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Hi /lit/
I'm after your personal favourite passages from books you've read over the years - inspiring quotes or descriptions that really hit you hard the first time you read them.
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees, because there is no other for which we are fitted, and it is too late to begin again. It keeps different social strata from mixing. Already at the age of twenty-five you see the professional mannerism settling down on the young commercial traveller, on the young doctor, on the young minister, on the young counsellor-at-law. You see the little lines of cleavage running through the character, the tricks of thought, the prejudices, the ways of the 'shop,' in a word, from which the man can by-and-by no more escape than his coat-sleeve can suddenly fall into a new set of folds. On the whole, it is best he should not escape. It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
--William James, The Principles of Psychology
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>>9610349
Art belongs to those who create it and those who savour it. [...] Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time. Art does not exist for arts sake; it exists for people's sake.
-- Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time
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"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility." - Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents
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I'd let her sit on my face.
- me.
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>try to read a book
>after only a few paragraphs, realize I lost focus on what I was reading and didn't take it in
>reread what I just read
>don't understand the words/allegories
>look them up
>while doing this, go on /lit/, shitpost about books I haven't read
>fantasize about being a writer
>try to write something, give up as soon as I open Word
>go back to reading
>after every page check the /lit/ threads to read new responses
>check my phone in the hope that someone has messaged me
>no one has
>after 2 hours I've read 15 pages
>realize I've forgotten it all
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Nice blog post
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That's bad. You should focus on just reading a book first. Set a tomato timer and look up words/allegories on your break. Sounds like technology has broken you.
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>>9610319
>tomato timer
wut
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Why is this guy never brought up in any discussion on the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory ("cultural Marxism")? He's always left out in every discussion on the subject.
>most influential member of the frankfurt school
>kabbalist/Jewish esotericist
>admired Lenin
>only member of the Frankfurt School to have lived in the USSR
>wrote on Baudelaire, Blanqui, and Nietzsche (all of them evil)
>language theory could be considered the precursor to deconstruction and thus "political correctness"
>believed mass-media could be used as a tool to promote communism
>promoted ugly-ass modern art
>apocalyptist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwdjcXJZ94Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQpyUjJAo-s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_y0LxcANic
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>>9609355
back to /pol/ you brainlet faggot
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>>9609355
>Literally the kike version of Dugin
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>>9609355
He was just an unlucky mofo
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>My mom tried to get me to read this
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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>>9609295
>be me
>12/13 years old
>loved the movie, read the book after
>there are adults who read, enjoy and recommend that book
Oh boy
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>>9609295
After they see that it actually doesn't work, they're going to become deeply Christian. Happened to my parents.
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It's true though
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Poetry is the lowest form of written """"art."""" It's for people who lack the musical ability to write a song and people who aren't good enough at prose to write a story.
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>>9609169
I tend to agree with your assessment.
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>>9609169
Well poetry used to have its own rules but since Whitman its degraded into postmodern stupidity along with the other arts. It used to take talent. We should be grateful that prose still exists because the written word has utility beyond art.
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>>9609169
Wtf I hate verse now
Old Testament:
>Ooh boy, I created you, and I will act like a dick towards you because I'm divine and shit
New Testament:
>Look, I'm actually a nice guy. Here, use my son as a scapegoat.
Now that's what I call character development!
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>>9608985
How did God become such a nu-male
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>>9608985
jesus is god and jesus is human
god had to take a human form in order to truly suffer, in order to truly save humanity
constructing retard-tier strawman analyses doesn't make you look smart and only robs you of understanding the true depths of one of the oldest literary traditions in the world
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OT God is Satan, Jesus was a crypto-gnostic who only referenced the Jewish scriptures in order to reach a wider audience
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>Essays are incoherent messes
>Aphorisms are the lowest form of the written word, used by people incapable of writing poetry or prose
>tfw born to early too be a depressed 16 year old boy with a twitter account and a copy if The Stranger
>Can't make an argument to save his life
>Hypocrite
>Spoiled little beta baby bitch boy
Why do people like this hack again? Is it just because they're sad?
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>>9608952
>missing the point this hard
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>>9609007
What's the point?
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>>9609017
Cioran would say any attempt to formulate the world will be an incoherent mess
He attempts towards a dual project of philosophy and prose, aphorisms are a necessary mode for that regardless of your opinion of them
Everyone is a hypocrite, thats part of his work
Literally nothing wrong with being a spoiled little beta baby bitch boy, I would encourage it
Does knowing German make reading Kant and Hegel any easier or clearer?
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It enables you to read them at all.
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>>9608714
Serious question? It's of course the same in every language. You have to be fluent and have read a fucking lot before it's somewhat easy and clearer. I imagine there are German natives who find Kant or Hegel hard to read.
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>>9608714
A meme that did the rounds whilst I was an undergraduate was that even some Germans read Kant in English because the translations are more readable.
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Describe your writing process.
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Writing is for narcissistic faggots.
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>>9608693
well, i come up with a plot in my head based on a few themes i want to portray, and then splat that out in about two hours, then never touch it again or revise it at all.
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>find temporal refuge from the human jungle
>open notepad
>*blacks out*
>look at the screen
>theres a huge text
>edit
>reread
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Is 4chan changing the English language?
Consider the suffixes it has introduced:
>-fag
>-kino
>-let
Words it has imported and popularised, or invented:
>t.
>kek
>wew
>trap
Punctuation it has developed:
>
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>>9608677
1. Language is always in flux
2. You give 4chan too much credit, step away from le screen
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It's just internet jargon.
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>>9608700
>Ey, man, it's just castilian jargon, we still speakin' Latin
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has any academic/"intelligent" theologist written about homosexuality? Like justifying it despite the bible or legitimately talking about why it's bad as a whole or something?
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>>9608576
Aquinas
Any recent papal encyclical
Me
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>>9608576
>shit like this
>'good' in any way, shape or form
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>>9609874
This is why we need sharia law
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Did he exist? Or was he invented by Plato?
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>>9608536
>Did he exist?
My guess is probably not.
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He existed. Xenophon was another student of Socrates that also wrote his own Apology. Aristophanes was a playwright that was a contemporary of Socrates and was harshly critical of Socrates in his plays.
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>>9608558
Xenophons account of Socrates contradicted Plato's though.
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Hey everyone,
I am looking for a book about timelines and people experiencing multiple 'branches' of timelines with their consciousness; remembering little bits of the other timelines, perhaps striving for a specific goal. It is not really time travel.
If anyone of you have played the Zero Escape trilogy, you will know what I'm kind of looking for. Quantum theory, schrodingers cat, chinese room, prisoners dilemma etc. all appear in said trilogy.
If anyone has any suggestions it is much appreciated!
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http://brainchip.thecomicseries.com/
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Victor Pelevin's Clay Machine gun/Buddha's Little Finger
>time-travel; reincarnation; or just full-blown schizophrenia?
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>>9607913
interesting lol
>>9607931
I'll check that out. "Who are we? How do we know that? Is there any proof for us that we are real? If so, what is reality and is there any meaning underneath the random nonsense we call life?
Trying to sum up the story must turn into a complete failure, as the moment it makes sense, I must have misunderstood something. But vaguely speaking, it is about a character who moves around in a shifting historical context, between the Russian revolution and the post-Soviet era in Russia. "
Reading that comment about the book is getting me pretty interested.
Anonymous
The Brothers Karamazov 2017-06-07 11:03:04 Post No.9607804
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The Brothers Karamazov 2017-06-07 11:03:04 Post No.9607804
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Finally finished reading this, can we discuss it please?
What exactly was I supposed to take away from it morally? I ask because even though I know it is a Christian book, I'm a little confused about a very important plot point:
***spoilers***When Smerdyakov "confessed" to Ivan, was that real or was that another hallucination by Ivan like when he hallucinated the Devil in his house? And if the confession was a hallucination, does that mean Mitya actually did commit the murder? Because it wasn't proven that he did do it, but it wasn't exactly proven that he didn't in court, either, and the narrator never discloses if he really did it or not.
anyways discuss whatever you want about this book here, themes and plot points and stuff.
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>>9607804
recall the little cripple girl? was she talking about getting boned by some other guy during the last conversation with Alyosha?
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>>9607826
I don't really remember her saying that, but what would that have to do with the stuff I mentioned?
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>>9607804
Y'know, don't confuse 19th century Russian literature with today's psychological thrillers.Of course Smerdyakov's confession was real. And Dmitri was innocent. I, myself, doubted his innocence until the vital information came from Alyosha, when he remembered the evening he met Mitya, and Mitya pointed to his secret pocket and not his heart. He was tried guilty because the hysteria from his ex-girlfriend caused quite a scene in the courtroom, and caught the jury by heart. Dmitri's reputation didn't put him in good graces, and only Alyosha, Ivan and his ex-girlfriend knew about his true virtues. But in the end, his ex-girlfriend eradicated every last bit of hope for him just out of spite.
The Brothers Karamazov is the third best book by Dostoyevsky in my ranking.
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Recommend your fave historians/historical books, /lit/
Bought a collection of AJP Taylor's essays recently, as well as Lukacs' Five Days in London.
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>>9607715
Thucydides and Gibbon. Saint-Beuve's Port-Royal. Caton for the American Civil War. Henry Adams' Americana (the Adams and Jefferson stuff). Huizinga's Autumn of the Middle Ages. Tuchmann. Many!
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>>9607715
Luis González y González
Maybe Le Goff
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>>9607715
Herodotus and Procopius for their memey potential