Quotes

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the quote

character

piece; author

“I would know him in death, at the end of the world… He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”

Patroclus

The Song of Achilles; Madeline Miller

“In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by- pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.”

--

East Coker; T. S. Elliot

“By the time the ink hits the pages of this book, scholarship will have sailed on. But that is a happy conundrum, and it is worth the risks if we can start to build a provisional map, inevitably to be filled in and corrected as discovery advances.”

--

The Fate of Rome; Kyle Harper

"I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any—until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.) It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know. You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

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The Unnamable; Samuel Beckett

"To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have, therefore, only pretended to pretend.”

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Jacques Derrida (I think)

“The free man is one who lives for his own sake and not for another’s.”

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Politics, Book VII; Aristotle

“If we were to be regarded as lesser subjects, denied the rights afforded to others, then I could not in good faith defend their judgement. I would instead commit myself to building my own.”

George Washington

Short story; influenced by Just and Unjust Wars, by Michael Walzer, but quote by Hojae Kirkpatrick

“The tragedy of war lies in this; those who fall in its service never witness the triumph or destruction of the cause to which they gave their last measure of devotion.”

George Washington

Short story; influenced by Just and Unjust Wars, by Michael Walzer, but quote by Hojae Kirkpatrick

“The tragic hero is not a morally perfect man, but one who falls into misfortune through some error of judgment.”

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Poetics; Aristotle

“The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion”

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Notebook of Thoughts; Giacomo Leopardi