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Posted by: Mela Favale
in Quotes & Aphorisms (Books)
But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. (from "The Picture of Dorian Gray")
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    Posted by: Francesco Pierri
    in Quotes & Aphorisms (Books)
    He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
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      Posted by: Silvana Stremiz
      in Quotes & Aphorisms (Books)
      It may happen that one may write some messy and useless things (this happens often) without realizing it or without wanting to realize it, which is quite possible, because paper is a far too tolerant material. You can write over it any vastness, and it doesn't protest: it isn't like the wood in the armours of mine shafts, that creaks when it's overloaded.
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