/lit/ - Literature

Robert Briffault: “Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.” ( The Mothers, I, 191)

"A world without hope, but no despair."
—Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

For some reason that stuck with me greatly. The book is great as well.

>>2854021
What does that even mean? It's somehting banal that applies to everyhting whatsoever, but with a vaguely sexist twist to it, too.
This is honest-to-god stupid.

This >>2854024 , on the other hand, is amazing. Cheers, mate.

>>2854024
Just started reading it, I like it so far. Does his trilogy warrant a read?

'Why do you hate the South?'
'I don't hate it.'

- Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

>>2854038
I'm afraid I've never gotten really far into his other works except Opus Pistorum, which is funny smut.

I'm sure there's other anons who've read more of him though.

>>2854024
Henry Miller's always got great ideas. The one about how carefree life is when you're naive and don't burden yourself with cynicism and suspicion, how much trouble you avoid. Also, the one about how no women can refuse a man that is in love with her. We could all do well to be more optimistic

Does Kuhn not understand that what has happened today is an abomination, which no propitiatory prayer, no pardon, no expiation by the guilty, which nothing at all in the power of man can ever clean again? If I was god, I would spit at Kuhn's prayer.

Primo Levi.

"Everything is some kind of a plot, man."
- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

'Maybe I am an idiot,' Prince Myshkin. The Idiot, Dostyevsky


That line stuck out for me, its in the middle of the book when the prince is walking home after a seizure in front of some nobles. Throughout the whole book, everyone thinks he's an idiot, and he isn't, not really.

Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.

“The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody."

I think I know a good deal about physical suffering. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because tonight that my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace…

Sometimes I am possessed by a most powerful feeling, a despairing bewildered jealousy which, when deepened by drink, turns into a desire to destroy myself by my own imagination, not at least to be the prey of -- ghosts

"Americans are looking for love in the wrong places and in the wrong form."-Cat's Cradle

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forget in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race…Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead."
- James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The book was great, one of my all-time favorites.

>>2854579
Who is Cats Cradle? I've never heard of him myself, and I thought I was pretty hip to the scene with literature knowledge. Has he written anything I might have heard of? That's a nice quote, and this Mr Cradle sounds like a clever guy.

>>2854582
Why would you even bother to type that out?

“Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs Ramsay’s knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs Ramsay would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out, would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored?”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

>>2854587
What?

>>2854582
I'm not person who quoted Cat's Cradle, but it's a book by Kurt Vonnegut. He's pretty well known.

>>2854588
man that book was so good. so fucking good.

>>2854582
a++ post

>>2854587
>>2854601
lol

>>2854601
Yeah, I know it's a book by Kurt Vonnegut. The book didn't fucking say it though, Vonnegut did, and my post was any attempt to sarcastically point out that fact to the fucking idiot who said it.

"All the world will be your enemy, Prince of a Thousand enemies. And when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you; digger, listener, runner, Prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed. " - Watership Down

My favorite novel as a teen. It stuck with me for a long time..

>inb4 furry

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty."

Wilde is still my favorite literary theorist of all time (well, second to Pater but Wilde is wittier).

>>2854631
that's why pater is better

lord, i cannot stand wilde

>>2854631
What about those who find beauty in ugly things?

>>2854636

Pls, Wilde iz lief.

>inb4 someone actually believes I can't spell

"Life is not a mystery to be solved, but a reality to be experienced" is said a couple times throughout the Dune books. Seemed profound to me as a young teen I guess.

>>2854657

That's what art is.

More than a line but it's too good
"...he alone had created himself, he knew his own strength, his vigor, he could cope and he had himself well in hand. But, in the strange dizziness of that moment, the statue every man eventually erects and that hardens in the fire of the years, into which he then creeps and there awaits its final crumbling-that statue was rapidly cracking, it was already collapsing. All that was left was this anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been with him for forty years, and still struggling against the wall that separated him from the secret of all life, wanting to go further, to go beyond, and to discover, discover before dying, discover at last in order to be, just once to be, for a single second, but forever"
-Albert Camus's The First Man P.26

>>2854631
>>2854636
>>2854658

Wilde was a one-trick pony. Gimmicky as fuck, and I can't believe people still repeat his trite "aphorisms" today.

Here's how it goes: conjure a topic, like beauty, civilisation, punctuality--anything abstract. Then, think of the exact opposite. Then, put the two together in a blase generalisation.

It's easily done, here I'll do it right now:

Beautiful people can't afford to create works of art, because their work must always be uglier than themselves, out of a sense of unaccustomed jealousy.

Civilisation has been roundly cultivated and is now at a new frontier: barbarism.

I believe everyone has a absolute duty to be on time, so I've made it a habit to arrive at least twenty minutes late.

in the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is lithe sense in not trying to accomplish all of your wildest dreams in life"-kevin smith; more of a motivation quote

“Woman is not born: she is made. In the making, her humanity is destroyed. She becomes symbol of this, symbol of that: mother of the earth, slut of the universe; but she never becomes herself because it is forbidden for her to do so.”

>>2854689
gender quotes?

What's wrong with the world? You ask a man and he says, "don't ask." Ask a woman and you'll be dead of old age before she's finished.

>>2854686

...You've got a point there, but thats not going stop me enjoying his work (and words of wisdom?) as much as any other Wilde fan.
Everyone has their own personal taste, and I respect your liking to Pater over Wilde, because only a asshat would get angry over someone liking something else, even if it makes no sense to you.
And I will repeat his "trite" aphorisms as I please.

>>2854750
Because most men have nothing important to say.

>>2854777
Haha, you're a funny guy, Anon.

>>2854777
neither men nor women have anything important to say, the difference is in how they approach this question

>>2854777
0/10