدت في الدنيا التي أعرضت عنها ،
وأخفت جمالها الذاوي وراء نقاب الحكمة الجليل.
تلك هي تقلبات ذوات الغنج في عصرنا هذا:
يشق عليهن هجر الظرفاء المحبين لهن
فلا يجدن ملاذا في ظلام همومهن
إلا باحتراف التقى والفضيلة
ولقد بلغت قسوة تلك النساء الصالحات
ان رحن ينددن بكل شيء ولا يتجاوزن عن شيء:
فهن ينتقدن جهارا سلوك كل إنسان،
لا عن تقوى وصلاح ولكن بدافع من الحسد
الذي يأبى على الآخرين الاستمتاع بلذات
فطمهن تقادم السن عنها”
“What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector was doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him. As the Collector pored over his manuals, from time to time rubbing his tired eyes, he knew that he was using science and progress to help him out of his difficulties and he was pleased. The inventions on his desk, the carriage which supplied its own track and the effervescent drinking vessel, watched him in silent admiration as he worked. The”
“Eliza’s laughter died abruptly when Hamilton dropped down by her side and, for some unknown reason, began to play with the fabric of her skirt that was billowed out around her even as he continued bantering with his brother. She shot a look to Gloria and groaned. Of course the woman would have noticed her son’s actions. She scrambled to her feet, made a circle around the blanket, and dropped back down on the other side of Agatha, far from Hamilton’s reach. “Didn’t like where you were sitting?” Agatha muttered. “I thought I’d get closer to you so we could chat,” Eliza said.”
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