The largest website for English phrases and quotes

The largest website for English phrases and quotes

Category: Marcel Theroux

He didn’t seem conventionally insane in any way that I could understand. But there was no way of comprehending him. In some eerie and fundamental way, he didn’t appear to belong to our world. But that didn’t seem the same as being mad.

consciouness, insanity

The Word is alive. We have always known it. But it needs to be uttered, aloud or in the mind of a reader. Without a consciousness to tickle them into life, those books were dead.

books, dead, life, reader, word

It’s a kind of heresy to say so, but I think our race has made forms more beautiful than what was here before us. Sometimes god’s handiwork is crude. There is no more ugly thing than a lobster. There’s not much pretty about a caribou. It has an ungainly walk and its touchhole voids droppings when it strains in harness. Was there a straight line on earth before we drew one?

mankind, nature, reflective

…the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they’re fighting for the sake of an idea. We’ve been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don’t have the power over you they would like. That’s why they do what they do. And I’m not going to give them the power now. But it was a cruel thing that they did, and when they had finished hurting me, a splinter of loneliness seemed to break off and stay inside me forever.

cruelty, hurt, ideology, men

There is something talismanic about familiar words.

talismanic, words

Literature itself is a species of code. You line up symbols and create a simulacrum of life.

code, literature

I loved my father, but I was not like him. I never needed to believe the best of people. I took them as they were: two-faced, desperate, kind – perhaps all at once. But to Pa, they were all children of god, poor troubled sheep, who only needed love and an even break. He needed the world to back up what his religion told him about people. And when it came down to a choice between reason and faith, he let go of reason.

faith, reason, religion

Strange how it is that men never act crueler than when they’re fighting for the sake of an idea. We’ve been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don’t have the power over you they would like. That’s why they do what they do.

creulty, god, men, nature

…the years have taught me not to wonder too much at the dark things men do. Strange how it is that men never act crueller than when they’re fighting for the sake of an idea. We’ve been killing since Cain over who stands closer to god. It seems to me that cruelty is just in the way of things. You drive yourself mad if you take it all personal. Those who hurt you don’t have the power over you they would like. That’s why they do what they do. And I’m not going to give them the power now. But it was a cruel thing that they did, and when they had finished hurting me, a splinter of loneliness seemed to break off and stay inside me forever.

cruelty, hurt, ideology, men

There is something talismanic about familiar words.

talismanic, words

Literature itself is a species of code. You line up symbols and create a simulacrum of life.

code, literature

I loved my father, but I was not like him. I never needed to believe the best of people. I took them as they were: two-faced, desperate, kind – perhaps all at once. But to Pa, they were all children of god, poor troubled sheep, who only needed love and an even break. He needed the world to back up what his religion told him about people. And when it came down to a choice between reason and faith, he let go of reason.

faith, reason, religion