Brother Karamazov by Dostoevsky
Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
An autobiography by Ansel Adams
Siddartha by Hermund Hesse
American Photographs (enjoyed)
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs
The US the Soviet UNion and the third world
Politics, trade and development
Ernando de Soto: Mystery of Capital
Howard Zinn: People's history of the United States
Yann Martel: Life of Pi
The origin of Capitalism
Aborted: Homi Baba's Location of culture
BROTHER KARAMAZOV by DOSTOYEVSKY
p.38: No, not about Diderot. Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and litens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offence, isnt’ it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but hat he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill – he knows that himself, yet he will be the firt to take offence, nad will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too is deceitful posturing …
p.83: As he uttered the last word of his tirade, Miusov completely recovered his self-complacency, and all traces his former irritation disappeared. He fully and sincerely loved humanity again.
p.173: “that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old. But they have only analysed the parts and overlooked the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvellous. Yet the whole still stands steadfast before their eyes, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Has it not lasted nineteen centuries, is it not still a living a moving power in the individual soul dand in the masses of people? It is still as strong and living even in the souls of atheists, who have destroyed everything!
p.238: Then you know what for. It is different for other people; but we in our green youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. That’s what we care about. Young Russia is talking about nothing but the eternal questions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with practical questions. Why have you been looking at me in expectation for the last three months? To ask me, 2What do you believe, or don’t you believe at all2? That’s what your eyes have been meaning for these three months, have not they?
p.331 (g) of prayer, of love, and of contact with other worlds:
Young man, be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education. Remember too, every day and wherever you can, repeat to yourself:” Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee to-day” For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected, that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not.
p.333: OF the pride of Satan what I think is this: it is hard for us on eath to comprehend it, and therefore it is so easy to fall into error and to share it, even emagining that ewe are doing something grand and fine. Indeed many of the strongest feeling and moevements of our nature we cannot comprehend on earth. Let not htat be stunling-block, and think not that it may serve as a justification to you for anything. For the Eternal Judge asks of you what you can comprehend and not what you cannot. You will know that yourself hereafter, for you will behold all thing truly then and will not dispute them.
p.363: The great grief in his heart swallowed up every sensation that might have been aroused, and if only he could have thought clearly at that moment he would have realised that he had not the strongest armour to protect him from every lust and temptation. Yet in spite of the vague irresposiveness of his spiritual condition and the sorrow that overwhelmed him, he could not help wondering at a new and strange sensation in his heart.
p.579: Итгэлийн 500 гр наранцэцэгийн тос зарах гэж явах(өдрийн хоолны үеэр бусад элдвийн бараа таваар зардаг найз нартайгаа дайралдан хуушуур цохиж суухдаа санаа орж ирнэ. Ингээд бүгд бооцоо тавиад зарахаар хүмүүс дундуур орон алга болно. Хамгийн гол пойнт нь өөрийнхөө чадварт дэндүү итгэлтэйгээс үүдэх аж.)
And the owner wasnot looking, he was talking to someone, so I had nothing to do, the goose thrust its head in after the oats of itself, under the cart just under the wheel. I winked at the lad, he tugged at the bridle, and crack! The goose’s neck was broken in half. And as luch would have it, all the peasants saw us at that moemnet and they kicked up a shindy at once. ‘You did aht on purpose!’ “ No, not on purpose” ‘ Yes you did, on purpose! Ell, they shouted, ‘take him to the justice of the peace!’ Kolya is the guy who is very confident as well and lied under the train until it passed. That is the particular emphasis on his character. (pay attention in the character building as well)
p.582: (Itgel’s one of the main characteristics will be the following)
“I am fagging away at Latin because I have to, because I promised my mother to pass my examination, and I think that whatever you do, it is worth doing it well. But in my soul I have a profound contempt for the classics and all that fraud…. You don’t agree, Karamazov?”
Why froud? Alyosha smiled again.
“Well, all the classical authors have been translated into all languages, so it was not for the sake of studying the calssics they introduced Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the intelligence. So what can one call it but a fraud?”
Why, who taught you all thi s, cird Alyosha, surprised at the last.
“In the first place I am capable of thinking for myself without being taught. Besides, what I said just now about the classics being trandlated our teacher Kolbasnikov has said to the whole of the third class.”
p.583: “I have long learned to respect you as a rare person,” Kolyoa muttered again, faltering and uncertain. “I have heard you are a mystic and have been in the monastery. I know you are mystic, but … that has not pu me off. Contact with real life will cure you. … It is always so with characters like yours.”
“What do you mean by mystic? Cure me of what?” ALyosha was rather astonished.
“Oh, God and all the rest of it.”
“What, don’t you believe in God?”
“Oh, I have nothing against God. OF course, Go di sonly a hypothesis, but … I admit athat He is needed … for the order of the universe and all that … and that if there were no God He would have to be invented, “ added Kolya, beginning to blush. (NOTICE the 3 dots in between to stimulate a pause in the conversation, but also connect the statements)
p.585: I think, too, that to leave one’s own country and fly to America is mean, worse than mean-silly. Why go to America when one may be of great service to humanity here? Now especially. There is a perfect mass of fruitful activity open to us. That’s what I answered.
p.721: “I was once indebted to him for assistance in money for more than three thousand, and I took it, although I could not at that time foresee that I should ever be in a position to repay my debt.” There was a note of defiance in her voice. It was then Fetyukovitch began his cross-examination.
p.740: “For my part I wish the excellent and gifted young man every success; I trust that his youthful idealism and impulse towards the ideas of the people may never degenerate, as often happens, on the moral side into gloomy mysticism, and on the political into blind Chauvinism- two elements which are even a greater menace to Russia than the premature decay, due to misunderstanding and gratiotous adoption of European ideas, from which his elder brother is suffering.” […]
“But to return to the elsest son,” Ippolit Kirillovitch went on. “He is the prisoner before us. We have his life and his actions, too, before us; the fatal day has come and all has been brought to the surface. While his brothers seem to stand for ‘Europeanism’ and the ‘principles of the people’, he seems to represent Russia as she is. Oh not all Russia, not all! God preserve us, if it were! Yet, here we have her, our mother Russia, the very scent and sound of her. Oh, he is spontaneous, he is a marvellous mingling of good and evil, he is a lover of culture and Schiller, yet he brawls in taverns and plucks out the beards of his boon companions. Oh he, too, can be good and noble ideas, but only if they come of themselves, if they fall from heaven for him, if they …
[TYPICAL MONGOLIAN ATTITUDE should be presented through the assistant character]
Ansel Adams' letter to his friend Cedric
Dear Cedric,
A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me; things that related to those who are loved and those who are real ftiends.
For the first time I know what love is; what ftiends are; and what art should be.
Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things. Children are not only of flesh and blood - children may be ideas, thoughts, emotions. The person of the one who is loved is a form composed of a myriad mirrors reflecting and illuminating the powers and thoughts and the emotions that are within you, and flashing another kind of light from within. No words or deeds may encompass it.
Friendship is another form of love - more passive perhaps) but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean reality of granite.
Art is both love and ftiendship and understanding: the desire to give.
It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness) which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men) and of all the interrelations of these.
Ansel
THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST
He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was Truth
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying
For the obdurate people will not believe
What they do not see and distincly feel
Inexperience, I believe
Will give little credence to my song!
... His suffering became too great, and you know that as soon as suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward. Borther H. was led to despair in his test, and despair is hte result of each earnest attempt to understand and to fulfill their requirements.
SIDDHARTHA
Siddhartha does nothing; he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he goes through th eaffairs of the world like the stone through water, without doing anything, without bestirring himself; he is drawn and lets himself fall. He is drawn by his goal, for he does not allow anything to enter his mind which opposes his goal. That is what Siddhartha learnt from the Samanas. It is what fools call magic and what they think is caused by demons. Nothing is caused by demons; there are no demons. Everyone can perform fast.
... 'Maybe' said Siddhartha wearily. 'I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practise love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret'
... Siddhartha himself acquired some of the characteristics of the ordinary people, some of their childishness adn some of their anxiety. And yet he envied them; the more he became like them, the more he envied them. He envied them them hte one thing that he lacked and that htey had: the sense of importance with which they lived hteir lives, the depth of their pleasures and sorrows, the anxious but sweet happiness of their continual power to love.
... When someone is seeking, said Siddhartha, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anythin g, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of hte thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
... Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
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