Reader 246

“I had no genius, no mission to fulfill, no great heart to bestow. I had nothing and I deserved nothing. But all the same I desired some sort of reward.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise,—and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

“Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively.”
― Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us

“It was suicide. Others killed themselves with poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell