49 books
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13 voters
“The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the—”
― That Hideous Strength
― That Hideous Strength
“Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the high-brow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.”
― That Hideous Strength
― That Hideous Strength
“There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.”
― That Hideous Strength
― That Hideous Strength
“We want you to write it down--to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan't have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We'll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the N.I.C.E. wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you'd have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to and end. Odd thing it is--the word 'experiment' is unpopular, but not the word 'experimental.' You must'nt experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the N.I.C.E. and it's all correct!”
― That Hideous Strength
― That Hideous Strength
“Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done.”
― That Hideous Strength
― That Hideous Strength
Classics and the Western Canon
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This is a group to read and discuss those books generally referred to as “the classics” or “the Western canon.” Books which have shaped Western though ...more
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