“There again, Gloder had met men more skilled in mathematics and the sciences than he could ever be, but such men had been devoid of any sense of history, imagination or fellow feeling. He had encountered poets, but such poets had no relish for facts, for figures or for the logical procession of pure ideas. Philosophers he had known or read, deep in their mastery of the abstract, yet such men had no knowledge of hunting the stag or setting the plough. What is the use of fixing the four hundredth decimal place of pi, or nailing the ontology of the human mind, if you cannot exchange talk with a countryman on the best time to bring down a herd from the high pastures or stand easily with a friend picking out whores? For that matter, what use is the common touch that allows you access to the hearts and minds of the masses, if you cannot also weep at the death of Isolde where human love stretches out into the finest point of pure Art and then attenuates further into spirit and transcendental nothingness?” — Making History


“The time one wastes in self-recrimination is better spent in learning.” — Making History


“The perfect stage hero is Hamlet. The perfect film hero is Lassie. Your history - ‘back story’ as they call it in Hollywood - only counts insofar as it informs the present, the now, the Action of the movie of your life. And that’s how we all live today. In scenes. God is not the Author of the Universe, he is the screen writer of your Biopic.” — Making History


“Self-consciousness, that’s what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What’s the trick?” — Making History


“Real problems aren’t number-shaped, they’re people-shaped.” —


“I can remember at school how we would read together in class an Ode by Keats, a Shakespeare sonnet or a chapter of Animal Farm. I would tingle inside and want to sob, just at the words, at nothing more than the simple progression of sounds. But when it came to writing that thing called an Essay, I flubbed and floundered. I could never discover where to start. How do you find the distance and the cool to write in an academically approved style about something that makes you spin, wobble and weep?” — Making History, by Stephen Fry



“How to separate the humiliation from the loss, that’s the catch. You can never be sure if what tortures you is the pain of being without someone you love or the embarrassment of admitting that you have been rejected.” — Making History (via thechocolatebrigade)

posted 1 year ago