Abi
369 ratings (3.87 avg)
102 reviews

#26 most followed
#3 best reviewers
#93 top reviewers

Abi

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Abi.

http://www.thedogdaysqueen.blogspot.com

Loading...
James  Thomson
“Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?
I think myself; yet I would rather be
My miserable self than He, than He
Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.

The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou
From whom it had its being, God and Lord!
Creator of all woe and sin! abhorred
Malignant and implacable! I vow

That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,
For all the temples to Thy glory built,
Would I assume the ignominious guilt
Of having made such men in such a world.

As if a Being, God or Fiend, could reign,
At once so wicked, foolish and insane,
As to produce men when He might refrain!

The world rolls round for ever like a mill;
It grinds out death and life and good and ill;
It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

While air of Space and Time's full river flow
The mill must blindly whirl unresting so:
It may be wearing out, but who can know?

Man might know one thing were his sight less dim;
That it whirls not to suit his petty whim,
That it is quite indifferent to him.

Nay, does it treat him harshly as he saith?
It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath,
Then grinds him back into eternal death.”
James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Marcel Proust
“Nor did these society people add to Elstir's work in their mind's eye that temporal perspective which enabled them to like, or at least to look without discomfort at, Chardin's painting. And yet the older among them might have reminded themselves that in the course of their lives they had gradually seen, as the years bore them away from it, the unbridgeable gulf between what they considered a masterpiece by Ingres and what they had supposed must forever remain a "horror" (Manet's Olympia, for example) shrink until the two canvases seemed like twins. But we never learn, because we lack the wisdom to work backwards from the particular to the general, and imagine ourselves always to be faced with an experience which has no precedents in the past.”
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

Marcel Proust
“But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live.”
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way

James  Thomson
“How the moon triumphs through the endless nights!
How the stars throb and glitter as they wheel
Their thick processions of supernal lights
Around the blue vault obdurate as steel!
And men regard with passionate awe and yearning
The mighty marching and the golden burning,
And think the heavens respond to what they feel.

Boats gliding like dark shadows of a dream
Are glorified from vision as they pass
The quivering moonbridge on the deep black stream;
Cold windows kindle their dead glooms of glass
To restless crystals; cornice dome and column
Emerge from chaos in the splendour solemn;
Like faery lakes gleam lawns of dewy grass.

With such a living light these dead eyes shine,
These eyes of sightless heaven, that as we gaze
We read a pity, tremulous, divine,
Or cold majestic scorn in their pure rays:
Fond man! they are not haughty, are not tender;
There is no heart or mind in all their splendour,
They thread mere puppets all their marvellous maze.”
James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

Arnaldur Indriðason
“Hann sá strax að þetta var mannsbein þegar hann náði því af barninu, sem setið hafði á gólfinu og tuggið á því.”
Arnaldur Indriðason, Silence of the Grave

220 Goodreads Librarians Group — 317333 members — last activity 0 minutes ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
984 Old Norse Literature — 287 members — last activity Jan 30, 2022 05:00PM
This group is dedicated to all things associated with Old Norse literature, both primary and secondary sources: Family Sagas, Legendary sagas, Riddara ...more
35402 Loosed in Translation — 528 members — last activity Mar 06, 2026 05:09PM
Are you interested in world literature, and works in translation? Come here for recommendations, resources, links, advice on who the best translator o ...more
2281 Magic Realism — 1033 members — last activity Jul 04, 2025 11:47AM
Magic realism is a global and varied mode of literature, from the early twentieth century European works which made the everyday seem magical, to the ...more
25x33 Icelandophiles — 87 members — last activity Jan 31, 2024 05:21PM
Members enjoy Icelandic fiction
More of Abi’s groups…
year in books
Tim Lucas
534 books | 45 friends

Michael
498 books | 91 friends

Villimey
387 books | 124 friends

Arni Je...
61 books | 56 friends

Gavin
328 books | 18 friends


The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
History as Literature
735 books — 539 voters
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward GibbonHitler by Ian KershawThe Great Cat Massacre by Robert DarntonThe Rise of Western Christendom by Peter         BrownYoung Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Best History Books
3,827 books — 3,866 voters

More…


Polls voted on by Abi

Lists liked by Abi