are quotations the beginning or end of ideas?
Posted by Gordon on January 25, 2009
The Counterfeiters, Andre Gide
Bernard: Laura, Laura you don’t love Douviers. You feel affection for him, pity, esteem, but that’s not love. I think the secret of your sadness (for you are sad, Laura) is that life has divided you; love has only consented to take you, incomplete; you distribute among several what yo would have liked to give to one only. As for me, I feel I am indivisible; I can only give the whole of myself.
Laura: You are too young to speak so! (p181)
Edouard (earlier in his journal): The man they (women) love is as a rule a kind of clothes peg on which to hang their love.
The Ancient Shore, Shirley Hazard
Neapolitans know that pleasure can’t be deferred for ideal circumstances. (p55)
The contemporary world grappled to its explanations, sets itself to ignore the accidental quality of our existence. (p14) (cf N N Taleb)
