j-august - Tumblr blog

[j-august]

The problem with a man always working on himself is that he may also be working on you.

Kerry Howley, 'Andrew Huberman's Mechanisms of Control'

[j-august]

Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

It was no earthly good going out. He could not find anywhere in London what he wanted. But he went out. He led a cortege of dismal thoughts along dark streets, through lighted streets, in and out of two flash bars, as if in a half-hearted attempt to make a night of it, and finally back again to his menaced home, where he sat down fatigued behind the counter, and they crowded urgently round him, like a pack of hungry black hounds. After locking up the house and putting out the gas he took them upstairs with him - a dreadful escort for a man going to bed.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

His descent into the street was like the descent into a slimy aquarium from which the water has been run off. A murky, gloomy dampness enveloped him. The walls of the houses were wet, the mud of the roadway glistened with an effect of phosphorescence, and when he emerged onto the Strand out of a narrow street by Charing Cross Station the genius of the locality assimilated him. He might have been but one more of the queer foreign fish that can be seen of an evening about there flitting round the dark corners.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

He dreaded the demon of sleeplessness, which he felt had marked him for its own.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

The majority of revolutionists are the enemies of discipline and fatigue mostly.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

At last, with business-like persistency, he reached the Square, and made diagonally for the number 10. This belonged to an imposing carriage gate in a high, clean wall between two houses, one of which rationally enough bore the number9 and the other was numbered 37; but the fact that this last belonged to Porthill Street, a street well known in the neighbourhood, was proclaimed by an inscription placed above the ground-floor windows by whatever highly efficient authority is charged with the duty of keeping track of London's stray houses. Why powers are not asked of Parliament (a short act would do) for compelling these edifices to return where they belong is one of the mysteries of municipal administration.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

Born of industrious parents for a life of toil, he had embraced indolence from an impulse as inexplicable and imperious as the impulse which directs a man's preference for one particular woman in a given thousand. He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect ease; or it might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the effectiveness of every human effort.

Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent

[j-august]

"Think of it. 1850 to 1940. What a period to have lived through! Some folks say there's been more change in the world in those hundred years than in the whole thousand years preceding. Progress? My hat! Do you call it progress?" "Depends where you're progressing to," said Reeves. "Sometime these past two years I've thought human beings were making a bee-line for hell."

E.C.R. Lorac, Checkmate to Murder

[j-august]

"I suppose all Londoners who survived the winter of 1940 with nerves unimpaired, did develop what the psychologists call 'a defence mechanism' - they learned to disregard disessential bangs."

E.C.R. Lorac, Checkmate to Murder

[j-august]

The mind has many watchdogs; sometimes they bark unnecessarily, but a wise man never ignores their warning.

Arthur C. Clarke, A Fall of Moondust

[j-august]

It was characteristic of Tom that one of the few men he really admired had never existed.

Arthur C. Clarke, A Fall of Moondust

[j-august]

Tom hated to admit defeat, even in matters far less important than this. He believed that all problems could be solved if they were tackled in the right way, with the right equipment. This was a challenge to his scientific ingenuity; the fact that there were many lives at stake was immaterial. Dr. Tom Lawson had no great use for human beings, but he did respect the Universe. This was a private fight between him and It.

Arthur C. Clarke, A Fall of Moondust

[j-august]

"You think yourself educated, but all you are is a repository of dead lives."

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

[j-august]

It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nitpicking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

[j-august]

"Philosophy should be approached with irreverence," Farad'n said.

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

[j-august]

She felt small choice between hells: the outcry within her mind or the outcry from her attendants - all were pointless voices, but persistent in their demands, hourglass noises that she would like to silence with the edge of a knife.

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune