obaidwardak

[obaidwardak]

“Brother, I’m not depressed and haven’t lost spirit. Life everywhere is life, life is in ourselves and not in the external. There will be people near me, and to be a human being among human beings, and remain one forever, no matter what misfortunes befall, not to become depressed, and not to falter—this is what life is, herein lies its task. I have come to recognize this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother detailing his experience of nearly getting executed (via apocryphics)

[obaidwardak]

“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via notesfromtheundergroundman)

[obaidwardak]

I Loved You

by Alexander Pushkin

I loved you; even now I must confess, Some embers of my love their fire retain; But do not let it cause you more distress, I do not want to sadden you again. Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly, With pangs the jealous and the timid know; So tenderly I love you, so sincerely, I pray God grant another love you so.

[obaidwardak]

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

[obaidwardak]

“The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

[obaidwardak]

“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

[obaidwardak]

As a professed Connoisseur of Russian Literature, I can definitively state that the most Authentic way to read Crime & Punishment is in a cold sweat, over a period of 48 hours, without sleeping, desperately hiding the book under desks and other textbooks hoping you won’t be caught reading it in your other classes, blowing off plans with friends and family without admitting that you procrastinated reading this book, in an increasingly mounting state of panic about failing your upcoming timed writing about this book that YOU STILL HAVEN’T FINISHED AND IT’S NEXT PERIOD OH GOD WHY. There are themes in that book that won’t fully emerge unless you do exactly that.

Totally unrelated question: Do you ever just have flashbacks to high school?

[obaidwardak]

“You are humble when you always question your humility.”

— Tariq Ramadan

[obaidwardak]

“I sought, in vain, for the rare and precious Phoenix of the soul,”

— Zeb-un-Nissa, tr. by Paul Smith, from “Makhfi: A Selection of Poems,”

[obaidwardak]

اب تو کچھ بھی نہیں ہوں میں ویسے

کبھی وہ بھی تھا مبتلا میرا

[obaidwardak]

“Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times, Come, and come yet again. Ours is not a caravan of despair.”

— Rumi

[obaidwardak]

Classic Books List

“Why read the classics? A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” These are a few recommendations, books everyone should read. Don’t let yourself be convinced they are good: read and decide for yourself!

(no particular order intended)

Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell

Hard Times - Charles Dickens

The Karamazov Brothers - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

The Waves - Virginia Woolf

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Richard II - William Shakespeare

Little Women - Louisa Alcott

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Emma - Jane Austen

Anna Karenina - Liev Tolstói

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton 

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Lord of The Flies - William Golding

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

Persuasion - Jane Austen

War and Peace - Liev Tolstói

Macbeth - William Shakespeare

The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe

Dracula - Bram Stoker

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar - Edgar Allan Poe

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka 

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

King Lear - William Shakespeare

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

Jean Barois - Roger Martin du Gard

Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

[obaidwardak]

Cloud Atlas starters

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”

"Our lives are not our own."

"Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another."

“Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”

“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

"It doesn't mean you're defective - it just means you're human.”

"No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

“We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more than I was, sorely.”

“Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”

"...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.”

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty."

“Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.”

“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”

"What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”

“What is any ocean but a multitude of drops?”

“...now I'm a spent firework; but at least I've been a firework.”

“History admits no rules; only outcomes.”

"At best, you will exist a pariah to be spat at and beaten-at worst, to be lynched or crucified."

"All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended."

"What if no one believes you?"

"Someone already does."

"I believe there is a another world waiting for us, Sixsmith. A better world. And I'll be waiting for you there."

"There is only one rule that binds all people. One governing principle that defines every relationship on God's green earth: The weak are meat, and the strong do eat."

"I believe we do not stay dead long. Find me beneath the Corsican stars where we first kissed."

"This world spins from the same unseen forces that twist our hearts."

"I will not be subjected to criminal abuse."

"Fear, belief, love phenomena that determined the course of our lives. These forces begin long before we are born and continue after we perish."

"Two sprained ankles, one cracked rib. Official cause of accident listed on the hospital form: Pussy."

"You have to do whatever you can't not do."

"I know, I know!"

"Blood has always trumped water."

"Don't leave me here!"

"If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden. I couldn't allow that."

[obaidwardak]

Dream about Lost Ones

“I swear I only want to hear about you, to know what you've been doing. It's a hundred years since we've met-it may be another hundred before we meet again.” ― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

[obaidwardak]

“My brother used to ask the birds to forgive him; that sounds senseless but it is right; for all is like the ocean, all things flow and touch each other; a disturbance in one place is felt at the other end of the world.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov 

[obaidwardak]

“Even when I am alone, I have real good company - dreams and imaginations and pretendings.”

— L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

[obaidwardak]

“It is better to act and repent than not to act and regret.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Letters of Machiavelli