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Book: The Dream of Scipio
Quotes of Book: The Dream of Scipio
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  1. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    «How do we justify calling ourselves civilised, after all? Is it the books we read? The delicacy of our tastes? Our place in continuing a line of belief ando of common values which strech back a thousand years and more? All this, indeed, but what does it mean? How does it show itself? Are you civilised if you read the right books, yet stand by while your neighbours ara massacred, your lanas laid waste, your cities brought to ruin?»
    book-quote

  2. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    The world needs only a few geniuses; civilization is maintained and extended by those lesser souls who corral the men of greatness, tie them down with explanations and footnotes and annotated editions, explain what they meant when they didn't know themselves, show their true place in the awesome progression of mankind.
    book-quote

  3. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Men reacted as they always did; some with an extreme of generosity, giving what little they could spare to strangers; others behaved with an equal and opposite extreme of harshness, demanding outrageous things in exchange. Honest men became thieves, honest women prostitutes, criminals became saints, all driven onward by an idea of what they were leaving behind.
    book-quote

  4. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in {occupied} France in that period; laziness became political.
    book-quotewarpoliticswwii

  5. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Father is a school ... He always wanted to write books. But he became rich instead, so is not allowed.
    book-quotewritingbookswealth

  6. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something."The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action."Olivier frowned. "So?""Dear boy, I must tell you a secret.""What?""I do believe it is wrong.
    book-quoteunderstandingwrongphilosophy

  7. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Do you wish to speak in Provençal, French, or Latin? They are all I can manage, I'm afraid." "Any will do," the rabbi replied in Provençal. "Splendid. Latin it is," said Pope Clement.
    book-quotecommunicationmockerypope

  8. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    {H}e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or a poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion -- held almost to the last -- was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terible weakness.
    book-quotelovepassionpoetry

  9. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Caius was one of those who gloried in his ignorance, called his lack of letters purity, scorned any subtlety of thought or expression. A man for his time, indeed."
    book-quoteignorancestupidityeducation

  10. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.
    book-quoteimaginationdreamsirrationality

  11. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    Considering he was neither priest nor scholar, the young man gave sensible, thoughtful replies -- the more so, perhaps, for being untrained, for he had not learned what he should believe or should not believe. Present a statement to him in flagrant contradiction to all Christian doctrine and he could be persuaded to agree on its good sense, unless he remembered it was the sort of thing of which pyres are made for the incautious.
    book-quotefreedomphilosophyreason

  12. Iain Pears _ The Dream of Scipio

    He had volunteered early, rather than waiting to be conscripted, for he felt a duty and an obligation to serve, and believed that ... being willing to fight for his country and the liberty it represented, would make some small difference. ... His idealism was one of the casualties of the carnage {of Verdun}.
    book-quotewarwwi
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