The most important meetings have already been combined by souls before the bodies are even created. Usually, they happen when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. Meetings await us, but most of the time we avoid them happening. If we're desperate, instead, if we have nothing left to lose or we're quite enthusiastic about life, then the unknown occurs and our universe changes tack. (from "11 minutes")
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")
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.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Let there be no other book but the world, no other instruction than facts.
The one who accumulates knowledge, accumulates pain.
There is no sin, except stupidity.
The same meaning changes by the words that express it. Meanings receive from words their dignity, rather than conferring them to themselves. One must look for examples.
What are American dry-goods? American novels.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
We should read everything. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.