CONRAD - The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.
shareFew men realize
that their life, the very essence of their character, their
capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their
belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the
composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great
and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to
the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible
force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its
police and of its opinion.
Joseph Conrad, An Outpost of Progress
If history is something like the memory of mankind and represents the spirit of mankind brooding over man's past, we must imagine it as working not to accentuate antagonisms or to ratify old party-cries but to find the unities that underlie the differences and to see all lives as part of the one web of life. Studying the quarrels of an ancient day he can at least seek to understand both parties to the struggle and he must want to understand them better than they understood themselves; watching them entangled in the net of time and circumstance he can take pity on them - these men who perhaps had no pity for one another.
Sir Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History
I cannot present quotations, but there are some books which more than most others make me admire their language:
Fridrich Hölderlin: Hyperion. (In German)
Sören Kierkegaard: Stadier på livets vej. (in Danish)
Jens Peter Jakobsen: Niels Lyhne. (in Danish)
Astrid Ehrencron-Kidde: Den signede dag. (in Danish)
I am somewhat suspicious about this list. Why are there no prose in Swedish or in English?
Danish is my mother thong, but I have lived in Sweden in 65 years, and have certainly read a larger part of Swedish literature than most people.
There was a young man from Nantucket,
Whose dick was so long he could suck it,
He said with a grin,
As he wiped off his chin,
If my ear was a *beep* I would *beep* it
Fantastic...
shareThat was verse not prose.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations" Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Don't be so dull.
shareDon't be so dull.
Appy polly loggies.
"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations" Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
You were right of course, but I thought it too good a limerick to care about it being out of place...
share