/lit/ - Literature

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
—Oscar Wilde

“I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”

To want to impose an imaginary state of government on others by violence is not only a vulgar superstition, but even a criminal work. Understand that this work, far from assuring the well-being of humanity is only a lie, a more or less unconscious hypocrisy, camouflaging the lowest passions we posses.

Leo Tolstoy

"Know thyself."

When a man is born...there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inaminate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people … The most improper job of any many, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity …

J.R.R. Tolkien

"And that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life. And in one of those transparent sections of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had naively believed that she was moving in a tunnel parallel to mine, when in fact she belonged to the wide world, the unbounded world of those who did not live in tunnels..."

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>>4114556
Here's the fuII quote:
"And that after all there was only one tunnel, dark and solitary: mine, the tunnel which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my entire life. And in one of those transparent sections of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had naively believed that she was moving in a tunnel parallel to mine, when in fact she belonged to the wide world, the unbounded world of those who did not live in tunnels; and perhaps out of curiosity she had approached one of my strange windows, and had glimpsed the spectacle of my unredeemable solitude, or had been intrigued by the mute message, the key, of my painting. And then, while I kept moving through my passageway, she lived her normal life outside, the exciting life of people who live outside, that curious and absurd life in which there are dances and parties and gaiety, and frivolity. And sometimes it happened that when I passed by one of my windows she was waiting for me, silent and anxious (why waiting for me? why silent and anxious?); but at other times she did not come in time, or she forgot that poor caged being, and then I, my face pressed against the wall of glass, watched her in the distance laughing or dancing without a care in the world or, which was worse, I did not see her at all, and imagined her in obscene places I could not reach. At those times I felt that my destiny was infinitely more lonely than I had ever imagined."

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. - my nigga billy faulkner

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fuck yeah statism is gay

IT IS VERY WARM ON THIS PLANE

"I'm cold"

"There, There"

~My full name is the "Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath". Cool, eh?

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? ...we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. -Franz Kafka

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPIos2mXbUE

>>4115333
oh shit, I remember this from catch-22. great book.