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book quote
book quote - Bilingual quotes that celebrate the beauty of language, showcasing meaningful expressions in two unique perspectives.
Mark Helprin
Craig Binky was sitting in a visible place and what happened at the moment did not escape a single person. He grabbed his breast and eyebrow, as if he got a heart attack and stroke at the same time, then began to curve, making a series of mines, which expression would embarrass the real mima.
Mark Helprin
A benevolent act is like a locust: it sleeps until it is called.
Mark Helprin
Hoheit, do you know why crows are black?" "No, I never thought of it." "They taste lousy, and they're black as a sure sign to predators that they're crows, who will taste lousy." "Why aren't they yellow?" "They live in cold climates, and black absorbs heat. They don't need camouflage, so they can take advantage of the way their color soaks up the sunlight." "Why do you ask me these questions?" Klodwig demanded. "To remind you, Hoheit, not to argue with nature.
Mark Helprin
I was put in charge, made a general, and sent into Serbia, where, by dint of my own ingenuity, we served honorably but did not kill a soul. And that, believe me, is very hard with the Serbs, because they are very ingenious themselves, and they have a passion for martyrdom. I've been a field marshal for two years. I have so many medals that when I wear them I look like a window in a junk shop.
Mark Helprin
Alessandro sat up straight. How is it you think babies are born? Something the mother and father do before sex, some sort of cloth or herb or hard-boiled egg that the father puts in the mother or something, with a rubber bulb and a glass dish. No, Alessandro said. That's not quite it. No? No. You just have to have sex-if you're married, fifty times; if you're not married, once. You're kidding!
Mark Helprin
I don't want an ambulance. I want you to sit down and shut up." "But Signore, an ambulance could take you to a hospital. They could help you." "I don't want to die in a hospital." "You wouldn't! You'd live!" Alessandro closed one eye. "I don't want to be alive in a hospital, either.
Mark Helprin
When I got back to Rome I discovered that the Italian army considered me dead-in Gruensee, in the observation post, and on the Cima Bianca. That I was reported killed three times seemed not to affect their trust in the reports except to strengthen it. Being the army, they must have thought that anyone who was killed three times was most certainly deader than if he had been killed only once.
Mark Helprin
I'm a critic. I write essays about works of art. It's like being a eunuch in the seraglio, but unrequited love is the sweetest, and I have the proper distance. I can compress the qualities of beauty I've been trained to see, store them up, and bring them out at will, rapid-fire, in the combinations I want.
Mark Helprin
The difference between classes of men is that the vast majority remember youth as their glory, and the tiniest fraction, in escaping a life of drudgery and increasing difficulty, finds something even better.
Mark Helprin
Better to have a font of money in middle age than when you're young. Middle age is the time when you'll need it and appreciate it." "I'll never appreciate it. I've been trained out of it. I don't want money. I want much more. I want what rarely happens. I want what people are afraid even to imagine." "Like what?" "Resurrection, redemption, love.
Mark Helprin
Alessandro learned yet again that the joy of escape is better than the joy of merely being free.
Mark Helprin
You'll be shot, they cautioned. No. I won't be shot. I'm going to shoot them, and then I'll go home. I'll be perfectly safe. I can see the future, and the clouds are lifting. You can see the future? How can you see the future? I know enough now about the patterns of the past to see the darkness of the future unraveling before the golden light of time. Behind the clouds is the dawn. How can I possibly know such things? The fact is, I do. So watch out.
Mark Helprin
What, exactly, are you talking about?" "I'm talking about love." "I'm unconvinced." "I wasn't attempting to convince you. I'm now sufficiently tranquil not to have to convince anyone of anything." "Will you be tranquil in front of the firing squad?" "I don't know. We'll see tomorrow. You'll be able to watch from the window." Alessandro winked at Ludovico, to show him that he was undisturbed. "The way you winked," Ludovico said accusingly, "the way you winked at me was just like a religious fanatic." "Sorry," Alessandro said. "I'll try to wink like a Marxist.
Mark Helprin
The difference between men and women," Alessandro went on, "is something that I've enjoyed a great deal. I would almost say that I wish I had enjoyed it more, except that at least half was the feeling that arose from restraint and modesty-and you have to go lightly with those, as I did. And perhaps I did it just right, even if at the time I thought I wasn't bold enough. I don't know, but here, at the end, I see that the most beautiful thing between a man and a woman is not the consummation of their love, but, simply, their regard for one another.
Mark Helprin
I don't have a system." "Theology is a system." "Not my theology." "Then what is it?" "What is it? It's the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refused to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate a creature as man. Unlike Marxism, it is ineffable, and it cannot be explained in words.
Mark Helprin
Alessandro," his father said, almost cheerfully. "You don't understand. This kind of problem is very special: it has no solution
Mark Helprin
You're crazy," Ludovico announced. Alessandro held his finger in the air. "Ah!" he said, "but at least I'm able to tell you my last name, and at least, when they take me out to the stake my dreams may be just beginning, whereas yours, by your own definition, must and will come to a dark end." "You fool yourself. Your illusions will fall away even before the end. They won't do you any good. You'll see.
Mark Helprin
I suppose that's because you have faith in the judicial system that will try us." "Yes. I have faith that we will be found guilty and that we will be shot." "Your faith will be rewarded." "Why? It hasn't been for the last few years.
Mark Helprin
I've never touched a woman," Nicolò said, in deep despair. "You will. It'll take you years to learn what to do-not because it's a matter of technique, but precisely because it isn't. It's a matter of deep understanding, and of love. Nowadays, people have a problem with sex, I think. Popular culture is obsessed with it. It has become almost a sickness. It never was when I was a boy, and when I was in my prime.
Mark Helprin
I returned to the university only after the Second World War, and, even then, not having been in the resistance, I had political difficulties." "Why weren't you in the resistance?" "I was tired. And you have to have a certain temperament. You have to be fixed on the point. You need what politicians have, which is the absence of a sense of mortality. It comes, like a drug, from adoration and deference. Revolutionaries get it from dreams. They say that nothing is apolitical, that politics, the bedrock of life, is something from which you cannot depart. I say, fuck them.
Mark Helprin
No one knows better than I that it's all here, and need not be explained or interpreted-just seized.
Mark Helprin
Somewhat unnerved by what he felt were Germanic currents in a man whom he had taken to be just an Italian intellectual who ate flowers, Strassnitzky cautiously argued that the records are secret, part of the War Office. How do you expect to match the number with the man? I haven't the slightest idea, Alessandro said, almost arrogantly, but God is directly in charge of all things relating to life and death. That I've learned in the war. You think God is going to get you the operations records of the Austrian army? I don't know, but if He were, wouldn't you imagine that the first thing He'd do would be to have me conveyed to Vienna?
Mark Helprin
Real power is with those who are forever still, and I want to join them." "Good God. Why?" "Because I love them." "You mean like Hamlet jumping into the grave?" "Yes." "You can't do that!" Arturo screamed. "This is the twentieth century. And, besides, he jumped out." "He climbed out." "All right, he climbed out. Better that your soul should be on fire. It is on fire, and when you give it air it will flare like the sun. Even I ... My soul is on fire.... I, an accountant!
Mark Helprin
Humanity requires for its understanding and governance not science but art
Mark Helprin
No," De Roos said. "You mustn't thank me. The relatives of patients thank the physician as if the physician were God. It's no good, and if the patient dies it turns to ash-not just for them, but, as you can imagine, for me. I'll see you later.
Mark Helprin
Guariglia, what happens when you let go, when your strength leaves you and you sink into darkness, when there's nothing that you or anyone else can do, no matter how desperate you are, no matter how you try? Perhaps it's then, when you have neither pride nor power, that you are saved, brought to an unimaginably great reward.
Mark Helprin
to cite Montaigne, "Nature always gives us happier laws than those we give ourselves."125
Mark Helprin
Life is so quick that it's all played out at the gates of death, and the value of resolution is that it quickens life.
Mark Helprin
Quite clearly, Europe had come apart and millions had died not because of the shifting of great historical forces or the accidents of fate or destiny, the several bullets of Sarajevo, colonial competition, or anything else. It was because Orfeo had slipped from his seat in the office of the attorney Giuliani and been carried upon the flood, like a corked bottle full of shit, until he had lodged upon a platform at the Ministry of War, where his feverish hand and only half-innocent imagination had been directing the machinery of nations in homage to the exalted one and the holy blessed sap.
Mark Helprin
The smell of hot bread came from underneath the tent walls, and Perseus said that the ovens had just been opened. "You haven't eaten in three days. You'd better strengthen yourself." "How can I eat," Alessandro answered, pointing his nose to his padded hands. "Don't be ridiculous, they're perfect for holding a hot loaf of bread. You'll look like a kangaroo, but you'll be able to eat all you want. Now you can pick up a bowl of boiling soup as if you were a Cossack."
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