De kerstvakantie staat voor de deur! Ik wens jullie alvast fijne feestdagen en veel leesplezier toe met het voorlaatste deel van mijn favoriete quotes uit wat ik de afgelopen drie jaar aan Engelse literatuur las.
Uit: WAR AND PEACE (non illustrated) (Leo Tolstoy and Maude Aylmer)
But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom!
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(He used to say that a nap “after dinner was silver–before dinner, golden.”)
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“All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom.”
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The whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and darkness….”
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A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth–science–which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
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modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has asked.
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Uit: Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag (Orlando Figes)
I’m grateful to fate and to nature, to you and to myself, for the happiness I was granted, that I was able to see it, at the time and not just when it had passed.
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That’s one of the privileges of love, that you can do stupid things.
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Uit: An Agent of Deceit (Chris Morgan Jones)
He was English, and almost certainly a lawyer; or was he PwC? He was grinning; accountants tended not to grin.
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‘And what is your role in the company, Mr Lock?’ ‘I am a shareholder.’ ‘The sole shareholder?’ ‘I would prefer not to answer that. I own a majority holding in the company. That shareholding is structured through various offshore companies in order to minimize my tax obligations.’ ‘Legitimately minimize,’ said Kesler.
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Uit: The Stand (Stephen King)
The car ate road and blew miles out its tailpipe. The car was a form of teleportation. The car defeated the map.
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“The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs.”
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Uit: Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History (Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio)
IF YOU’VE GOT THEM BY THE BALLS, THEIR HEARTS AND MINDS WILL FOLLOW.