Sublime
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It is a curious phenomenon to be observed among certain hurricane survivors: the area crossed by such a storm is so relatively small and its fury so great that once one has been struck directly and has been fortunate enough to survive, a certain denial, or form of bravado, sets in. I have been struck by lightning now, one may be tempted to reason.
... See moreLes Standiford • Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean
It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leprous.
John Steinbeck • Tortilla Flat (Penguin Modern Classics)
good blood and a good disposition. One
William Maxwell • So Long, See You Tomorrow: Virtage International Edition (Vintage International)
A good story is one that, having created a pattern of excesses, notices those excesses and converts them into virtues.
George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
It is one of the most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness.
Honoré de Balzac • Father Goriot
“The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,”
Taylor Branch • At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68
What did the dead Joan of Arc hear? Insight or delusion? Next week he’ll tell his undergrads about Durkheim, Foucault, crypto-normativity: How reason is just another weapon of control. How the invention of the reasonable, the acceptable, the sane, even the human, is greener and more recent than humans suspect.