Common Sense by Thomas Paine, r. Nov. 2020

- a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.

- Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness by positively uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

- what at first was submitted to as a convenience [government], was afterwards claimed as a right

- The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.

- Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things. 

The Meritocracy Trap by Daniel Markovits, r. Oct. 2020

p. 5 Today, asking how long people have studied and how hard they work reveals not how poor they are, but how rich.

p. 37 Indeed, the profits that a rentier extracts free him to devote his personal energies to his authentic interests and ambitions - in the arts, for example, or statesmanship, or even just high society - without worrying about his economic income or social status. Traditional wealth, held as physical and financial capital, does not just free its owner from the need to work; it also enables him to become more fully himself.

p. 60 Elite society forgives (and even ignores) selfishness, intemperance, cruelty, and other long-recognized vices, but bigotry and prejudice, if exposed, can end a career. Such moralism seems selective, out of sympathy with life's complexities and confusions, and sometimes out of proportion to the harms at stake.

p. 61 The elite's intense concern for diversity and inclusion also carries an odor of self-dealing. Unlike other vices, prejudice attacks meritocracy's moral foundations, raising the specter that advantage more broadly follows invidious privilege rather than merit. Meritocracy demands extreme vigilance against prejudice in order to shore up the inequalities it seeks to legitimate against their increasing size and instability. The elaborate and fragile identity politics that govern elite life follow inexorably from the elite's meritocratic foundations.

p. 62 Meritocratic exclusion now approaches, in its statistical effects, the racial exclusion that scars American life. Yet when meritocracy declares its inequalities just, it licenses elites simultaneously to worry endlessly about identity politics and to embrace attitudes that, in myriad ways, flatly insult the idled working and middle classes.

p. 85 Celebrities today must also work intense and long hours. Supermodels, as one recently observed, "all train like it's the... Olympics." Even pure celebrities - who are famous only for being famous - constantly and effortfully cultivate their fame.

p. 104 Whatever its vices, and even as it ushers in massive new economic inequality, the American economic and political system today provides for the basic material needs of a virtually unprecedented share of citizens. The pervasive, grinding, absolute deprivation that drove the quest for economic justice at midcentury no longer dominates the American scene. Legitimate outrage at the poverty that remains does not erase and should not obscure this progress.

p. 154 Not just languid play and decadent amusements, but also deep reflection and an intrinsic love of learning are becoming historical curiosities - memories of life outside the meritocracy trap. The young rich today diligently study and doggedly train, with a constant eye on tests and admissions competitions, intent on acquiring and then demonstrating the human capital needed to sustain them as superordinate workers in adulthood.

p. 259 Present-day ideals concerning justice, entitlement, and even merit are all meritocracy's offspring and carry its genes inside them. Meritocracy has built a world that makes itself - in all its facets, including meritocratic inequality - seem practically and even morally necessary. This is the tyranny of no alternatives that makes the meritocracy trap so difficult to escape.

Common Sense by Glenn Beck, r. Oct. 2020

 p. 44 When Americans say that socialism is a better system than capitalism they are essentially saying they prefer to be led and fed by the state than be free. They are saying, perhaps ignorantly, that they prefer increased state control over their personal decisions because having a cap on success is an appropriate price to pay for also having a cap on failure.

p. 101 Remember, to us, slavery and tyranny are far-fetched concepts that history has righted - but to history, the far-fetched concept is the idea that men should be free.

Why Running Matters by Ian Mortimer, r. Sep. 2020

 p. 24 Every single achievement is, in some small way, accomplished in the face of adversity.

p. 39 Youthfulness does not dissolve completely but instead breaks up, piece by piece, like chunks of ice on the edge of the Arctic ice shelf. Although some parts drift away and melt, others remain. I think that it is a blessing to retain shards of your youth, in some form or other. And having a little bit of recklessness is no exception to that rule. It means that a part of you truly believes that anything is possible.

p. 56 Running might be hard work physically but, mentally, it is the ultimate escape from pressure.

p. 67 So you could say that we want to run faster not just to impress other people but also because other people impress us and we want to show that we respect them for their achievements. All our efforts feed into a mutual appreciation of each other's successes - a virtuous circle wherein, by doing well, we inspire others to do just as well, who in turn encourage us to do even better.

p. 86 Actually, I suspect that satisfaction only comes from a performance that takes you out of your comfort zone. You can have satisfaction or enjoyment but not both at the same time.

p. 96 The idea of running a marathon is a challenge but to run one against people's expectations is an opportunity to surprise them - and everything becomes easier when you see it as an opportunity.

p. 112 Right now, [running] is the reason why every step I take is painful. But when I am deprived of its company, if only for a week, I miss it. It comes around regularly and checks on how I am. It looks after me, gives me pride and makes me leaner, stronger, fitter, healthier, and - according to some recently published research that was reported in The Times last week - keeps my brain more active. It is a companion when lonely and a joy when I'm low in spirits.

p. 139 On top of that, I suspect that running does make us more optimistic. It sets us achievable challenges that we would not otherwise face, and thereby creates more opportunities for us to spend time in pursuit of modest successes rather than simply watching television or doing nothing. In that way it gives us what I previously have referred to as 'emotional income'. 

p. 167 In my children, I can impart values that will resonate amongst my descendants and their friends long after my name is forgotten. Perhaps I am not so different from the men who built Albi Cathedral. I too can dream of creating something that lasts forever.

p. 173 The unselfconscious glow that follows a race is not unlike that which you feel after making love.

p. 181 Indeed, one of the greatest joys of fatherhood is being able to compete with your children as hard as you can and then take pride in their victories.

p. 205 Fifty is a significant landmark which should make any intelligent person think deeply about what it means to grow old. It raises questions about your achievements to date and what the future holds. It is the point at which you stop counting up your age in how many birthdays you have passed and start counting down - speculating how long you might have left to live - with a view to leaving a legacy of some sort. But despite my shock at stepping over this border, two things are clear. The first is simply that you'd rather turn fifty than not. We've all lost friends at tragically young ages, who've died knowing they will never fulfil their ambitions or see their children grow up. And second, even if your running is just a reaction to your midlife worries, it is a better strategy than rushing off with the young blonde from the bus stop or splashing out on a new sports car.

p. 213 I was repeatedly told that, historically, individuals don't matter. They are the mere crests of waves that briefly touch the sunlight and then disappear into the unfathomable depths. Only the deeper tides of history are important. As the years go by, however, I find myself disagreeing with that judgement more and more. Often a single person can make a decision that affects millions of people.

The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson, r. Aug. 2020

p. 23 A friend who has known you since you were four years old really knows you, whereas your parents only think they do.

p. 37 Inside was the leaden weight of boredom; outside was the sharp tang of wood smoke and the urgency of shortening days. You could smell the winter coming. You could see it in the transparency of the light and hear it in the harsh warning cries of the geese as they passed overhead. Most of all, you could feel it. During the day the sun was still hot, but as soon as it dipped down behind the trees the warmth dropped out of the air like a stone.

p. 179 On Sunday morning when he woke up he realized that far from having days and days to prepare for the chemistry exam he now had somewhat less than thirty hours. He skipped church and studied all day. He was good at cramming, even enjoyed it to a degree; there was a kind of masochistic pleasure to be found in concentrating so hard for so long. He took an hour off for supper and then worked till midnight. He got up at six, had breakfast, and started in again. By half past ten in the morning he'd finished. The entire chemistry textbook, a whole year's work, was now inside his head, and provided it didn't all fall out between now and the exam, he'd be fine.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, r. May 2020

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream. -T.K. Whipple, Study Out the Land

p. 211 There was something different about her, Jake had to admit. She had a beautiful face, a beautiful body, but also a distance in her such as he had never met in a woman. Certain mountains were that way, like the Bighorns. The air around them was so clear you could ride toward them for days without seeming to get any closer. And yet, if you kept riding, you would get to the mountains. He was not so sure he would ever get to Lorie.

p. 473 Of course they had heard that the buffalo were being wiped out, but with the memory of the southern herd so vivid, they had hardly credited the news. Discussing it in Lonesome Dove they had decided that the reports must be exaggerated - thinned out, maybe, but not wiped out. Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel. With those millions of animals gone, and the Indians mostly gone in their wake, the great plains were truly empty, unpeopled and ungrazed. Soon the whites would come, of course, but what he was seeing was a moment between, no the plains as they had been, or as they would be, but a moment of true emptiness, with thousands of miles of grass resting unused, occupied only by remnants - of the buffalo, the Indians, the hunters. Augustus thought they were crazed remnants, mostly, like the old mountain man who worked night and day gather bones to no purpose.

p. 474 A chain of follies had put him there: Call's abrupt decision to become a cattleman and his own decision, equally abrupt, to try and rescue a girl foolish enough to be taken in by Jake Spoon. None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked. The sensible way, which he had pursued once or twice in his life, had always proved boring, usually within a few days. In his case it had led to nothing much, just excessive drunkenness and reckless card playing. There was more enterprise in certain follies, it seemed to him.

p. 587 It had always puzzled [July] how some men could spend their days just sitting in a saloon, drinking, but now it was beginning to seem less puzzling. It was restful, and the heavy feeling that came with the drinking was a relief to him, in a way. For the last few weeks he had been struggling to do things which were beyond his powers - he knew he was supposed to keep trying, even if he wasn't succeeding, but it was pleasant not to try for a little while. 

p. 622 "People have been living there since the beginning, and their bones have kinda filled up the ground. It's interesting to think about, all the bones in the ground. But it's just fellow creatures, nothing to shy from." It was such a startling thought - that under him, beneath the long grass, were millions of bones - that Newt stopped feeling so strained. He rode beside Mr. Gus, thinking about it, the rest of the night.

p. 696 "You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it," Augustus said. "If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day - that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave."

p. 832 "I can't think of nothing better than riding a fine horse into new country. It's exactly what I was meant for, and Woodrow too." "Do you think we'll see Indians?" Newt asked. "You bet," Augustus said. "We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That's the wild for you - it's got its dangers, which is part of the beauty. 'Course the Indians have had this land forever. To them it's precious because it's old. To us it's exciting because it's new."

p. 907 Often [Clara] sat out on her upper porch at night, wrapped in Bob's huge coat. She liked the bitter cold, a cold that seemed to dim the stars. 

The Great Unknown by Marcus du Sautoy, r. Apr. 2020

p. 21 "The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing." - Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

p. 56 At least with the future we can wait and see what the outcome of chaotic equations produces. But trying to work backward and understand what state our planet was in to produce the present is equally if not more challenging. The past, even more than the future, is probably something we can never truly know.

p. 75 "Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

p. 172 The problem, [Herbert McCabe] believed, is that religion far too often commits idolatry by trying to engage too personally with this concept of God. The trouble is that an undefined, unknowable, transcendent concept is too abstract for many to engage with. It can't offer the sort of consolation that many seek. So perhaps it is inevitable that God's potency depends on becoming a little less transcendent, and more tangible.

p. 229 "The universe is not constructed for our convenience. It's not an exercise in the philosophy of science. It's too bad if we can't find these things out. In fact, I'd be very suspicious if all these fundamental questions happened to be answerable by what we're doing.

p. 318 Consciousness allows the brain to take part in mental time travel. You can think of yourself in the past and even project yourself into the future. But at the same time, being aware of your own existence means having to confront the inevitability of your demise. Death-awareness is the price we pay for self-awareness. That is why Gallup believes that later in life chimpanzees prefer to lose their ability to be conscious of themselves. Could dementia in humans play a similar role, protecting aging humans from the painful recognition of their impending death?

p. 331 Many neuroscientists now speak of consciousness as being similar to the wetness of water. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon in the sense that it is a higher-level property of a system triggered by neuronal activity happening at a lower level. But that doesn't really explain what this higher-level thing really is.

p. 333 "What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind." - The Dhammapada

p. 417 I wonder, though, whether, as I come to the end of my exploration, I have changed my mind about declaring myself an atheist. With my definition of a God as that which we cannot know, to declare myself an atheist would mean that I believe there is nothing we cannot know. I don't believe that anymore. In some sense I think I have proved that this God does exist. The challenge now is to explore what quality this God has. My statement about being an atheist is really just a response to the rather impoverished version of God offered by most religions and cultures. I reject the existence of a supernatural intelligence that intervenes in the evolution of the universe and in our lives. This is a rejection of the God that people assign strange properties to - such as compassion, wisdom, love - that make no sense when it comes to the idea that I am exploring.

p. 426 Studies into consciousness suggest boundaries beyond which we cannot go. Our internal worlds are potentially unknowable to others. But isn't that one of the reasons we write and read novels? It is the most effective way to give others access to that internal world.-

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, r. April 2020

p. 4 In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

p. 50 Opposite the hotel was a barren little park, as wretched as only the park of a dirty little town can be, but for Tereza it had always been an island of beauty: it had grass, four poplars, benches, a weeping willow, and a few forsythia bushes.

p. 55 The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

p. 59 Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.

p. 59 Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

p. 88 While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

p. 103 "When a society is rich, its people don't need to work with their hands; they can devote themselves to activities of the spirit. We have more and more universities and more and more students. If students are going to earn degrees, they've got to come up with dissertation topics. And since dissertations can be written about everything under the sun, the number of topics is infinite. Sheets of paper covered with words pile up in archives sadder than cemeteries, because no one ever visits them, not even on All Souls' Day. Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity. That's why one banned book in your former country means infinitely more than the billions of words spewed out by our universities."

p. 110 The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed. From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenery.

p. 156 Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like white water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain. Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments.

p. 170 She went outside and set off in the direction of the embankment. She wanted to see the Vltava. She wanted to stand on its banks and look long and hard into its waters, because the sight of the flow was soothing and healing. The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.

p. 221 As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about. But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself? ... The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them.

p. 246 Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.

p. 257 ... political movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images, words, and archetypes that come together to make up this or that political kitsch.... The dictatorship of the proletariat or democracy? Rejection of the consumer society or demands for increased productivity? The guillotine or an end to the death penalty? It is all beside the point. What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.

p. 278 And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

p. 289 We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.

p. 298 And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote, r. Apr. 2020

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a tram. The walls were stucco, and a color rather like tobacco-spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman ruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.

"Hold on," he said, gripping my wrist. "Sure I loved her. But it wasn't that I wanted to touch her." And he added, without smiling: "Not that I don't think about that side of things. Even at my age, and I'll be sixty-seven January ten. It's a peculiar fact -- but, the older I grow, that side of things seems to be on my mind more and more. I don't remember thinking about it so much even when I was a youngster and it's every other minute. Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that's why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden. Whenever I read in the paper about an old man disgracing himself, I know it's because of this burden.

"I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead."

That Monday in October, 1943. A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird. To start, we had Manhattans at Joe Bell's; and, when he heard of my good luck, champagne cocktails on the house. Later, we wandered toward Fifth Avenue, where there was a parade. The flags in the wind, the thump of military bands and military feet, seemed to have nothing to do with war, but to be, rather, a fanfare arranged in my personal honor.

She was forever on her way out, not always with Rusty Trawler, but usually, and usually, too, they were joined by Mag Wildwood and the handsome Brazilian, whose name was José Ybarra-Jaegar: his mother was German. As a quartet, they struck an unmusical note, primarily the fault of Ybarra-Jaegar, who seemed as out of place in their company as a violin in a jazz band. He was intelligent, he was presentable, he appeared to have a serious link with his work, which was obscurely governmental, vaguely important, and took him to Washington several days a week. How, then, could he survive night after night in La Rue, El Morocco, listening to the Wildwood ch-ch-chatter and staring into Rusty's raw baby-buttocks face? Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local color and national character. That would explain much; Holly's determination explains the rest.

"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full- grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

"I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away."

A Sutil Arte de Ligar o Foda-se by Mark Manson, r. Mar. 2020

p. 11 Muitas vezes, o autoaprimoramento e o sucesso andam de mãos dadas. Não significa que sejam a mesma coisa.

p. 12 Afinal de contas, nenhuma pessoa realmente feliz sente necessidade de ficar falando que é feliz para si mesma no espelho. Ela simplesmente é.

p. 38 A vida é basicamente uma série interminável de problemas.... A solução de um problema é apenas o início do próximo.

p. 39 A felicidade está em resolver problemas. Repare que a palavra-chave é "resolver". Se você evita os problemas ou acha que não tem nenhum, está no caminho da infelicidade. Se acha que não consegue resolver seus problemas, estará no mesmo caminho. O segredo está em resolver os problemas, e não em não ter problemas. Para ser feliz, é preciso ter algo para resolver. Assim, a felicidade é uma forma de ação; é uma atividade, não algo que você recebe de forma passiva, que descobre magicamente...

p. 46 O que determina o sucesso não é "De que prazer você quer desfrutar?". A questão relavante é: "Qual dor você está disposto a suportar?" O caminho da felicidade é cheio de obstáculos e humilhações.

p. 127 Aproximar-se da verdade e da perfeição não leva à verdade nem à perfeição. Não devemos procurar a resposta "certa", e sim tentar eliminar nossos erros de hoje para estarmos um pouco menos errados amanhã.

p. 152 A verdade é que somos nossos piores observadores. Os últimos a perceber quando estamos irritados, enciumados ou tristes. A única maneira de descobrir isso é enfraquecer a nossa armadura de certeza, o tempo todo considerando a possibilidade de engano.

p. 173 Se seguirmos o princípio do Faça Alguma Coisa, o peso do fracasso é reduzido. Quando o parâmetro de sucesso é meramente a ação - quando todo resultado possível é considerado um progresso e tem seu valor, quando a inspiração é vista como uma recompensa e não um pré-requisito -, somos impulsionados à frente. Nos sentimos livres para fracassar, e até mesmo o fracasso nos movimenta.

p. 177 A liberdade nos dá a oportunidade de encontrar um significado maior, mas ela em si não tem necessariamente nada de significativo. No fim das contas, a única maneira de encontrar o significado e propósito é rejeitar alternativas, num processo que constitui um estreitamento da liberdade, ao escolher formar vínculos e assumir compromissos com um lugar, uma crença ou (ai!) uma pessoa.

p. 219 Você também vai morrer, mas só porque teve a sorte de viver. Pode não sentir isso agora, mas experimente ficar na beira de um penhasco algum dia e talvez consiga.