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The entire geographical footprint of a college campus is illuminated at night every night, greatly enhancing its desolation during the weekend. During the school week, the university belongs to no one. It buzzes and throbs with people coming and going. But the whole place is different on a Friday midnight, when the university belongs to you. Smug in the presumption that you are the only working person within a fifty-mile radius, you accomplish just enough to feel justified in being naughty. In the rhythm of these Friday nights beat the honest, humble heart of science, and it explains how discovery and mischief are two sides of the very same coin.

Hope Jahren, Lab Girl  

#literature #lit #quote #science #lab girl #hope jahren #college #university #discovery

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It wasn't simply joy that I felt in each of these moments. Rather, it was a sense that everything I was doing, every touch and breath and word, carried the full weight of my life; that a circle was beginning to close, so that I might finally recognize myself as I was, here, now, in one place.

Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father

#dreams from my father #obama #barack obama #literature #quote #kenya

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I think perhaps education doesn't do us much good unless it is mixed with sweat.

Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father 

#Dreams From My Father #obama #barack obama #lit #literature #education #quote

[literaryboner]

She will never ask for anything. She has always something that she is doing. It gives her pride. Anyone could do the same, but many people here, they prefer to give up.

Barack Obama, Dreams From My Father

#Dreams From My Father #Obama #barack obama #literature #lit #quoteoftheday

[literaryboner]

How much of life have I missed, he wondered, simply by failing to look? Or by looking and not seeing?

Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

#irvin d. yalom #when nietzsche wept #literature #lit

[literaryboner]

Once you did me the honour of giving me your confidence. Perhaps you have quite forgotten me now! How is it that I am writing to you? I do not know; but I am conscious of an irresistible desire to remind you of my existence, especially you. How many times I have needed all three of you; but only you have dwelt always in my mind’s eye. I need you— I need you very much. I will not write about myself. I have nothing to tell you. But I long for you to be happy. ARE you happy? That is all I wished to say.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

#fyodor dostoevsky #Dostoyevsky #the idiot #literature #lit

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I'm thinking that when you rise from your chair and go past me, I watch you, and follow you with my eyes; if your dress does but rustle, my heart sinks; if you leave the room, I remember every little word and action, and what your voice sounded like, and what you said. I thought of nothing all last night, but sat here listening to your sleeping breath, and heard you move a little, twice.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

#Fyodor Dostoevsky #dostoyevsky #the idiot #literature

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She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.

Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

#Pride & Prejudice #Jane Austen #lit

[literaryboner]

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

Emma Goldman 

#Emma Goldman #Society

[literaryboner]

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet 

#Hamlet #William Shakespeare #Shakespeare

[literaryboner]

“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.”

Sylvia Plath

#Sylvia Plath

[literaryboner]

My mother asks me, "Are you on the side of the law-breakers in this thing?" For ten minutes we exchange mother talk and revolutionary rhetoric. She points out that neither Gandhi nor Thoreau would have asked for amnesty. I admit that I haven't read them. But Gandhi had no Gandhi to read and Thoreau hadn't read Thoreau. They had to reach their own conclusions and so will I.

 James Simon Kunen, The Strawberry Statement

#James Simon Kunen #The Strawberry Statement #Columbia University #1968 #Thoreau #Gandhi

[literaryboner]

Thinking and writing should be indissoluble activities, the hand ministering to the thought, the thought shaped by the hand. Today, if I find myself without pen and paper and thoughts start to arrive, my fingers begin to twitch and I long for those implements of cogitation. With such rudimentary tools you can perform the miracle of turning an invisible thought into a concrete mark, bringing the ethereal interior into the public external world, refining it into something precious and permanent.

Colin McGinn, "Finding Philosophy" 

#Finding Philosophy #Colin McGinn #Writing

[literaryboner]

"What do you mean?” “That anything’s possible.” “Well, not anything is possible. Pigs can’t fly.” “Yeah, but for some reason, sitting here with you, I feel like they can"

Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

#Miranda July #No One Belongs Here More Than You #Literature

[literaryboner]

I laughed and said, Life is easy. What I meant was, Life is easy with you here, and when you leave, it will be hard again.

Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

#No One Belongs Here More Than You #Miranda July #Literature #Lit

[literaryboner]

The dead do walk and haunt and crawl into your bed at night. Ghosts sneak into your head when you're not looking. Stars line up and volcanoes birth out bits of glass that foretell the future. Poison berries make girls stronger, but sometimes kill them. If you howl at the moon and swear on your blood, anything you desire will be yours. But be careful what you wish for. There's always a catch.

Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls 

#Laurie Halse Anderson #Wintergirls #Literature #Lit

[literaryboner]

...Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have , then you are not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and still can shake hands with the murders, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend or lover, and whatever be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of sycophant.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense 

#Thomas Paine #Common Sense