Post your favourite paragraph from any book

[Anonymous No.16701848]

"Each generation was a rehearsal of the one before, so that that family gradually formed the repetitive pattern of a Greek fret, interrupted only once in two centuries by a nine-year-old boy who had taken a look at his prospects, tied a string round his neck with a brick to the other end, and jumped from a footbridge into two feet of water. Courage aside, he had that family’s tenacity of purpose, and drowned, a break in the pattern quickly obliterated by the calcimine of silence".
Gaddis

[Anonymous No.16701866]

>>16701848
Je me propose, sans être ému, de déclamer à grande voix la strophe sérieuse et froide que vous allez entendre. Vous, faites attention à ce qu’elle contient, et gardez-vous de l’impression pénible qu’elle ne manquera pas de laisser, comme une flétrissure, dans vos imaginations troublées. Ne croyez pas que je sois sur le point de mourir, car je ne suis pas encore un squelette, et la vieillesse n’est pas collée à mon front. Écartons en conséquence toute idée de comparaison avec le cygne, au moment où son existence s’envole, et ne voyez devant vous qu’un monstre, dont je suis heureux que vous ne puissiez apercevoir la figure ; mais, moins horrible est-elle que son âme. Cependant, je ne suis pas un criminel… Assez sur ce sujet. Il n’y pas longtemps que j’ai revu la mer et foulé le pont des vaisseaux, et mes souvenirs sont vivaces comme si je l’avais quittée la veille. Basedez néanmoins, si vous le pouvez, aussi calmes que moi, dans cette lecture que je me repens déjà de vous offrir, et ne rougissez pas à la pensée de ce qu’est le cœur humain. Ô poulpe, au regard de soie ! toi, dont l’âme est inséparable de la mienne ; toi, le plus beau des habitants du globe terrestre, et qui commandes à un sérail de quatre cents ventouses ; toi, en qui siégent noblement, comme dans leur résidence naturelle, par un commun accord, d’un lien indestructible, la douce vertu communicative et les grâces divines, pourquoi n’es-tu pas avec moi, ton ventre de mercure contre ma poitrine d’aluminium, assis tous les deux sur quelque rocher du rivage, pour contempler ce spectacle que j’adore !

[Anonymous No.16701873]

>>16701866
Author?

[Anonymous No.16701881]

>>16701848
what book it is?

[Calvin Sloane No.16701901]

"He sent upon them His burning anger,
Fury and indignation and trouble,
A band of destroying angels."

Psalm 78:49

[Anonymous No.16701903]

[Anonymous No.16701917]

>>16701881
Not telling you

[Anonymous No.16702005]

>>16701917
oh i found it.
The book is The Recognitions by William Gaddis

[Anonymous No.16702013]

>>16701873
Lautreamont, Songs of Maldoror is absolutely great

[Anonymous No.16702065]

>>16702005
That didn't take too long

[Anonymous No.16702072]

>Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?
It’s either this or Pip’s sight past the firmament.

[Anonymous No.16702077]

>>16702065
You’re a smug prick and I hope you die horribly

[Anonymous No.16702078]

>wardine be cry...

[Anonymous No.16702107]

>>16702077
Checked

[Anonymous No.16702137]

Some of my favorites:

Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“It is true, I suppose, that nobody finds it exactly pleasant to be criticized or shouted at, but I see in the face of the human being raging at me a wild animal in its true colors, one more horrible than any lion, crocodile or dragon. People normally seem to be hiding this true nature, but an occasion will arise (as when an ox sedately ensconced in a grassy meadow suddenly lashes out with its tail to kill the horsefly on its flank) when anger makes them reveal in a flash human nature in all its horror. Seeing this happen has always induced in me a fear great enough to make my hair stand on end, and at the thought that this nature might be one of the prerequisites for survival as a human being, I have come close to despairing of myself.”

[Anonymous No.16702144]

>>16702137
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground

“I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!”

[Anonymous No.16702148]

>>16701848
Not only my favorite from the book but among the best paragraphs I've ever read, the line directly before it should be included too:

Ils étaient sur la terrasse. Une masse d'ombre énorme s'étalait devant eux, et qui semblait contenir de vagues amoncellements, pareils aux flots gigantesques d'un océan noir pétrifié.

Mais une barre lumineuse s'éleva du côté de l'Orient. A gauche, tout en bas, les canaux de Mégara commençaient à rayer de leurs sinuosités blanches les verdures des jardins. Les toits coniques des temples heptagones, les escaliers, les terrasses, les remparts, peu à peu, se découpaient sur la pâleur de l'aube ; et tout autour de la péninsule carthaginoise une ceinture d'écume blanche oscillait tandis que la mer couleur d'émeraude semblait comme figée dans la fraîcheur du matin. Puis à mesure que le ciel rose allait s'élargissant, les hautes maisons inclinées sur les pentes du terrain se haussaient, se tassaient telles qu'un troupeau de chèvres noires qui descend des montagnes. Les rues désertes s'allongeaient ; les palmiers, çà et là sortant des murs, ne bougeaient pas ; les citernes remplies avaient l'air de boucliers d'argent perdus dans les cours, le phare du promontoire Hennormaeum commençait à pâlir. Tout en haut de l'Acropole, dans le bois de cyprès, les chevaux d'Eschmoûn, sentant venir la lumière, posaient leurs sabots sur le parapet de marbre et hennissaient du côté du soleil.

[Anonymous No.16702171]

>>16702137
>>16702144
Nikolai Gogol, The Overcoat

"The young clerks jeered and made jokes at him to the best of their clerkly wit, and told before his face all sorts of stories of their own invention about him; they would say of his landlady, an old woman of seventy, that she beat him, would enquire when the wedding was to take place, and would scatter bits of paper on his head, calling them snow.
Akaky Akakyevitch never answered a word, however, but behaved as though there were no one there. It had no influence on his work even; in the midst of all this teasing, he never made a single mistake in his copying. Only when the jokes were too unbearable, when they jolted his arm and prevented him from going on with his work, he would bring out "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" and there was something strange in the words and in the voice in which they were uttered. There was a note in it of something that aroused compassion, so that one young man, new to the office, who, following the example of the rest, had allowed himself to mock him, suddenly stopped as though cut to the heart, and from that time forth, everything was, as it were, changed and appeared in a different light to him.
Some unnatural force seemed to thrust him away from the companions with whom he had become acquainted, accepting them as well-bred, polished people. And long afterwards, at moments of the greatest gaiety, the figure of the humble little clerk with a bald patch on his head rose before him with his heart-rending words: "Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?" and in those heart-rending words he heard others: "I am your brother." And the poor young man hid his face in his hands, and mamy times afterwards in his life he shuddered, seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage brutality lies under refined, cultured politeness, and, my god! even in a man whom the world accepts as a gentleman and a man of honour."

[Anonymous No.16702176]

>>16701848
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.

Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.

[Anonymous No.16702188]

>>16701848
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

[Anonymous No.16702353]

>>16701848
>Who can name Him and dare profess "I believe He is!" Who can feel deeply and then presume to say "I don’t believe!" Encompassing all, sustaining all. does He not hold, sustain you, and me, and Himself? Is not the vault of heaven there above? Here below is earth not firm? And do not everlasting stars emerge and gently gleam on high? And when I look into your eyes does not all being press upon your heart and mind, an unseen presence stir, visibly, beside you? Imbue your heart with this immensity, and when you wholly feel beatitude, then call it what you will: "Happiness! Heart! Love! God!" I have no name to give it! Feeling is everything, name is but sound and smoke.

[Anonymous No.16703563]

>>16702137
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ38jTQcO1k&ab_channel=PeepShow