cloud atlas, from the book:
“She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.”
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
“All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.”
“. . .my dreams are the single unpredictable factor in my zone
d days and nights. Nobody allots them, or censors them. Dreams are all I have ever truly owned.”
“Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.”
“History admits no rules; only outcomes.”
“…and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace.
He said it. ‘The ocean.”
“If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe diverse races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.”
“Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”
“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”
“Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.”
“Whoever opined, "Money can't buy you happiness," obviously had too much of the stuff.”
“We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.”
“Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.”
“History admits no rules; only outcomes.”
“…and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace.
He said it. ‘The ocean.”
“If we believe that humanity may transcend tooth and claw, if we believe diverse races & creeds can share this world as peaceably as the orphans share their candlenut tree, if we believe leaders must be just, violence muzzled, power accountable & the riches of the Earth & its Oceans shared equitably, such a world will come to pass.”
“Why fight the 'natural' (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this--one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”
“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”
“Torturous advances won over generations can be lost by a single stroke of a myopic president's pen or a vainglorious general's sword.”
“Whoever opined, "Money can't buy you happiness," obviously had too much of the stuff.”
“We looked at each other for the last time; nothing is as eloquent as nothing.”
I'm about 3/4 of the way through with the book and have a ridiculous number of passages highlighted. Lovely to see where we overlapped, and to read some that I "missed." :)
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