{"quotes":[{"text":"I’ve always found that the better the book I’m reading, the smarter I feel, or, at least, the more able I am to imagine that I might, someday, become smarter.","author":"Francine Prose","tags":["classics","reading"],"id":7341,"author_id":"Francine+Prose"},{"text":"I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.","author":"George Gordon Byron","tags":["classics","epic-poetry","poetry","verse"],"id":9684,"author_id":"George+Gordon+Byron"},{"text":"What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering. For weeks, Marianne, I've had this pressing on me without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature. It was forced on me by the very person whose prior claims ruined all my hope. I have endured her exultations again and again whilst knowing myself to be divided from Edward forever. Believe me, Marianne, had I not been bound to silence I could have provided proof enough of a broken heart, even for you.","author":"Jane Austen","tags":["classics","heartbreak","stoicism"],"id":11765,"author_id":"Jane+Austen"},{"text":"What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluster of men, all smoking pipes, gathered around an exhibit in a glass case that gleamed in the dim light and lit their faces ghoulishly from below.I drew nearer. In the case was a machine revolving slowly on a turntable, a machine with metal parts that slid in and out and collapsed in upon themselves to form new images. An Inca temple… click click click… the Pyramids… the Parthenon.History passing beneath my very eyes, changing every moment.'I thought I'd find you here,' said a voice at my elbow.It was Henry. His gaze was steady and impassive in the dim light. Above his ear, beneath the wire stem of his spectacles, I could just make out the powder burn and the dark hole in his right temple.I was glad to see him, though not exactly surprised. 'You know,' I said to him, 'everybody is saying that you're dead.'He stared down at the machine. The Colosseum… click click click… the Pantheon. 'I'm not dead,' he said. 'I'm only having a bit of trouble with my passport.''What?'He cleared his throat. 'My movements are restricted,' he said.'I no longer have the ability to travel as freely as I would like.'Hagia Sophia. St. Mark's, in Venice. 'What is this place?' I asked him.'That information is classified, I'm afraid.'1 looked around curiously. It seemed that I was the only visitor.'Is it open to the public?' I said.'Not generally, no.'I looked at him. There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to say; but somehow I knew there wasn't time and even if there was, that it was all, somehow, beside the point.'Are you happy here?' I said at last.He considered this for a moment. 'Not particularly,' he said.'But you're not very happy where you are, either.'St. Basil's, in Moscow. Chartres. Salisbury and Amiens. He glanced at his watch.'I hope you'll excuse me,' he said, 'but I'm late for an appointment.'He turned from me and walked away. I watched his back receding down the long, gleaming hall.","author":"Donna Tartt","tags":["architecture","classics","death","dreams","museum","unhappiness"],"id":14572,"author_id":"Donna+Tartt"},{"text":"The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.","author":"Henry David Thoreau","tags":["authenticity","books","cheapness","classics","mass-culture","mass-media","press","translations","writing"],"id":15299,"author_id":"Henry+David+Thoreau"},{"text":"He had so long since ceased to direct his life toward any ideal goal, and had confined himself to the pursuit of quotidian satisfactions, that he had come to believe, though without ever formally stating his belief even to himself that he would remain all his life in that condition, which only death could alter.","author":"Marcel Proust","tags":["classics","literature","marcel-proust","proust"],"id":16073,"author_id":"Marcel+Proust"},{"text":"It is fatal to suppose the great writer was too wise or too profound for us ever to understand him; to think of art so is not to praise but to murder it, for the next step after that tribute will be neglect of the masterpiece.","author":"John Erskine","tags":["classics","great-books","reading"],"id":17198,"author_id":"John+Erskine"},{"text":"- Ay! Thornton o' Marlborough Mill, as we call him.- He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? What sort of master is he? - Did yo' ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hindlegs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo'n just getten John Thornton.","author":"Elizabeth Gaskell","tags":["classics","drama","georgian-romance","period-drama","romance"],"id":20465,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Gaskell"},{"text":"If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["ial-intent","classics","drama","interpretation","shakespeare"],"id":21064,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"And is not all of life material- based on the material- permeated by the material? Should not one learn, gladly, to utilize the beauty of the fine material? I do not speak of the gross crudities of soporific television, of loud brash convertibles and vulgar display- but rather of grace and line and refinement- and there are wonderful and exciting things that only money can buy, such as theater tickets, books, paintings, travel, lovely clothes- and why deny them when one can have them? The only problem is to work, to stay awake mentally and physically, and NEVER become mentally, physically, spiritually flabby or over complacent!","author":"Elizabeth Winder","tags":["aesthetics","beauty","classics","fashion","purist"],"id":32181,"author_id":"Elizabeth+Winder"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":139,"pages":14,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}