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The title of the book is A Farewell to Arms and except for three years there has been war of some kind almost ever since it has been written. Some people used to say, why is the man so preoccupied and obsessed with war, and now, since 1933 perhaps it is clear why a writer should be interested in the constant, bullying, murderous, slovenly crime of war. Having been to too many of them, I am sure that I am prejudiced, and I hope that I am very prejudiced. But it is the considered belief of the writer of this book that wars are fought by the finest people that there are, or just say people, although, the closer you are to were they are fighting, the finer people you meet; but they are made, provoked and initiated by straight economic rivalries and by swine that stand to profit from them. I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts by accredited rappresentatives of loyal citizens of their country who will fight it. The author of this book would be very glad to take charge of this shooting, if legally delegated by those who will fight, and see that it would be performed as humanely and correctly as possible and see that all the bodies were given decent burial. We might even arrange to have them buried in cellophane or any one of the newer plastic materials. If, at the end of the day, there was any evidence that I had in any way provoked the new war or had not performed my delegated duties correctly, I would be willing, if not pleased, to be shot by the same firing squad and be buried either with or without cellophane or be left naked on a hill.

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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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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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Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later, no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget, we will return.

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My great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the
universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not
seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in
the woods: time will change it, (...)a source of little visible delight, but necessary. (...) He's always, always in
my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a
pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of
our separation again: it is impracticable...

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Only dead fishes go with the stream.

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Harry Potter : "Dumbledore's man, til the end".

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All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken:
The crownless again shall be king.

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All the books of the world don't give you happiness, but in secret they refer to you.
There is everything you needin there, sun stars moon.
Because the light that you looked for lives in your chest.
The wisdom that you have looked for a long time in a library sines in every sheet, because now it's yours.

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There is a life visible to everyone, and there is another one that only belongs to us, of which nobody knows nothing.
Everyone has his own "not man's land" in which it's the total owner of himself. This doeen't mean at all that, from ethics point of view, one it's moral and the other one is immoral; one is licit and the other one illicit. Simply the man every now and then escapes to any control, he lives in the freedom and the mystery.