From charlesreid1


January

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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 843  | Added on Sunday, January 29, 2012, 08:20 AM

The sun like a sneaky keyhole view of hell.
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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 851-58  | Added on Sunday, January 29, 2012, 08:24 AM

A breeze sends the beach ball skating all the way across the blue pool to the other side, and Orin watches its noiseless glide. The white iron tables have no umbrellas, and you can tell where the sun is without looking; you can feel right where it is on your body and project from there. The ball moves tentatively back out toward the middle of the pool and then stays there, not even bobbing. The same small breezes make the rotted palms along the condominium complex's stone walls rustle and click, and a couple of fronds detach and spiral down, hitting the deck with a slap. All the plants out here are malevolent, heavy and sharp. The parts of the palms above the fronds are tufted in sick stuff like coconut-hair. Roaches and other things live in the trees. Rats, maybe. Loathsome high-altitude critters of all kinds. All the plants either spiny or meaty. Cacti in queer tortured shapes. The tops of the palms like Rod Stewart's hair, from days gone by.
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Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 862-67  | Added on Sunday, January 29, 2012, 08:26 AM

Watching the Jacuzzi funnel and bubble and foam around the leg. And out of nowhere a bird had all of a sudden fallen into the Jacuzzi. With a flat matter-of-fact plop. Out of nowhere. Out of the wide empty sky. Nothing overhung the Jacuzzi but sky. The bird seemed to have just had a coronary or something in flight and died and fallen out of the empty sky and landed dead in the Jacuzzi, right by the leg. He brought his sunglasses down onto the bridge of his nose with a finger and looked at it. It was an undistinguished kind of bird. Not a predator. Like a wren, maybe. It seems like no way could it have been a good sign. The dead bird bobbed and barrel-rolled in the foam, sucked under one second and reappearing the next, creating an illusion of continued flight.
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February

Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3418-22  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:19 AM

Be apprised, though, that the Maine Lobster Festival’s democratization of lobster comes with all the massed inconvenience and aesthetic compromise of real democracy. See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling. It’s hot, and the sagged roof traps the steam and the smells, which latter are strong and only partly food-related.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3418-28  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:20 AM

Be apprised, though, that the Maine Lobster Festival’s democratization of lobster comes with all the massed inconvenience and aesthetic compromise of real democracy. See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling. It’s hot, and the sagged roof traps the steam and the smells, which latter are strong and only partly food-related. It is also loud, and a good percentage of the total noise is masticatory. The suppers come in styrofoam trays, and the soft drinks are iceless and flat, and the coffee is convenience-store coffee in more styrofoam, and the utensils are plastic (there are none of the special long skinny forks for pushing out the tail meat, though a few savvy diners bring their own). Nor do they give you near enough napkins considering how messy lobster is to eat, especially when you’re squeezed onto benches alongside children of various ages and vastly different levels of fine-motor development—not to mention the people who’ve somehow smuggled in their own beer in enormous aisle-blocking coolers, or who all of a sudden produce their own plastic tablecloths and spread them over large portions of tables to try to reserve them (the tables) for their own little groups. And so on.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3433-38  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:21 AM

What the Maine Lobster Festival really is is a midlevel county fair with a culinary hook, and in this respect it’s not unlike Tidewater crab festivals, Midwest corn festivals, Texas chili festivals, etc., and shares with these venues the core paradox of all teeming commercial demotic events: It’s not for everyone. 6 Nothing against the euphoric senior editor of Food & Wine, but I’d be surprised if she’d ever actually been here in Harbor Park, amid crowds of people slapping canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3466-67  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:24 AM

Most of us have been in supermarkets or restaurants that feature tanks of live lobsters, from which you can pick out your supper while it watches you point.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3470-73  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:24 AM

So then here is a question that’s all but unavoidable at the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, and may arise in kitchens across the US: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does “all right” even mean in this context? Is the whole thing just a matter of personal choice?
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3526-31  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:32 AM

For one thing, it’s not just that lobsters get boiled alive, it’s that you do it yourself—or at least it’s done specifically for you, on-site. 14 As mentioned, the World’s Largest Lobster Cooker, which is highlighted as an attraction in the festival’s program, is right out there on the MLF’s north grounds for everyone to see. Try to imagine a Nebraska Beef Festival 15 at which part of the festivities is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and slaughtered right there on the World’s Largest Killing Floor or something—there’s no way.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3550-56  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:35 AM

There are, of course, other ways to kill your lobster on-site and so achieve maximum freshness. Some cooks’ practice is to drive a sharp heavy knife point-first into a spot just above the midpoint between the lobster’s eyestalks (more or less where the Third Eye is in human foreheads). This is alleged either to kill the lobster instantly or to render it insensate, and is said at least to eliminate some of the cowardice involved in throwing a creature into boiling water and then fleeing the room. As far as I can tell from talking to proponents of the knife-in-head method, the idea is that it’s more violent but ultimately more merciful, plus that a willingness to exert personal agency and accept responsibility for stabbing the lobster’s head honors the lobster somehow and entitles one to eat it (there’s often a vague sort of Native American spirituality-of-the-hunt flavor to pro-knife arguments).
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3606-7  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:39 AM

The truth is that if you, the festival attendee, permit yourself to think that lobsters can suffer and would rather not, the MLF begins to take on the aspect of something like a Roman circus or medieval torture-fest.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3626-29  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 03:41 AM

These last few queries, though, while sincere, obviously involve much larger and more abstract questions about the connections (if any) between aesthetics and morality—about what the adjective in a phrase like “The Magazine of Good Living” is really supposed to mean—and these questions lead straightaway into such deep and treacherous waters that it’s probably best to stop the public discussion right here. There are limits to what even interested persons can ask of each other.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3705-10  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 01:21 PM

Dostoevsky is a literary titan, and in some ways this can be the kiss of death, because it becomes easy to regard him as yet another sepia-tinted Canonical Author, belovedly dead. His works, and the tall hill of criticism they’ve inspired, are all required acquisitions for college libraries … and there the books usually sit, yellowly, smelling the way really old library books smell, waiting for somebody to have to do a term paper. Dahlberg is mostly right, I think. To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people. 10
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Bookmark Loc. 3725  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 01:25 PM


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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 3725-27  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 01:26 PM

The point is that it’s not just the death-by-canonization thing: there is real and alienating stuff that stands in the way of our appreciating Dostoevsky and has to be dealt with—either by learning enough about all the unfamiliar stuff that it stops being so confusing, or else by accepting it (the same way we accept racist/sexist elements in some other nineteenth-century books) and just grimacing and reading on anyway.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 51-59  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 02:02 PM

It is not a coincidence that the Oscars ceremony is held during TV’s Sweeps Week. We pretty much all tune in, despite the grotesquerie of watching an industry congratulate itself on its pretense that it’s still an art form, of hearing people in $5,000 gowns invoke lush clichés of surprise and humility scripted by publicists, etc.—the whole cynical postmodern deal—but we all still seem to watch. To care. Even though the hypocrisy hurts, even though opening grosses and marketing strategies are now bigger news than the movies themselves, even though Cannes and Sundance have become nothing more than enterprise zones. But the truth is that there’s no more real joy about it all anymore. Worse, there seems to be this enormous unspoken conspiracy where we all pretend that there’s still joy. That we think it’s funny when Bob Dole does a Visa ad and Gorbachev shills for Pizza Hut. That the whole mainstream celebrity culture is rushing to cash in and all the while congratulating itself on pretending not to cash in. Underneath it all, though, we know the whole thing sucks.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 67-70  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 02:04 PM

It is no accident that Adult Video News—a slick, expensive periodical whose articles are really more like infomercials—and its yearly Awards both came into being in 1982. The early ’80s, after all, saw the genesis of VCRs and home-video rentals, which have done for the adult industry pretty much what TV did for pro football.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 134-40  | Added on Wednesday, February 01, 2012, 04:41 PM

Nor let us forget Vegas’s synecdoche and beating heart. It’s kittycorner from Bally’s: Caesars Palace. The granddaddy. As big as 20 Wal-Marts end to end. Real marble and fake marble, carpeting you can pass out on without contusion, 130,000 square feet of casino alone. Domed ceilings, clerestories, barrel vaults. In Caesars Palace is America conceived as a new kind of Rome: conqueror of its own people. An empire of Self. It’s breathtaking. The winter’s light rain makes all the neon bleed. The whole thing is almost too pretty to stand. There could be no site but Las Vegas’s Caesars for modern porn’s Awards show—here, the AAVNAs are one more spectacle. Way more tourists and conventioneers recognize the starlets than you’d expect. Double-takes all over the hotel. Even just standing around or putting coins in a slot machine, the performers become a prime attraction. Las Vegas doesn’t miss a trick.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 302-12  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 02:44 AM

So yr. corresps. were, for a couple hours, at least logistically speaking, In. For a regular civilian male, hanging out in a hotel suite with porn starlets is a tense and emotionally convolved affair. There is, first, the matter of having seen the various intimate activities and anatomical parts of these starlets in videos heretofore and thus (weirdly) feeling shy about meeting them. But there is also a complex erotic tension. Because porn films’ worlds are so sexualized, with everybody seemingly teetering right on the edge of coitus all the time and it taking only the slightest nudge or excuse—a stalled elevator, an unlocked door, a cocked eyebrow, a firm handshake—to send everyone tumbling into a tangled mass of limbs and orifices, there’s a bizarre unconscious expectation/dread/ hope that this is what might happen in Max Hardcore’s hotel room. Yr. corresps. here find it impossible to overemphasize the fact that this is a delusion. In fact, of course, the unconscious expectation/dread/hope makes no more sense than it would make to be hanging out with doctors at a medical convention and to expect that at the slightest provocation everyone in the room would tumble into a frenzy of MRIs and epidurals. Nevertheless the tension persists, despite the fact that the actresses are obviously tired and disassociated from the day’s CES,
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 817-21  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:38 AM

My point is not that his wit is too subtle for US students. In fact, the only halfway effective strategy I’ve come up with for exploring Kafka’s funniness in class involves suggesting to students that much of his humor is actually sort of unsubtle—or rather anti-subtle. The claim is that Kafka’s funniness depends on some kind of radical literalization of truths we tend to treat as metaphorical. I opine to them that some of our most profound collective intuitions seem to be expressible only as figures of speech, that that’s why we call these figures of speech expressions.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 832-33  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:40 AM

What Kafka’s stories have, rather, is a grotesque, gorgeous, and thoroughly modern complexity, an ambivalence that becomes the multivalent Both/And logic of the, quote, “unconscious,” which I personally think is just a fancy word for soul.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 4274-84  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:42 AM

There are probably whole Johns Hopkins U. Press books to be written on the lallating function that humor serves in today’s US psyche. A crude way to put the whole thing is that our present culture is, both developmentally and historically, adolescent. And since adolescence is acknowledged to be the single most stressful and frightening period of human development — the stage when the adulthood we claim to crave begins to present itself as a real and narrowing system of responsibilities and limitations (taxes, death) and when we yearn inside for a return to the same childish oblivion we pretend to scorn* — it’s not difficult to see why we as a culture are so susceptible to art and entertainment whose primary function is escape, i.e. fantasy, adrenaline, spectacle, romance, etc. Jokes are a kind of art, and because most of us Americans come to art now essentially to escape ourselves — to pretend for a while that we’re not mice and walls are parallel and the cat can be outrun — it’s understandable that most of us are going to view “A Little Fable” as not all that funny, or maybe even see it as a repulsive instance of the exact sort of downer-type death-and-taxes reality for which “real” humor serves as a respite.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 839-41  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:44 AM

No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 841-44  | Added on Thursday, February 02, 2012, 03:45 AM

You can ask them to imagine his stories as all about a kind of door. To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens … and it opens outward—we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2281-95  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:04 AM

For although the pettiest lawyer might be to some extent capable of analyzing the state of things in the Court, it never occurred to the lawyers that they should suggest or insist on any improvements in the system, while -- and this was very characteristic -- almost every accused man, even quite simple people among them, discovered from the earliest stages a passion for suggesting reforms which often wasted time and energy that could have been better employed in other directions. The only sensible thing was to adapt oneself to existing conditions. Even if it were possible to alter a detail for the better here or there -- but it was simple madness to think of it -- any benefit arising from that would profit clients in the future only, while one's own interests would be immeasurably injured by attracting the attention of the ever-vengeful officials. Anything rather than that! One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the disposition of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery -- since everything interlocked -- and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2388-96  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:13 AM

The contempt which he had once felt for the case no longer obtained. Had he stood alone in the world he could easily have ridiculed the whole affair, though it was also certain that in that event it could never have arisen at all. But now his uncle had dragged him to this lawyer, family considerations had come in; his position was no longer quite independent of the course the case took, he himself, with a certain inexplicable complacence, had imprudently mentioned it to some of his acquaintances, others had come to learn of it in ways unknown to him, his relations with Fräulein Bürstner seemed to fluctuate with the case itself -- in short, he hardly had the choice now to accept the trial or reject it, he was in the middle of it and must fend for himself. To give in to fatigue would be dangerous.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Bookmark Loc. 2408  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:15 AM


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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2406-23  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:15 AM

From this standpoint the conclusion was inevitable that the case must be withdrawn from Dr. Huld as soon as possible, preferably that very evening. According to him that was something unheard of, it was true, and very likely an insult, but K. could not endure that his efforts in the case should be thwarted by moves possibly originating in the office of his own representative. Once the lawyer was shaken off, the petition must be sent in at once and the officials be urged daily, if possible, to give their attention to it. This would never be achieved by sitting meekly in the attic lobby like the others with one's hat under the seat. K. himself, or one of the women, or some other messenger must keep at the officials day after day and force them to sit down at their desks and study K.'s papers instead of gaping out into the lobby through the wooden rails. These tactics must be pursued unremittingly, everything must be organized and supervised; the Court would encounter for once an accused man who knew how to stick up for his rights. Yet even though K. believed he could manage all this, the difficulty of drawing up the petition seemed overwhelming. At one time, not more than a week ago, he had regarded the possibility of having to draw up his own plea with merely a slight feeling of shame; it never even occurred to him that there might be difficulties in the way. He could remember that one of those mornings, when he was up to his ears in work, he had suddenly pushed everything aside and seized his jotting-pad with the idea of drafting the plan of such a plea and handing it to Dr. Huld by way of egging him on, but just at that moment the door of the Manager's room opened and the Assistant Manager came in laughing uproariously.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2438-48  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:17 AM

And besides how dreary such a task would be! It would do well enough, perhaps, as an occupation for one's second childhood in years of retirement, when the long days needed filling up. But now, when K. should be devoting his mind entirely to work, when every hour was hurried and crowded -- for he was still in full career and rapidly becoming a rival even to the Assistant Manager -- when his evenings and nights were all too short for the pleasures of a bachelor life, this was the time when he must sit down to such a task! Once more his train of thought had led him into self-pity. Almost involuntarily, simply to make an end of it, he put his finger on the button which rang the bell in the waiting-room. While he pressed it he glanced at the clock. It was eleven o'clock, he had wasted two hours in dreaming, a long stretch of precious time, and he was, of course, still wearier than he had been before. Yet the time had not been quite lost, he had come to decisions which might prove valuable.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2457-73  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:19 AM

As it was, he tugged papers covered with statistics out of every pocket, spread them before K., explained various entries, corrected a trifling error which his eye had caught even in this hasty survey, reminded K. of a similar transaction which he had concluded with him about a year before, mentioned casually that this time another bank was making great sacrifices to secure the deal, and finally sat in eager silence waiting for K.'s comments. K. had actually followed the man's argument quite closely in its early stages -- the thought of such an important piece of business had its attractions for him too -- but unfortunately not for long; he had soon ceased to listen and merely nodded now and then as the manufacturer's claims waxed in enthusiasm, until in the end he forgot to show even that much interest and confined himself to staring at the other's bald head bent over the papers and asking himself when the fellow would begin to realize that all his eloquence was being wasted. When the manufacturer stopped speaking, K. actually thought for a moment that the pause was intended to give him the chance of confessing that he was not in a fit state to attend to business. And it was with regret that he perceived the intent look on the manufacturer's face, the alertness, as if prepared for every objection, which indicated that the interview would have to continue. So he bowed his head as at a word of command and began slowly to move his pencil point over the papers, pausing here and there to stare at some figure.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2517-35  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 09:24 AM

But as no one came in he recovered his composure, went over to the washbasin, washed his face in cold water, and returned to his place at the window with a clearer mind. The decision to take his defense into his own hands seemed now more grave to him than he had originally fancied. So long as the lawyer was responsible for the case it had not come really home to him, he had viewed it with a certain detachment and kept beyond reach of immediate contact with it, he had been able to supervise it whenever he liked, but could also withdraw whenever he liked. Now, on the other hand, if he were to conduct his own defense he would be putting himself completely in the power of the Court, at least for the time being, a policy which would eventually bring about his absolute and definite acquittal, but would meanwhile, provisionally at least, involve him in far greater dangers than before. If he had ever doubted that, his state of mind today in his encounter with the Assistant Manager and the manufacturer would have been more than enough to convince him. What a stupor had overcome him, merely because he had decided to conduct his own defense! And what would develop later on? What days were lying in wait for him? Would he ever find the right path through all these difficulties? To put up a thoroughgoing defense -- and any other kind would be a waste of time -- to put up a thoroughgoing defense, did that not involve cutting himself off from every other activity? Would he be able to carry that through? And how was he to conduct his case from a Bank office? It was not merely the drawing up of a plea; that might be managed on a few weeks' furlough, though to ask for leave of absence just now would be decidedly risky; but a whole trial was involved, whose duration it was impossible to foresee. What an obstacle had suddenly arisen to block K.'s career!
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 2888-92  | Added on Sunday, February 05, 2012, 02:49 PM

"Impervious only to proof which one brings before the Court," said the painter, raising one finger as if K. had failed to perceive a fine distinction. "But it is quite a different matter with one's efforts behind the scenes; that is, in the consultingrooms, in the lobbies or, for example, in this very studio." What the painter now said no longer seemed incredible to K., indeed it agreed in the main with what he had heard from other people.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4110-46  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:03 PM

"In the writings which preface the Law that particular delusion is described thus: before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. `It is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, `but not at this moment.' Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: `If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hail to hail, keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. And the sight of the third man is already more than even I can stand.' These are difficulties which the man from the country has not expected to meet, the Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long thin Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity. The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: `I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.' During all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged study of the doorkeeper he has learned to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. `What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper, `you are insatiable.' `Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, `how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: `No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.'"
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4286-88  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:16 PM

"That means I belong to the Court," said the priest. "So why should I want anything from you? The Court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go."
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4484-88  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:32 PM

How closely non-publication was bound up for Kafka with the problem of how to conduct his life (a problem which, to our immeasurable grief, no longer obtains) could be gathered from many of his conversations and can be seen in this letter to me: . . . I am not enclosing the novels. Why rake up old efforts? Only because I have not burned them yet? . . . Next time I come I hope to do so.
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The Trial (Franz Kafka)
- Highlight Loc. 4552-59  | Added on Friday, February 10, 2012, 04:39 PM

As someone said to me -- I can't remember now who it was -- it is really remarkable that when you wake up in the morning you nearly always find everything in exactly the same place as the evening before. For when asleep and dreaming you are, apparently at least, in an essentially different state from that of wakefulness; and therefore, as that man truly said, it requires enormous presence of mind or rather quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to seize hold as it were of everything in the room at exactly the same place where you had let it go on the previous evening. That was why, he said, the moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the day. Once that was well over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take heart of grace for the rest of the day.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 159-62  | Added on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 06:40 AM

The problem with cadavers is that they look so much like people. It's the reason most of us prefer a pork chop to a slice of whole suckling pig. It's the reason we say "pork" and "beef" instead of "pig" and "cow." Dissection and surgical instruction, like meat-eating, require a carefully maintained set of illusions and denial. Physicians and anatomy students must learn to think of cadavers as wholly unrelated to the people they once were.
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Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett)
- Highlight Loc. 713-15  | Added on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 08:26 AM

“What is this thing, anyway?” said the Dean, inspecting the implement in his hands. “It’s called a shovel,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I’ve seen the gardeners use them. You stick the sharp end in the ground. Then it gets a bit technical.”
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Reaper Man (Terry Pratchett)
- Highlight Loc. 1080-86  | Added on Thursday, February 16, 2012, 08:55 AM

The Chief Priest moved a little closer. “I think I could be strong enough to master and defeat just a little snare,” he said. “I haven’t felt like this since Mrs. Cake was one of my flock.” “Mrs. Cake? What’s a Mrs. Cake?” “You have…ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions and things, yes? Terrible hazards of your ungodly profession?” said the Chief Priest. “Yes.” “We have someone called Mrs. Cake.” Ridcully gave him an enquiring look. “Don’t ask,” said the priest, shuddering. “Just be grateful you’ll never have to find out.” Ridcully silently passed him the brandy.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 2386-90  | Added on Friday, February 17, 2012, 05:19 PM

have trouble believing Thomas Edison to be a loopy individual. I offer as evidence the following passage on human memory, taken from his diaries: "We do not remember. A certain group of our little people do this for us. They live in that part of the brain which has become known as the 'fold of Broca.'…There may be twelve or fifteen shifts that change about and are on duty at different times like men in a factory….Therefore it seems likely that remembering a thing is all a matter of getting in touch with the shift that was on duty when the recording was done."
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 3472-73  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 08:37 AM

In the Bradbury story, the protagonist ends up having his bones pulled out through his mouth, by an alien disguised as a beautiful woman. Though he was reduced to a jellyfish heap on his living-room floor, his body remained intact. No blood was spilled.
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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)
- Highlight Loc. 3507-13  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 08:42 AM

If you are considering becoming a brain donor, the best thing for you to do is stay away from the Brain Bank. Within ten minutes of arriving, I was watching a twenty-four-year-old technician slice a sixty- seven-year-old brain. The brain had been flash-frozen and did not slice cleanly. It sliced as does a Butterfinger, with little shards crumbling off. The shards quickly thawed and looked less Butterfingerlike. The technician wiped them up with a paper towel. "There goes third grade." He has gotten in trouble for saying things like this.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 661-65  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:04 AM

And no US novelist has mapped the inner terrain of the solipsist better than John Updike, whose rise in the 1960s and ’70s established him as both chronicler and voice of probably the single most self-absorbed generation since Louis XIV. As were Freud’s, Updike’s big preoccupations have always been with death and sex (not necessarily in that order), and the fact that his books’ mood has gotten more wintry in recent years is understandable—Updike has always written mainly about himself, and since the surprisingly moving Rabbit at Rest he’s been exploring, more and more overtly, the apocalyptic prospect of his own death.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 670-72  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:05 AM

First, though, if I may poke the critical head into the frame for just one moment, I’d like to offer assurances that your reviewer is not one of these spleen-venting spittle-spattering Updike haters one often encounters among literary readers under forty.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 679  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:07 AM

“Just a penis with a thesaurus.”
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Bookmark Loc. 679  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:07 AM


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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 686-87  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:08 AM

But I think the deep reason so many of my generation dislike Updike and the other GMNs has to do with these writers’ radical self-absorption, and with their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 690-93  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:12 AM

They always live in either Pennsylvania or New England, are either unhappily married or divorced, are roughly Updike’s age. Always either the narrator or the point-of-view character, they tend all to have the author’s astounding perceptual gifts; they think and speak in the same effortlessly lush, synesthetic way that Updike does. They are also always incorrigibly narcissistic, philandering, self-contemptuous, self-pitying … and deeply alone, alone the way only an emotional solipsist can be alone.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Note Loc. 693  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:14 AM

once again foster wallace articulates precisely the unformed and subconscious impression i can never seem to put my finger on
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Note Loc. 693  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:17 AM

once again foster wallace articulates precisely the unformed and subconscious impression i can never seem to put my finger on. except in my case it was norman mailer. same impressions that walce describes. it is neary irresistable reading, but a completely absurdly mysoginistic narcissistic narrator. harlots ghost could have been the escapades of a frat boy (fratire) and would have been enjoyable anywa.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 697-702  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:18 AM

I’m guessing that for the young educated adults of the sixties and seventies, for whom the ultimate horror was the hypocritical conformity and repression of their own parents’ generation, Updike’s evection of the libidinous self appeared refreshing and even heroic. But young adults of the nineties—many of whom are, of course, the children of all the impassioned infidelities and divorces Updike wrote about so beautifully, and who got to watch all this brave new individualism and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation—today’s subforties have very different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 739-43  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:24 AM

Turnbull is particularly keen on subatomic physics and something he calls the “Theory of Many Worlds”—a real theory, by the way, which was proposed in the fifties as a solution to certain quantum paradoxes entailed by the Principles of Indeterminacy and Complementarity, and which in truth is wildly complex and technical, but which Turnbull seems to believe is basically the same as the Theory of Past-Life Channeling, thereby explaining the set pieces where Turnbull is somebody else. The whole quantum setup ends up being embarrassing in the special way something pretentious is embarrassing when it’s also wrong.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 749-51  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:25 AM

The clunky bathos of this novel seems to have infected even the line-by-line prose, Updike’s great strength for almost forty years. Toward the End of Time does have flashes of beautiful writing—deer described as “tender-faced ruminants,” leaves as “chewed to lace by Japanese beetles,” a car’s tight turn as a “slur” and its departure as a “dismissive acceleration down the driveway.”
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 758  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:26 AM

they seem less like John Updike than like somebody doing a mean parody of John Updike.
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace)
- Highlight Loc. 770-74  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 09:28 AM

Maybe the one thing that the reader ends up appreciating about Ben Turnbull is that he’s such a broad caricature of an Updike protagonist that he helps clarify what’s been so unpleasant and frustrating about this author’s recent characters. It’s not that Turnbull is stupid: he can quote Pascal and Kierkegaard on angst, discourse on the death of Schubert, distinguish between a sinistrorse and a dextrorse Polygonum vine, etc. It’s that he persists in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 497-500  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 05:31 PM

To this extent, Louisville has integrated itself right out of the South, and now faces problems more like those of a Northern or Midwestern city. The white power structure has given way in the public sector, only to entrench itself more firmly in the private. And the Negro -- especially the educated Negro -- feels that his victories are hollow and his "progress" is something he reads about in the newspapers.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 567-70  | Added on Sunday, February 19, 2012, 05:40 PM

It is the same assumption that motivates a homeowner to sell to whites only-- not because of race prejudice but out of concern for property values. In other words, almost nobody has anything against Negroes, but everybody's neighbor does. This is galling to the Negroes. Simple racism is an easy thing to confront, but a mixture of guilty prejudice, economic worries and threatened social standing is much harder to fight.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 669-70  | Added on Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 04:24 AM

Indeed. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. John Mitchell said that -- shortly before he quit his job and left Washington at 90 miles an hour in a chauffeur-driven limousine.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 675-97  | Added on Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 04:27 AM

There is a bond, among pros, that needs no definition. Or at least it didn't on that Sunday morning in Houston, for reasons that require no further discussion at this point in time. . . because it suddenly occurred to me that I had already written the lead for this year's Super Bowl game; I wrote it last year in Los Angeles, and a quick rip through my fat manila folder of clips labeled "Football '73" turned it up as if by magic. I jerked it out of the file, and retyped it on a fresh page slugged: "Super Bowl/Houston '74." The only change necessary was the substitution of "Minnesota Vikings" for "Washington Redskins." Except for that, the lead seemed just as adequate for the game that would begin in about six hours as it was for the one that I missed in Los Angeles in January of '73. "The precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Minnesota Vikings today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stops around both ends. . ." The jangling of the telephone caused me to interrupt my work. I jerked it off the hook, saying nothing to whoever was on the other end, and began flashing the hotel operator. When she finally cut in I spoke very calmly. "Look," I said. "I'm a very friendly person and a minister of the gospel, to boot -- but I thought I left instructions down there to put no calls -- NO CALLS, GODDAMNIT! -- through to this room, and especially not now in the middle of this orgy. . . I've been here eight days and nobody's called me yet. Why in hell would they start now?. . . What? Well, I simply can't accept that kind of flimsy reasoning, operator. Do you believe in Hell? Are you ready to speak with Saint Peter?. . . Wait a minute now, calm down. . . I want to be sure you understand one thing before I get back to my business; I have some people here who need help . . . But I want you to know that God is Holy! He will not allow sin in his presence! The Bible says: 'There is none righteous. No, not one . . . For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.' That's from the book of Romans, young lady. . ." 30 The silence at the other end of the line was beginning to make me nervous. But I could feel the sap rising, so I decided to continue my sermon from the balcony. . . and I suddenly realized that somebody was beating on my door. Jesus god, I thought, it's the manager; they've come for me at last. But it was a TV reporter from Pittsburgh, raving drunk and demanding to take a shower. I jerked him into the room. "Nevermind the goddamn shower," I said. "Do you realize what I have on my spine?" He stared at me, unable to speak. "A giant leech," I said. "It's been there for eight days, getting fatter and fatter with blood." He nodded slowly as I led him over to the phone. "I hate leeches," he muttered. "That's the least of our problems," I said. "Room service won't send any beer up until noon, and all the bars are closed. . . I have this Wild Turkey, but I think it's too heavy for the situation we're in." "You're right," he said. "I got work to do.

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March

My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 23 | Loc. 350-55  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 09:24 AM

her new pastor, Revered Ty Willis of the New Promise Church, which has usurped my mother's Catholic faith, encouraged us to read the book of Job. I'm not sure if my mother read it—to her, church, in her post-Catholic phase, was a bit of a social club more than anything—but I did, and I was less than comforted. The horror of the Lord engaging in high-stakes bets with Satan, and the absolute lack of comfort that Job's so-called friends bring to his grief, did change my view of God. The book made me feel as though God, if he existed, was sort of capable of being a major, reckless dick. Christians in the Midwest are fond of saying, "Everything happens for a reason." The book of Job illustrates, I think, that that's not the case at all.
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 646-49  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:07 AM

It is difficult to see so many people you know, so many busy and active people, if, frankly, you don't care how somebody's novel, thesis, art, job, marriage, life is going, not because you are heartless or cruel, but because you simply don't have the energy to hear about other people's struggles and triumphs. Your own joys and woes are exhausting enough, aren't they?
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 45 | Loc. 692-705  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:14 AM

How quickly has such an American ideal faded! Now, we are all slaves to institutions. Educated in them from the age of five, or younger, and often imprisoned within them, accumulating piles of debt, until we are pushing thirty. At the end of our educational process, we know what? How to plant a garden? Build a home? Repair and maintain machines? Hunt? Fish? Camp? Hardly. Rather, we leave these institutions with only one small skill—trading commodities, analyzing prose, ceramics, welding widget A to widget B—and we immediately need to find another institution to take us in: General Motors, Yale, the Federal Reserve, the UAW, Target, any place that will allow us to put food on the table. Once food is on the table, we must find shelter, often for a growing family, and instead of having any idea of how to build a shelter, we must buy a shelter, and because the costs of shelter are so absurdly prohibitive in comparison with actual wages, we must move immediately into the debtor system Thoreau likened to slavery. We must move into a home that is owned by an institution—Bank of America, Countrywide, CitiFinancial—and we must make ourselves adhere to a payment schedule. We must then secure health care coverage from a large institution, finance transportation through a large institution, deficit-spend based on the leverage of a large institution, worship the Lord at an approved institution, and then, one morning, our children enter a federally mandated pre-K program or a twenty-five-thousand-dollar-a-year private preschool. And the cycle begins again. You can almost hear the tiny hearts of America's children breaking as they gather around the story circle or line up for a carton of milk. Slaves!
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 735-37  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:17 AM

"There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a little hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 48 | Loc. 733-37  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:17 AM

I suppose the idea for my project came to me shortly after college, when I was rather absent-mindedly thumbing through a copy of The Portable Chekhov, during a register shift at the bookshop where I once worked. Rereading the story "Gooseberries," I came across these lines: "There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a little hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."
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My American Unhappiness (Dean Bakopoulos)
- Highlight on Page 151 | Loc. 2127-32  | Added on Saturday, March 03, 2012, 09:56 PM

In the blue light of the bus, on this, the first crisp and frosty evening of the autumn, all of the passengers look to me as if they are trapped in some giant, mobile freezer. They wear winter caps and thick coats for the first time in months, and their expressions are frozen and devoid of smiles, a motley crew of grimaces, pensive looks, and dour, soured expressions. Just a week ago they went coatless, bare-midriffed, sandaled. Now, this, the siege of winter already hinting at its arrival. It makes me feel as if we're awaiting somebody's death in that bus and I am thrilled to get off when my stop finally arrives.
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The Cambridge Companion to Carnap (sfn)
- Bookmark on Page 8 | Added on Sunday, March 04, 2012, 01:41 PM


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The Cambridge Companion to Carnap_k2opt 
- Bookmark on Page 123 | Added on Sunday, March 04, 2012, 04:29 PM


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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 537-39  | Added on Sunday, March 25, 2012, 12:29 PM

That public virtue, which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 551-53  | Added on Sunday, March 25, 2012, 12:31 PM

it was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline, that a good soldier should dread his officers far more than the enemy. From such laudable arts did the valor of the Imperial troops receive a degree of firmness and docility unattainable by the impetuous and irregular passions of barbarians.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 989-96  | Added on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 07:24 PM

The opinions of the Academics and Epicureans were of a less religious cast; but whilst the modest science of the former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of the latter urged them to deny, the providence of a Supreme Ruler. The spirit of inquiry, prompted by emulation, and supported by freedom, had divided the public teachers of philosophy into a variety of contending sects; but the ingenious youth, who, from every part, resorted to Athens, and the other seats of learning in the Roman empire, were alike instructed in every school to reject and to despise the religion of the multitude. How, indeed, was it possible that a philosopher should accept, as divine truths, the idle tales of the poets, and the incoherent traditions of antiquity; or that he should adore, as gods, those imperfect beings whom he must have despised, as men? Against such unworthy adversaries, Cicero condescended to employ the arms of reason and eloquence; but the satire of Lucian was a much more adequate, as well as more efficacious, weapon.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - All six volumes with an active table of contents (Annotated) (Edward Gibbon)
- Bookmark Loc. 1077  | Added on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 07:34 PM


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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 971-74  | Added on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 03:22 PM

But the equitable Nerva, who then filled the throne, refused to accept any part of it, and commanded him to use, without scruple, the present of fortune. The cautious Athenian still insisted, that the treasure was too considerable for a subject, and that he knew not how to use it. Abuse it then, replied the monarch, with a good-natured peevishness; for it is your own.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1061-64  | Added on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 03:35 PM

The coasts of Italy are, in general, destitute of safe harbors; but human industry had corrected the deficiencies of nature; and the artificial port of Ostia, in particular, situate at the mouth of the Tyber, and formed by the emperor Claudius, was a useful monument of Roman greatness. From this port, which was only sixteen miles from the capital, a favorable breeze frequently carried vessels in seven days to the columns of Hercules, and in nine or ten, to Alexandria in Egypt.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1098-1101  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 12:31 PM

But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property. The diligent mechanic, and the skilful artist, who have obtained no share in the division of the earth, receive a voluntary tax from the possessors of land; and the latter are prompted, by a sense of interest, to improve those estates, with whose produce they may purchase additional pleasures.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1156-57  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 05:35 PM

The name of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1167-73  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 05:37 PM

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. * A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1286-91  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 05:57 PM

By declaring themselves the protectors of the people, Marius and Cæsar had subverted the constitution of their country. But as soon as the senate had been humbled and disarmed, such an assembly, consisting of five or six hundred persons, was found a much more tractable and useful instrument of dominion. It was on the dignity of the senate that Augustus and his successors founded their new empire; and they affected, on every occasion, to adopt the language and principles of Patricians. In the administration of their own powers, they frequently consulted the great national council, and seemed to refer to its decision the most important concerns of peace and war.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1338-40  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:07 PM

A distinction was, however, soon introduced. The sacred title of Augustus was always reserved for the monarch, whilst the name of Cæsar was more freely communicated to his relations; and, from the reign of Hadrian, at least, was appropriated to the second person in the state, who was considered as the presumptive heir of the empire. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1348-57  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:10 PM

The death of Cæsar was ever before his eyes. He had lavished wealth and honors on his adherents; but the most favored friends of his uncle were in the number of the conspirators. The fidelity of the legions might defend his authority against open rebellion; but their vigilance could not secure his person from the dagger of a determined republican; and the Romans, who revered the memory of Brutus, would applaud the imitation of his virtue. Cæsar had provoked his fate, as much as by the ostentation of his power, as by his power itself. The consul or the tribune might have reigned in peace. The title of king had armed the Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by the virtue, or even by the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1358-63  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:12 PM

There appears, indeed, one memorable occasion, in which the senate, after seventy years of patience, made an ineffectual attempt to re-assume its long-forgotten rights. When the throne was vacant by the murder of Caligula, the consuls convoked that assembly in the Capitol, condemned the memory of the Cæsars, gave the watchword liberty to the few cohorts who faintly adhered to their standard, and during eight-and-forty hours acted as the independent chiefs of a free commonwealth. But while they deliberated, the prætorian guards had resolved. The stupid Claudius, brother of Germanicus, was already in their camp, invested with the Imperial purple, and prepared to support his election by arms. The dream of liberty was at an end; and the senate awoke to all the horrors of inevitable servitude.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1374-79  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:14 PM

During a long period of two hundred and twenty years from the establishment of this artful system to the death of Commodus, the dangers inherent to a military government were, in a great measure, suspended. The soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength, and of the weakness of the civil authority, which was, before and afterwards, productive of such dreadful calamities. Caligula and Domitian were assassinated in their palace by their own domestics: * the convulsions which agitated Rome on the death of the former, were confined to the walls of the city. But Nero involved the whole empire in his ruin. In the space of eighteen months, four princes perished by the sword; and the Roman world was shaken by the fury of the contending armies.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1380-81  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:14 PM

The emperor was elected by the authority of the senate, and the consent of the soldiers.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1457-59  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:28 PM

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1474-79  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:31 PM

The golden age of Trajan and the Antonines had been preceded by an age of iron. It is almost superfluous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus. Their unparalleled vices, and the splendid theatre on which they were acted, have saved them from oblivion. The dark, unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble Claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid, inhuman Domitian, are condemned to everlasting infamy. During fourscore years (excepting only the short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign) Rome groaned beneath an unremitting tyranny, which exterminated the ancient families of the republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue and every talent that arose in that unhappy period.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1512-20  | Added on Thursday, March 29, 2012, 06:38 PM

The object of his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his dominions, would easily obtain, in a happier climate, a secure refuge, a new fortune adequate to his merit, the freedom of complaint, and perhaps the means of revenge. But the empire of the Romans filled the world, and when the empire fell into the hands of a single person, the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave of Imperial despotism, whether he was condemned to drags his gilded chain in Rome and the senate, or to were out a life of exile on the barren rock of Seriphus, or the frozen bank of the Danube, expected his fate in silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers, his anxious view could discover nothing, except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, hostile tribes of barbarians, of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent kings, who would gladly purchase the emperor's protection by the sacrifice of an obnoxious fugitive. "Wherever you are," said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, "remember that you are equally within the power of the conqueror."
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1523-24  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:00 AM

His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1537-39  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:06 AM

The monstrous vices of the son have cast a shade on the purity of the father's virtues. It has been objected to Marcus, that he sacrificed the happiness of millions to a fond partiality for a worthless boy; and that he chose a successor in his own family, rather than in the republic.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1543-44  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:06 AM

he lived long enough to repent a rash measure,
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1547-48  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:07 AM

Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1547-49  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:15 AM

Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1550-51  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:15 AM

From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood; but these motives will not account for the unprovoked cruelties of Commodus, who had nothing to wish and every thing to enjoy.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1574-76  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:20 AM

One evening, as the emperor was returning to the palace, through a dark and narrow portico in the amphitheatre, an assassin, who waited his passage, rushed upon him with a drawn sword, loudly exclaiming, "The senate sends you this." The menace prevented the deed; the assassin was seized by the guards, and immediately revealed the authors of the conspiracy. It had been formed, not in the state, but within the walls of the palace.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1582-83  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 08:22 AM

But the words of the assassin sunk deep into the mind of Commodus, and left an indelible impression of fear and hatred against the whole body of the senate.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Bookmark Loc. 1597  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 11:13 AM


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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1609-18  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:03 PM

The negligence of the public administration was betrayed, soon afterwards, by a new disorder, which arose from the smallest beginnings. A spirit of desertion began to prevail among the troops: and the deserters, instead of seeking their safety in flight or concealment, infested the highways. Maternus, a private soldier, of a daring boldness above his station, collected these bands of robbers into a little army, set open the prisons, invited the slaves to assert their freedom, and plundered with impunity the rich and defenceless cities of Gaul and Spain. The governors of the provinces, who had long been the spectators, and perhaps the partners, of his depredations, were, at length, roused from their supine indolence by the threatening commands of the emperor. Maternus found that he was encompassed, and foresaw that he must be overpowered. A great effort of despair was his last resource. He ordered his followers to disperse, to pass the Alps in small parties and various disguises, and to assemble at Rome, during the licentious tumult of the festival of Cybele. To murder Commodus, and to ascend the vacant throne, was the ambition of no vulgar robber. His measures were so ably concerted that his concealed troops already filled the streets of Rome. The envy of an accomplice discovered and ruined this singular enterprise, in a moment when it was ripe for execution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1619-20  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:04 PM

Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion, that those who have no dependence, except on their favor, will have no attachment, except to the person of their benefactor.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1657-70  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:12 PM

But every sentiment of virtue and humanity was extinct in the mind of Commodus. Whilst he thus abandoned the reins of empire to these unworthy favorites, he valued nothing in sovereign power, except the unbounded license of indulging his sensual appetites. His hours were spent in a seraglio of three hundred beautiful women, and as many boys, of every rank, and of every province; and, wherever the arts of seduction proved ineffectual, the brutal lover had recourse to violence. The ancient historians have expatiated on these abandoned scenes of prostitution, which scorned every restraint of nature or modesty; but it would not be easy to translate their too faithful descriptions into the decency of modern language. The intervals of lust were filled up with the basest amusements. The influence of a polite age, and the labor of an attentive education, had never been able to infuse into his rude and brutish mind the least tincture of learning; and he was the first of the Roman emperors totally devoid of taste for the pleasures of the understanding. Nero himself excelled, or affected to excel, in the elegant arts of music and poetry: nor should we despise his pursuits, had he not converted the pleasing relaxation of a leisure hour into the serious business and ambition of his life. But Commodus, from his earliest infancy, discovered an aversion to whatever was rational or liberal, and a fond attachment to the amusements of the populace; the sports of the circus and amphitheatre, the combats of gladiators, and the hunting of wild beasts. The masters in every branch of learning, whom Marcus provided for his son, were heard with inattention and disgust; whilst the Moors and Parthians, who taught him to dart the javelin and to shoot with the bow, found a disciple who delighted in his application, and soon equalled the most skilful of his instructors in the steadiness of the eye and the dexterity of the 
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1671  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:13 PM

The servile crowd, whose fortune depended on their master's vices, applauded these ignoble pursuits.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1683-91  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:16 PM

On the appointed day, the various motives of flattery, fear, and curiosity, attracted to the amphitheatre an innumerable multitude of spectators; and some degree of applause was deservedly bestowed on the uncommon skill of the Imperial performer. Whether he aimed at the head or heart of the animal, the wound was alike certain and mortal. With arrows whose point was shaped into the form of crescent, Commodus often intercepted the rapid career, and cut asunder the long, bony neck of the ostrich. A panther was let loose; and the archer waited till he had leaped upon a trembling malefactor. In the same instant the shaft flew, the beast dropped dead, and the man remained unhurt. The dens of the amphitheatre disgorged at once a hundred lions: a hundred darts from the unerring hand of Commodus laid them dead as they run raging round the Arena. Neither the huge bulk of the elephant, nor the scaly hide of the rhinoceros, could defend them from his stroke. Æthiopia and India yielded their most extraordinary productions; and several animals were slain in the amphitheatre, which had been seen only in the representations of art, or perhaps of fancy.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1693-1701  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:18 PM

But the meanest of the populace were affected with shame and indignation when they beheld their sovereign enter the lists as a gladiator, and glory in a profession which the laws and manners of the Romans had branded with the justest note of infamy. He chose the habit and arms of the Secutor, whose combat with the Retiarius formed one of the most lively scenes in the bloody sports of the amphitheatre. The Secutor was armed with a helmet, sword, and buckler; his naked antagonist had only a large net and a trident; with the one he endeavored to entangle, with the other to despatch his enemy. If he missed the first throw, he was obliged to fly from the pursuit of the Secutor, till he had prepared his net for a second cast. The emperor fought in this character seven hundred and thirty-five several times. These glorious achievements were carefully recorded in the public acts of the empire; and that he might omit no circumstance of infamy, he received from the common fund of gladiators a stipend so exorbitant that it became a new and most ignominious tax upon the Roman people.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1752-54  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:25 PM

it. These effusions of impotent rage against a dead emperor, whom the senate had flattered when alive with the most abject servility, betrayed a just but ungenerous spirit of revenge. The legality of these decrees was, however, supported by the principles of the Imperial constitution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1754-57  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:25 PM

To censure, to depose, or to punish with death, the first magistrate of the republic, who had abused his delegated trust, was the ancient and undoubted prerogative of the Roman senate; but the feeble assembly was obliged to content itself with inflicting on a fallen tyrant that public justice, from which, during his life and reign, he had been shielded by the strong arm of military despotism. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1796-1802  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:30 PM

On the third day of his reign, the soldiers seized on a noble senator, with a design to carry him to the camp, and to invest him with the Imperial purple. Instead of being dazzled by the dangerous honor, the affrighted victim escaped from their violence, and took refuge at the feet of Pertinax. A short time afterwards, Sosius Falco, one of the consuls of the year, a rash youth, but of an ancient and opulent family, listened to the voice of ambition; and a conspiracy was formed during a short absence of Pertinax, which was crushed by his sudden return to Rome, and his resolute behavior. Falco was on the point of being justly condemned to death as a public enemy had he not been saved by the earnest and sincere entreaties of the injured emperor, who conjured the senate, that the purity of his reign might not be stained by the blood even of a guilty senator.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1803-13  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:34 PM

These disappointments served only to irritate the rage of the Prætorian guards. On the twenty-eighth of March, eighty-six days only after the death of Commodus, a general sedition broke out in the camp, which the officers wanted either power or inclination to suppress. Two or three hundred of the most desperate soldiers marched at noonday, with arms in their hands and fury in their looks, towards the Imperial palace. The gates were thrown open by their companions upon guard, and by the domestics of the old court, who had already formed a secret conspiracy against the life of the too virtuous emperor. On the news of their approach, Pertinax, disdaining either flight or concealment, advanced to meet his assassins; and recalled to their minds his own innocence, and the sanctity of their recent oath. For a few moments they stood in silent suspense, ashamed of their atrocious design, and awed by the venerable aspect and majestic firmness of their sovereign, till at length, the despair of pardon reviving their fury, a barbarian of the country of Tongress levelled the first blow against Pertinax, who was instantly despatched with a multitude of wounds. His head, separated from his body, and placed on a lance, was carried in triumph to the Prætorian camp, in the sight of a mournful and indignant people, who lamented the unworthy fate of that excellent prince, and the transient blessings of a reign, the memory of which could serve only to aggravate their approaching misfortunes.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1856-59  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:45 PM

He had already begun to use the only effectual argument, and to treat for the Imperial dignity; but the more prudent of the Prætorians, apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1856-65  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:46 PM

He had already begun to use the only effectual argument, and to treat for the Imperial dignity; but the more prudent of the Prætorians, apprehensive that, in this private contract, they should not obtain a just price for so valuable a commodity, ran out upon the ramparts; and, with a loud voice, proclaimed that the Roman world was to be disposed of to the best bidder by public auction. This infamous offer, the most insolent excess of military license, diffused a universal grief, shame, and indignation throughout the city. It reached at length the ears of Didius Julianus, a wealthy senator, who, regardless of the public calamities, was indulging himself in the luxury of the table. His wife and his daughter, his freedmen and his parasites, easily convinced him that he deserved the throne, and earnestly conjured him to embrace so fortunate an opportunity. The vain old man hastened to the Prætorian camp, where Sulpicianus was still in treaty with the guards, and began to bid against him from the foot of the rampart. The unworthy negotiation was transacted by faithful emissaries, who passed alternately from one candidate to the other, and acquainted each of them with the offers of his rival.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1869-72  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:47 PM

It was now incumbent on the Prætorians to fulfil the conditions of the sale. They placed their new sovereign, whom they served and despised, in the centre of their ranks, surrounded him on every side with their shields, and conducted him in close order of battle through the deserted streets of the city. The senate was commanded to assemble; and those who had been the distinguished friends of Pertinax, or the personal enemies of Julian, found it necessary to affect a more than common share of satisfaction at this happy revolution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1881-87  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:49 PM

He had reason to tremble. On the throne of the world he found himself without a friend, and even without an adherent. The guards themselves were ashamed of the prince whom their avarice had persuaded them to accept; nor was there a citizen who did not consider his elevation with horror, as the last insult on the Roman name. The nobility, whose conspicuous station, and ample possessions, exacted the strictest caution, dissembled their sentiments, and met the affected civility of the emperor with smiles of complacency and professions of duty. But the people, secure in their numbers and obscurity, gave a free vent to their passions. The streets and public places of Rome resounded with clamors and imprecations. The enraged multitude affronted the person of Julian, rejected his liberality, and, conscious of the impotence of their own resentment, they called aloud on the legions of the frontiers to assert the violated majesty of the Roman empire.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1891-95  | Added on Friday, March 30, 2012, 12:50 PM

Their immediate and unanimous revolt was fatal to Julian, but it was fatal at the same time to the public peace, as the generals of the respective armies, Clodius Albinus, Pescennius Niger, and Septimius Severus, were still more anxious to succeed than to revenge the murdered Pertinax. Their forces were exactly balanced. Each of them was at the head of three legions, with a numerous train of auxiliaries; and however different in their characters, they were all soldiers of experience and capacity.
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April

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 1981-84  | Added on Thursday, April 05, 2012, 04:10 PM

That assembly, convoked by the consul, unanimously acknowledged Severus as lawful emperor, decreed divine honors to Pertinax, and pronounced a sentence of deposition and death against his unfortunate successor. Julian was conducted into a private apartment of the baths of the palace, and beheaded as a common criminal, after having purchased, with an immense treasure, an anxious and precarious reign of only sixty-six days.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2042-44  | Added on Thursday, April 05, 2012, 07:14 PM

The fame and person of Severus appeared, during a few moments, irrecoverably lost, till that warlike prince rallied his fainting troops, and led them on to a decisive victory. The war was finished by that memorable day.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2081-86  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 04:13 AM

Thirty-five senators, however, accused of having favored the party of Albinus, he freely pardoned, and, by his subsequent behavior, endeavored to convince them, that he had forgotten, as well as forgiven, their supposed offences. But, at the same time, he condemned forty-one other senators, whose names history has recorded; their wives, children, and clients attended them in death, * and the noblest provincials of Spain and Gaul were involved in the same ruin. Such rigid justice—for so he termed it—was, in the opinion of Severus, the only conduct capable of insuring peace to the people or stability to the prince; and he condescended slightly to lament, that to be mild, it was necessary that he should first be cruel.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2091-94  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 04:14 AM

In the administration of justice, the judgments of the emperor were characterized by attention, discernment, and impartiality; and whenever he deviated from the strict line of equity, it was generally in favor of the poor and oppressed; not so much indeed from any sense of humanity, as from the natural propensity of a despot to humble the pride of greatness, and to sink all his subjects to the same common level of absolute dependence.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2111-13  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 04:20 AM

The Prætorians, who murdered their emperor and sold the empire, had received the just punishment of their treason; but the necessary, though dangerous, institution of guards was soon restored on a new model by Severus, and increased to four times the ancient number.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2121-24  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 05:12 AM

The command of these favored and formidable troops soon became the first office of the empire. As the government degenerated into military despotism, the Prætorian Præfect, who in his origin had been a simple captain of the guards, * was placed not only at the head of the army, but of the finances, and even of the law. In every department of administration, he represented the person, and exercised the authority, of the emperor.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2145-47  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 05:19 AM

The lawyers and historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws, could command by his arbitrary will the lives and fortunes of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private patrimony.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2207-11  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:48 AM

The declining health and last illness of Severus inflamed the wild ambition and black passions of Caracalla's soul. Impatient of any delay or division of empire, he attempted, more than once, to shorten the small remainder of his father's days, and endeavored, but without success, to excite a mutiny among the troops. The old emperor had often censured the misguided lenity of Marcus, who, by a single act of justice, might have saved the Romans from the tyranny of his worthless son. Placed in the same situation, he experienced how easily the rigor of a judge dissolves away in the tenderness of a parent.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2213-17  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:49 AM

He expired at York in the sixty-fifth year of his life, and in the eighteenth of a glorious and successful reign. In his last moments he recommended concord to his sons, and his sons to the army. The salutary advice never reached the heart, or even the understanding, of the impetuous youths; but the more obedient troops, mindful of their oath of allegiance, and of the authority of their deceased master, resisted the solicitations of Caracalla, and proclaimed both brothers emperors of Rome.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2220-28  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:50 AM

Such a divided form of government would have proved a source of discord between the most affectionate brothers. It was impossible that it could long subsist between two implacable enemies, who neither desired nor could trust a reconciliation. It was visible that one only could reign, and that the other must fall; and each of them, judging of his rival's designs by his own, guarded his life with the most jealous vigilance from the repeated attacks of poison or the sword. Their rapid journey through Gaul and Italy, during which they never ate at the same table, or slept in the same house, displayed to the provinces the odious spectacle of fraternal discord. On their arrival at Rome, they immediately divided the vast extent of the imperial palace. No communication was allowed between their apartments; the doors and passages were diligently fortified, and guards posted and relieved with the same strictness as in a besieged place. The emperors met only in public, in the presence of their afflicted mother; and each surrounded by a numerous train of armed followers. Even on these occasions of ceremony, the dissimulation of courts could ill disguise the rancor of their hearts.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2228-37  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:51 AM

This latent civil war already distracted the whole government, when a scheme was suggested that seemed of mutual benefit to the hostile brothers. It was proposed, that since it was impossible to reconcile their minds, they should separate their interest, and divide the empire between them. The conditions of the treaty were already drawn with some accuracy. It was agreed that Caracalla, as the elder brother should remain in possession of Europe and the western Africa; and that he should relinquish the sovereignty of Asia and Egypt to Geta, who might fix his residence at Alexandria or Antioch, cities little inferior to Rome itself in wealth and greatness; that numerous armies should be constantly encamped on either side of the Thracian Bosphorus, to guard the frontiers of the rival monarchies; and that the senators of European extraction should acknowledge the sovereign of Rome, whilst the natives of Asia followed the emperor of the East. The tears of the empress Julia interrupted the negotiation, the first idea of which had filled every Roman breast with surprise and indignation. The mighty mass of conquest was so intimately united by the hand of time and policy, that it required the most forcible violence to rend it asunder.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2239-49  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:52 AM

Had the treaty been carried into execution, the sovereign of Europe might soon have been the conqueror of Asia; but Caracalla obtained an easier, though a more guilty, victory. He artfully listened to his mother's entreaties, and consented to meet his brother in her apartment, on terms of peace and reconciliation. In the midst of their conversation, some centurions, who had contrived to conceal themselves, rushed with drawn swords upon the unfortunate Geta. His distracted mother strove to protect him in her arms; but, in the unavailing struggle, she was wounded in the hand, and covered with the blood of her younger son, while she saw the elder animating and assisting the fury of the assassins. As soon as the deed was perpetrated, Caracalla, with hasty steps, and horror in his countenance, ran towards the Prætorian camp, as his only refuge, and threw himself on the ground before the statues of the tutelar deities. The soldiers attempted to raise and comfort him. In broken and disordered words he informed them of his imminent danger, and fortunate escape; insinuating that he had prevented the designs of his enemy, and declared his resolution to live and die with his faithful troops. Geta had been the favorite of the soldiers; but complaint was useless, revenge was dangerous, and they still reverenced the son of Severus. Their discontent died away in idle murmurs, and Caracalla soon convinced them of the justice of his cause, by distributing in one lavish donative the accumulated treasures of his father's reign.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2255-57  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 06:53 AM

The crime went not unpunished. Neither business, nor pleasure, nor flattery, could defend Caracalla from the stings of a guilty conscience; and he confessed, in the anguish of a tortured mind, that his disordered fancy often beheld the angry forms of his father and his brother rising into life, to threaten and upbraid him.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2294-97  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 07:05 AM

The wise instructions of Severus never made any lasting impression on the mind of his son, who, although not destitute of imagination and eloquence, was equally devoid of judgment and humanity. One dangerous maxim, worthy of a tyrant, was remembered and abused by Caracalla. "To secure the affections of the army, and to esteem the rest of his subjects as of little moment."
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2300-2302  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 07:12 AM

The demeanor of Caracalla was haughty and full of pride; but with the troops he forgot even the proper dignity of his rank, encouraged their insolent familiarity, and, neglecting the essential duties of a general, affected to imitate the dress and manners of a common soldier.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2315-20  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 11:56 AM

Macrinus read his fate, and resolved to prevent it. He inflamed the discontents of some inferior officers, and employed the hand of Martialis, a desperate soldier, who had been refused the rank of centurion. The devotion of Caracalla prompted him to make a pilgrimage from Edessa to the celebrated temple of the Moon at Carrhæ. * He was attended by a body of cavalry: but having stopped on the road for some necessary occasion, his guards preserved a respectful distance, and Martialis, approaching his person under a presence of duty, stabbed him with a dagger. The bold assassin was instantly killed by a Scythian archer of the Imperial guard. Such was the end of a monster whose life disgraced human nature, and whose reign accused the patience of the
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2340-44  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 11:59 AM

and to arraign the nasty choice of the army. It had hitherto been considered as a fundamental maxim of the constitution, that the emperor must be always chosen in the senate, and the sovereign power, no longer exercised by the whole body, was always delegated to one of its members. But Macrinus was not a senator. The sudden elevation of the Prætorian præfects betrayed the meanness of their origin; and the equestrian order was still in possession of that great office, which commanded with arbitrary sway the lives and fortunes of the senate.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2351-56  | Added on Friday, April 06, 2012, 12:01 PM

a whisper that circulated in the camp, disclosed the fatal secret of the conspiracy against the late emperor, aggravated the guilt of murder by the baseness of hypocrisy, and heightened contempt by detestation. To alienate the soldiers, and to provoke inevitable ruin, the character of a reformer was only wanting; and such was the peculiar hardship of his fate, that Macrinus was compelled to exercise that invidious office. The prodigality of Caracalla had left behind it a long train of ruin and disorder; and if that worthless tyrant had been capable of reflecting on the sure consequences of his own conduct, he would perhaps have enjoyed the dark prospect of the distress and calamities which he bequeathed to his successors.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 20 | Loc. 834-44  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 03:23 PM

I smiled and shook my head. “I can quite understand your thinking so.” I said. “Of course, in your position of unofficial adviser and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents, you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here”—I picked up the morning paper from the ground—“let us put it to a practical test. Here is the first heading upon which I come. ‘A husband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There is half a column of print, but I know without reading it that it is all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude.” “Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,” said Holmes, taking the paper and glancing his eye down it. “This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 20 | Loc. 852-53  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 03:24 PM

Indeed, I have found that it is usually in unimportant matters that there is a field for the observation, and for the quick analysis of cause and effect which gives the charm to an investigation.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 26 | Loc. 1148-49  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:08 PM

The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home. In this case, however, they have established a very serious case against the son of the murdered man.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 27 | Loc. 1183-85  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:12 PM

“Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,” answered Holmes thoughtfully. “It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different. It must be confessed, however, that the case looks exceedingly grave against the young man, and it is very possible that he is indeed the culprit.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 29 | Loc. 1285  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:21 PM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 29 | Loc. 1283-86  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:22 PM

He had hardly spoken before there rushed into the room one of the most lovely young women that I have ever seen in my life. Her violet eyes shining, her lips parted, a pink flush upon her cheeks, all thought of her natural reserve lost in her overpowering excitement and concern. “Oh, Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” she cried, glancing from one to the other of us, and finally, with a woman’s quick intuition, fastening upon my companion, “I am so glad that you have come.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 30 | Loc. 1319-24  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:24 PM

Watson, I fear that you will find it very slow, but I shall only be away a couple of hours.” I walked down to the station with them, and then wandered through the streets of the little town, finally returning to the hotel, where I lay upon the sofa and tried to interest myself in a yellow-backed novel. The puny plot of the story was so thin, however, when compared to the deep mystery through which we were groping, and I found my attention wander so continually from the action to the fact, that I at last flung it across the room and gave myself up entirely to a consideration of the events of the day.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 31 | Loc. 1384-89  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:29 PM

Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would have failed to recognise him. His face flushed and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell unheeded upon his ears, or, at the most, only provoked a quick, impatient snarl in reply.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 32 | Loc. 1421  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:33 PM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 32 | Loc. 1419  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:33 PM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 32 | Loc. 1417-28  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:33 PM

It was about ten minutes before we regained our cab and drove back into Ross, Holmes still carrying with him the stone which he had picked up in the wood. “This may interest you, Lestrade,” he remarked, holding it out. “The murder was done with it.” “I see no marks.” “There are none.” “How do you know, then?” “The grass was growing under it. It had only lain there a few days. There was no sign of a place whence it had been taken. It corresponds with the injuries. There is no sign of any other weapon.” “And the murderer?” “Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears thick-soled shooting-boots and a grey cloak, smokes Indian cigars, uses a cigar-holder, and carries a blunt pen-knife in his pocket. There are several other indications, but these may be enough to aid us in our search.” Lestrade laughed. “I am afraid that I am still a sceptic,” he said. “Theories are all very well, but we have to deal with a hard-headed British jury.” “Nous verrons,” answered Holmes calmly. “You work your own method, and I shall work mine. I shall be busy this afternoon, and shall probably return to London by the evening train.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 33 | Loc. 1468-70  | Added on Saturday, April 07, 2012, 04:36 PM

He had stood behind that tree during the interview between the father and son. He had even smoked there. I found the ash of a cigar, which my special knowledge of tobacco ashes enables me to pronounce as an Indian cigar. I have, as you know, devoted some attention to this, and written a little monograph on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar, and cigarette tobacco.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 36 | Loc. 1591-96  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 05:44 AM

“I beg that you will draw your chair up to the fire and favour me with some details as to your case.” “It is no ordinary one.” “None of those which come to me are. I am the last court of appeal.” “And yet I question, sir, whether, in all your experience, you have ever listened to a more mysterious and inexplicable chain of events than those which have happened in my own family.” “You fill me with interest,” said Holmes. “Pray give us the essential facts from the commencement, and I can afterwards question you as to those details which seem to me to be most important.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 37 | Loc. 1632-35  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 05:47 AM

“ ‘I wish you, John,’ said my uncle, ‘to witness my will. I leave my estate, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages, to my brother, your father, whence it will, no doubt, descend to you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, but I can’t say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham shows you.’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 37 | Loc. 1650-53  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 05:49 AM

“One moment,” Holmes interposed, “your statement is, I foresee, one of the most remarkable to which I have ever listened. Let me have the date of the reception by your uncle of the letter, and the date of his supposed suicide.” “The letter arrived on March 10, 1883. His death was seven weeks later, upon the night of May 2nd.” “Thank you. Pray proceed.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 1700-1704  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:43 AM

“I have seen the police.” “Ah!” “But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.” Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 38 | Loc. 1700-1708  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:43 AM

“I have seen the police.” “Ah!” “But they listened to my story with a smile. I am convinced that the inspector has formed the opinion that the letters are all practical jokes, and that the deaths of my relations were really accidents, as the jury stated, and were not to be connected with the warnings.” Holmes shook his clenched hands in the air. “Incredible imbecility!” he cried. “They have, however, allowed me a policeman, who may remain in the house with me.” “Has he come with you to-night?” “No. His orders were to stay in the house.” Again Holmes raved in the air. “Why did you come to me,” he cried, “and, above all, why did you not come at once?” “I
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 39 | Loc. 1748-70  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:51 AM

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes and placed his elbows upon the arms of his chair, with his finger-tips together. “The ideal reasoner,” he remarked, “would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilise all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavoured in my case to do. If I remember rightly, you on one occasion, in the early days of our friendship, defined my limits in a very precise fashion.” “Yes,” I answered, laughing. “It was a singular document. Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud-stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin-player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco. Those, I think, were the main points of my analysis.” Holmes grinned at the last item. “Well,” he said, “I say now, as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a case as the one which has been submitted to us to-night, we need certainly to muster all our resources. Kindly hand me down the letter K of the American Encyclopaedia which stands upon the shelf beside you. Thank you. Now let us consider the situation and see what may be deduced from it. In the first place, we may start with a strong presumption that Colonel Openshaw had some very strong reason for leaving America. Men at his time of life do not change all their habits and exchange willingly the charming climate of Florida for the lonely life of an English provincial town. His extreme love of solitude in England suggests the idea that he was in fear of someone or something, so we may assume as a working hypothesis that it was fear of someone or something which drove him from America. As to what it was he feared, we can only deduce that by considering the formidable letters which were received by himself and his successors.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1831-33  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:56 AM

We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him. “That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1831-36  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:56 AM

We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him. “That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last. “It is a petty feeling, no doubt, but it hurts my pride. It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang. That he should come to me for help, and that I should send him away to his death—!” He sprang from his chair and paced about the room in uncontrollable agitation, with a flush upon his sallow cheeks and a nervous clasping and unclasping of his long thin hands. “They must be cunning devils,” he exclaimed at last.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1837-39  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:57 AM

Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!” “To the police?” “No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 41 | Loc. 1837-51  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:57 AM

Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run. I am going out now!” “To the police?” “No; I shall be my own police. When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.” All day I was engaged in my professional work, and it was late in the evening before I returned to Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes had not come back yet. It was nearly ten o’clock before he entered, looking pale and worn. He walked up to the sideboard, and tearing a piece from the loaf he devoured it voraciously, washing it down with a long draught of water. “You are hungry,” I remarked. “Starving. It had escaped my memory. I have had nothing since breakfast.” “Nothing?” “Not a bite. I had no time to think of it.” “And how have you succeeded?” “Well.” “You have a clue?” “I have them in the hollow of my hand. Young Openshaw shall not long remain unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put their own devilish trade-mark upon them. It is well thought of!” “What do you mean?” He took an orange from the cupboard, and tearing it to pieces he squeezed out the pips upon the table. Of these he took five and thrust them into an envelope. On the inside of the flap he wrote “S. H. for J. O.” Then he sealed it and addressed it to “Captain James Calhoun, Barque Lone Star, Savannah, Georgia.” “That will await him when he enters port,” said he, chuckling. “It may give him a sleepless night. He will find it as sure a precursor of his fate as Openshaw did before him.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 42 | Loc. 1869-73  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 08:59 AM

There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for news of the Lone Star of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of a boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters “L. S.” carved upon it, and that is all which we shall ever know of the fate of the Lone Star.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Note Loc. 2356  | Added on Sunday, April 08, 2012, 09:02 PM

circumlocuting wages pay cuts
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2448-52  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:35 AM

A long train of concubines, and a rapid succession of wives, among whom was a vestal virgin, ravished by force from her sacred asylum, were insufficient to satisfy the impotence of his passions. The master of the Roman world affected to copy the dress and manners of the female sex, preferred the distaff to the sceptre, and dishonored the principal dignities of the empire by distributing them among his numerous lovers; one of whom was publicly invested with the title and authority of the emperor's, or, as he more properly styled himself, of the empress's husband.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2453-55  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:41 AM

It may seem probable, the vices and follies of Elagabalus have been adorned by fancy, and blackened by prejudice. Yet, confining ourselves to the public scenes displayed before the Roman people, and attested by grave and contemporary historians, their inexpressible infamy surpasses that of any other age or country.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2475-82  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:44 AM

It was impossible that such a reconciliation should last, or that even the mean soul of Elagabalus could hold an empire on such humiliating terms of dependence. He soon attempted, by a dangerous experiment, to try the temper of the soldiers. The report of the death of Alexander, and the natural suspicion that he had been murdered, inflamed their passions into fury, and the tempest of the camp could only be appeased by the presence and authority of the popular youth. Provoked at this new instance of their affection for his cousin, and their contempt for his person, the emperor ventured to punish some of the leaders of the mutiny. His unseasonable severity proved instantly fatal to his minions, his mother, and himself. Elagabalus was massacred by the indignant Prætorians, his mutilated corpse dragged through the streets of the city, and thrown into the Tiber. His memory was branded with eternal infamy by the senate; the justice of whose decree has been ratified by posterity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2489-93  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:45 AM

In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life. In hereditary monarchies, however, and especially in those of modern Europe, the gallant spirit of chivalry, and the law of succession, have accustomed us to allow a singular exception; and a woman is often acknowledged the absolute sovereign of a great kingdom, in which she would be deemed incapable of exercising the smallest employment, civil or military.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2536-39  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:52 AM

Such a uniform tenor of life, which left not a moment for vice or folly, is a better proof of the wisdom and justice of Alexander's government, than all the trifling details preserved in the compilation of Lampridius. Since the accession of Commodus, the Roman world had experienced, during the term of forty years, the successive and various vices of four tyrants. From the death of Elagabalus, it enjoyed an auspicious calm of thirteen years.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2563-72  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 08:55 AM

The Prætorian guards were attached to the youth of Alexander. They loved him as a tender pupil, whom they had saved from a tyrant's fury, and placed on the Imperial throne. That amiable prince was sensible of the obligation; but as his gratitude was restrained within the limits of reason and justice, they soon were more dissatisfied with the virtues of Alexander, than they had ever been with the vices of Elagabalus. Their præfect, the wise Ulpian, was the friend of the laws and of the people; he was considered as the enemy of the soldiers, and to his pernicious counsels every scheme of reformation was imputed. Some trifling accident blew up their discontent into a furious mutiny; and the civil war raged, during three days, in Rome, whilst the life of that excellent minister was defended by the grateful people. Terrified, at length, by the sight of some houses in flames, and by the threats of a general conflagration, the people yielded with a sigh, and left the virtuous but unfortunate Ulpian to his fate. He was pursued into the Imperial palace, and massacred at the feet of his master, who vainly strove to cover him with the purple, and to obtain his pardon from the inexorable soldiers. * Such was the deplorable weakness of government, that the emperor was unable to revenge his murdered friend and his insulted dignity, without stooping to the arts of patience and dissimulation.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Bookmark on Page 68 | Loc. 3103  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:46 AM


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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3094-3105  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:47 AM

“I’ve got him here,” he whispered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder; “he’s all right.” “What is it, then?” I asked, for his manner suggested that it was some strange creature which he had caged up in my room. “It’s a new patient,” he whispered. “I thought I’d bring him round myself; then he couldn’t slip away. There he is, all safe and sound. I must go now, Doctor; I have my dooties, just the same as you.” And off he went, this trusty tout, without even giving me time to thank him. I entered my consulting-room and found a gentleman seated by the table. He was quietly dressed in a suit of heather tweed with a soft cloth cap which he had laid down upon my books. Round one of his hands he had a handkerchief wrapped, which was mottled all over with bloodstains. He was young, not more than five-and-twenty, I should say, with a strong, masculine face; but he was exceedingly pale and gave me the impression of a man who was suffering from some strong agitation, which it took all his strength of mind to control. “I am sorry to knock you up so early, Doctor,” said he, “but I have had a very serious accident during the night. I came in by train this morning, and on inquiring at Paddington as to where I might find a doctor, a worthy fellow very kindly escorted me here. I gave the maid a card, but I see that she has left it upon the side-table.” I took
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3108-15  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:48 AM

“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh. “Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some water from a caraffe. It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking. “I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped. “Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. “That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3108-29  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:49 AM

“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh. “Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some water from a caraffe. It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking. “I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped. “Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. “That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.” He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots. “Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.” “Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig.” “Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.” “It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own province.” “This has been done,” said I, examining the wound, “by a very heavy and sharp instrument.” “A thing like a cleaver,” said he. “An accident, I presume?” “By no means.” “What! a murderous attack?” “Very murderous indeed.” “You horrify me.” I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time. “How is that?” I asked when I had finished. “Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 68 | Loc. 3108-35  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:50 AM

“Oh, my night could not be called monotonous,” said he, and laughed. He laughed very heartily, with a high, ringing note, leaning back in his chair and shaking his sides. All my medical instincts rose up against that laugh. “Stop it!” I cried; “pull yourself together!” and I poured out some water from a caraffe. It was useless, however. He was off in one of those hysterical outbursts which come upon a strong nature when some great crisis is over and gone. Presently he came to himself once more, very weary and pale-looking. “I have been making a fool of myself,” he gasped. “Not at all. Drink this.” I dashed some brandy into the water, and the colour began to come back to his bloodless cheeks. “That’s better!” said he. “And now, Doctor, perhaps you would kindly attend to my thumb, or rather to the place where my thumb used to be.” He unwound the handkerchief and held out his hand. It gave even my hardened nerves a shudder to look at it. There were four protruding fingers and a horrid red, spongy surface where the thumb should have been. It had been hacked or torn right out from the roots. “Good heavens!” I cried, “this is a terrible injury. It must have bled considerably.” “Yes, it did. I fainted when it was done, and I think that I must have been senseless for a long time. When I came to I found that it was still bleeding, so I tied one end of my handkerchief very tightly round the wrist and braced it up with a twig.” “Excellent! You should have been a surgeon.” “It is a question of hydraulics, you see, and came within my own province.” “This has been done,” said I, examining the wound, “by a very heavy and sharp instrument.” “A thing like a cleaver,” said he. “An accident, I presume?” “By no means.” “What! a murderous attack?” “Very murderous indeed.” “You horrify me.” I sponged the wound, cleaned it, dressed it, and finally covered it over with cotton wadding and carbolised bandages. He lay back without wincing, though he bit his lip from time to time. “How is that?” I asked when I had finished. “Capital! Between your brandy and your bandage, I feel a new man. I was very weak, but I have had a good deal to go through.” “Perhaps you had better not speak of the matter. It is evidently trying to your nerves.” “Oh, no, not now. I shall have to tell my tale to the police; but, between ourselves, if it were not for the convincing evidence of this wound of mine, I should be surprised if they believed my statement, for it is a very extraordinary one, and I have not much in the way of proof with which to back it up; and, even if they believe me, the clues which I can give them are so vague that it is a question whether justice will be done.” “Ha!” cried I, “if it is anything in the nature of a problem which you desire to see solved, I should strongly recommend you to come to my friend, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, before you go to the official police.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Note on Page 69 | Loc. 3135  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:50 AM

republican healthcare
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 69 | Loc. 3151-52  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:53 AM

Holmes sat in his big armchair with the weary, heavy-lidded expression which veiled his keen and eager nature, while I sat opposite to him, and we listened in silence to the strange story which our visitor detailed to us.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 69 | Loc. 3153-60  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:55 AM

“You must know,” said he, “that I am an orphan and a bachelor, residing alone in lodgings in London. By profession I am a hydraulic engineer, and I have had considerable experience of my work during the seven years that I was apprenticed to Venner & Matheson, the well-known firm, of Greenwich. Two years ago, having served my time, and having also come into a fair sum of money through my poor father’s death, I determined to start in business for myself and took professional chambers in Victoria Street. “I suppose that everyone finds his first independent start in business a dreary experience. To me it has been exceptionally so. During two years I have had three consultations and one small job, and that is absolutely all that my profession has brought me. My gross takings amount to �27 10s. Every day, from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, I waited in my little den, until at last my heart began to sink, and I came to believe that I should never have any practice at all.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3175-81  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 10:58 AM

“ ‘If I promise to keep a secret,’ said I, ‘you may absolutely depend upon my doing so.’ “He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye. “ ‘Do you promise, then?’ said he at last. “ ‘Yes, I promise.’ “ ‘Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No reference to the matter at all, either in word or writing?’ “ ‘I have already given you my word.’ “ ‘Very good.’ He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning across the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was empty.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3205-7  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:02 AM

I should like, however, to understand a little more clearly what it is that you wish me to do.’ “ ‘Quite so. It is very natural that the pledge of secrecy which we have exacted from you should have aroused your curiosity. I have no wish to commit you to anything without your having it all laid before you. I suppose that we are absolutely safe from eavesdroppers?’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3210-21  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:03 AM

“ ‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3210-25  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:05 AM

“ ‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’ “ ‘I quite follow you,’ said I. ‘The only point which I could not quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press in excavating fuller’s-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out like gravel from a pit.’ “ ‘Ah!’ said he carelessly, ‘we have our own process. We compress the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I trust you.’
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 70 | Loc. 3210-28  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:05 AM

“ ‘Some little time ago I bought a small place—a very small place—within ten miles of Reading. I was fortunate enough to discover that there was a deposit of fuller’s-earth in one of my fields. On examining it, however, I found that this deposit was a comparatively small one, and that it formed a link between two very much larger ones upon the right and left—both of them, however, in the grounds of my neighbours. These good people were absolutely ignorant that their land contained that which was quite as valuable as a gold-mine. Naturally, it was to my interest to buy their land before they discovered its true value, but unfortunately I had no capital by which I could do this. I took a few of my friends into the secret, however, and they suggested that we should quietly and secretly work our own little deposit and that in this way we should earn the money which would enable us to buy the neighbouring fields. This we have now been doing for some time, and in order to help us in our operations we erected a hydraulic press. This press, as I have already explained, has got out of order, and we wish your advice upon the subject. We guard our secret very jealously, however, and if it once became known that we had hydraulic engineers coming to our little house, it would soon rouse inquiry, and then, if the facts came out, it would be good-bye to any chance of getting these fields and carrying out our plans. That is why I have made you promise me that you will not tell a human being that you are going to Eyford to-night. I hope that I make it all plain?’ “ ‘I quite follow you,’ said I. ‘The only point which I could not quite understand was what use you could make of a hydraulic press in excavating fuller’s-earth, which, as I understand, is dug out like gravel from a pit.’ “ ‘Ah!’ said he carelessly, ‘we have our own process. We compress the earth into bricks, so as to remove them without revealing what they are. But that is a mere detail. I have taken you fully into my confidence now, Mr. Hatherley, and I have shown you how I trust you.’ He rose as he spoke. ‘I shall expect you, then, at Eyford at 11:15.’ “ ‘I shall certainly be there.’ “ ‘And not a word to a soul.’ He looked at me with a last long, questioning gaze, and then, pressing my hand in a cold, dank grasp, he hurried from the room.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Note on Page 71 | Loc. 3270  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:14 AM

endof part one start of part two
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 72 | Loc. 3286-95  | Added on Monday, April 09, 2012, 11:17 AM

“The newcomers were Colonel Lysander Stark and a short thick man with a chinchilla beard growing out of the creases of his double chin, who was introduced to me as Mr. Ferguson. “ ‘This is my secretary and manager,’ said the colonel. ‘By the way, I was under the impression that I left this door shut just now. I fear that you have felt the draught.’ “ ‘On the contrary,’ said I, ‘I opened the door myself because I felt the room to be a little close.’ “He shot one of his suspicious looks at me. ‘Perhaps we had better proceed to business, then,’ said he. ‘Mr. Ferguson and I will take you up to see the machine.’ “ ‘I had better put my hat on, I suppose.’ “ ‘Oh, no, it is in the house.’ “ ‘What, you dig fuller’s-earth in the house?’ “ ‘No, no. This is only where we compress it. But never mind that. All we wish you to do is to examine the machine and to let us know what is wrong with it.’
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2775-78  | Added on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 09:51 AM

The daring hopes of ambition were set loose from the salutary restraints of law and prejudice; and the meanest of mankind might, without folly, entertain a hope of being raised by valor and fortune to a rank in the army, in which a single crime would enable him to wrest the sceptre of the world from his feeble and unpopular master. After the murder of Alexander Severus, and the elevation of Maximin, no emperor could think himself safe upon the throne, and every barbarian peasant of the frontier might aspire to that august, but dangerous station.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2824-32  | Added on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 05:16 PM

The former tyrants, Caligula and Nero, Commodus, and Caracalla, were all dissolute and unexperienced youths, educated in the purple, and corrupted by the pride of empire, the luxury of Rome, and the perfidious voice of flattery. The cruelty of Maximin was derived from a different source, the fear of contempt. Though he depended on the attachment of the soldiers, who loved him for virtues like their own, he was conscious that his mean and barbarian origin, his savage appearance, and his total ignorance of the arts and institutions of civil life, formed a very unfavorable contrast with the amiable manners of the unhappy Alexander. He remembered, that, in his humbler fortune, he had often waited before the door of the haughty nobles of Rome, and had been denied admittance by the insolence of their slaves. He recollected too the friendship of a few who had relieved his poverty, and assisted his rising hopes. But those who had spurned, and those who had protected, the Thracian, were guilty of the same crime, the knowledge of his original obscurity. For this crime many were put to death; and by the execution of several of his benefactors, Maximin published, in characters of blood, the indelible history of his baseness and ingratitude.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2940-52  | Added on Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 05:39 PM

The fate of the Gordians filled Rome with just but unexpected terror. The senate, convoked in the temple of Concord, affected to transact the common business of the day; and seemed to decline, with trembling anxiety, the consideration of their own and the public danger. A silent consternation prevailed in the assembly, till a senator, of the name and family of Trajan, awakened his brethren from their fatal lethargy. He represented to them that the choice of cautious, dilatory measures had been long since out of their power; that Maximin, implacable by nature, and exasperated by injuries, was advancing towards Italy, at the head of the military force of the empire; and that their only remaining alternative was either to meet him bravely in the field, or tamely to expect the tortures and ignominious death reserved for unsuccessful rebellion. "We have lost," continued he, "two excellent princes; but unless we desert ourselves, the hopes of the republic have not perished with the Gordians. Many are the senators whose virtues have deserved, and whose abilities would sustain, the Imperial dignity. Let us elect two emperors, one of whom may conduct the war against the public enemy, whilst his colleague remains at Rome to direct the civil administration. I cheerfully expose myself to the danger and envy of the nomination, and give my vote in favor of Maximus and Balbinus. Ratify my choice, conscript fathers, or appoint in their place, others more worthy of the empire." The general apprehension silenced the whispers of jealousy; the merit of the candidates was universally acknowledged; and the house resounded with the sincere acclamations of "Long life and victory to the emperors Maximus and Balbinus. You are happy in the judgment of the senate; may the republic be happy under your administration!"
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 2955-58  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:13 AM

Balbinus was an admired orator, a poet of distinguished fame, and a wise magistrate, who had exercised with innocence and applause the civil jurisdiction in almost all the interior provinces of the empire. His birth was noble, his fortune affluent, his manners liberal and affable. In him the love of pleasure was corrected by a sense of dignity, nor had the habits of ease deprived him of a capacity for business.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3059-67  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:31 AM

nothing could reconcile the haughty spirit of the Prætorians. They attended the emperors on the memorable day of their public entry into Rome; but amidst the general acclamations, the sullen, dejected countenance of the guards sufficiently declared that they considered themselves as the object, rather than the partners, of the triumph. When the whole body was united in their camp, those who had served under Maximin, and those who had remained at Rome, insensibly communicated to each other their complaints and apprehensions. The emperors chosen by the army had perished with ignominy; those elected by the senate were seated on the throne. The long discord between the civil and military powers was decided by a war, in which the former had obtained a complete victory. The soldiers must now learn a new doctrine of submission to the senate; and whatever clemency was affected by that politic assembly, they dreaded a slow revenge, colored by the name of discipline, and justified by fair pretences of the public good. But their fate was still in their own hands; and if they had courage to despise the vain terrors of an impotent republic, it was easy to convince the world, that those who were masters of the arms, were masters of the authority, of the state.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3071-79  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:33 AM

Their silent discord was understood rather than seen; but the mutual consciousness prevented them from uniting in any vigorous measures of defence against their common enemies of the Prætorian camp. The whole city was employed in the Capitoline games, and the emperors were left almost alone in the palace. On a sudden, they were alarmed by the approach of a troop of desperate assassins. Ignorant of each other's situation or designs, (for they already occupied very distant apartments,) afraid to give or to receive assistance, they wasted the important moments in idle debates and fruitless recriminations. The arrival of the guards put an end to the vain strife. They seized on these emperors of the senate, for such they called them with malicious contempt, stripped them of their garments, and dragged them in insolent triumph through the streets of Rome, with the design of inflicting a slow and cruel death on these unfortunate princes. The fear of a rescue from the faithful Germans of the Imperial guards, shortened their tortures; and their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, were left exposed to the insults or to the pity of the populace.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3071-80  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:33 AM

Their silent discord was understood rather than seen; but the mutual consciousness prevented them from uniting in any vigorous measures of defence against their common enemies of the Prætorian camp. The whole city was employed in the Capitoline games, and the emperors were left almost alone in the palace. On a sudden, they were alarmed by the approach of a troop of desperate assassins. Ignorant of each other's situation or designs, (for they already occupied very distant apartments,) afraid to give or to receive assistance, they wasted the important moments in idle debates and fruitless recriminations. The arrival of the guards put an end to the vain strife. They seized on these emperors of the senate, for such they called them with malicious contempt, stripped them of their garments, and dragged them in insolent triumph through the streets of Rome, with the design of inflicting a slow and cruel death on these unfortunate princes. The fear of a rescue from the faithful Germans of the Imperial guards, shortened their tortures; and their bodies, mangled with a thousand wounds, were left exposed to the insults or to the pity of the populace. In the space of a few months, six princes
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3094-96  | Added on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 09:36 AM

The minister, with the conscious dignity of virtue, congratulates Gordian that he is delivered from the tyranny of the eunuchs, and still more that he is sensible of his deliverance. The emperor acknowledges, with an amiable confusion, the errors of his past conduct; and laments, with singular propriety, the misfortune of a monarch, from whom a venal tribe of courtiers perpetually labor to conceal the truth.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3278  | Added on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 09:53 AM

The sword of Aristotle (such was the name given by the Orientals to the polytheism and philosophy of the Greeks) was easily broken;
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3525-28  | Added on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 05:36 PM

The sound that summoned the German to arms was grateful to his ear. It roused him from his uncomfortable lethargy, gave him an active pursuit, and, by strong exercise of the body, and violent emotions of the mind, restored him to a more lively sense of his existence. In the dull intervals of peace, these barbarians were immoderately addicted to deep gaming and excessive drinking; both of which, by different means, the one by inflaming their passions, the other by extinguishing their reason, alike relieved them from the pain of thinking.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3533-35  | Added on Thursday, April 12, 2012, 05:37 PM

Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3533-38  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:23 PM

Strong beer, a liquor extracted with very little art from wheat or barley, and corrupted (as it is strongly expressed by Tacitus) into a certain semblance of wine, was sufficient for the gross purposes of German debauchery. But those who had tasted the rich wines of Italy, and afterwards of Gaul, sighed for that more delicious species of intoxication. They attempted not, however, (as has since been executed with so much success,) to naturalize the vine on the banks of the Rhine and Danube; nor did they endeavor to procure by industry the materials of an advantageous commerce. To solicit by labor what might be ravished by arms, was esteemed unworthy of the German spirit. The intemperate thirst of strong liquors often urged the barbarians to invade the provinces on which art or nature had bestowed those much envied presents.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3557-61  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:26 PM

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism. "Among the Suiones (says Tacitus) riches are held in honor. They are therefore subject to an absolute monarch, who, instead of intrusting his people with the free use of arms, as is practised in the rest of Germany, commits them to the safe custody, not of a citizen, or even of a freedman, but of a slave. The neighbors of the Suiones, the Sitones, are sunk even below servitude; they obey a woman." In the mention of these exceptions, the great historian sufficiently acknowledges the general theory of government. We
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3567-75  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:27 PM

Civil governments, in their first institution, are voluntary associations for mutual defence. To obtain the desired end, it is absolutely necessary that each individual should conceive himself obliged to submit his private opinions and actions to the judgment of the greater number of his associates. The German tribes were contented with this rude but liberal outline of political society. As soon as a youth, born of free parents, had attained the age of manhood, he was introduced into the general council of his countrymen, solemnly invested with a shield and spear, and adopted as an equal and worthy member of the military commonwealth. The assembly of the warriors of the tribe was convened at stated seasons, or on sudden emergencies. The trial of public offences, the election of magistrates, and the great business of peace and war, were determined by its independent voice. Sometimes indeed, these important questions were previously considered and prepared in a more select council of the principal chieftains. The magistrates might deliberate and persuade, the people only could resolve and execute; and the resolutions of the Germans were for the most part hasty and violent.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3576-83  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 04:27 PM

and policy, and it was the practice to signify by a hollow murmur their dislike of such timid counsels. But whenever a more popular orator proposed to vindicate the meanest citizen from either foreign or domestic injury, whenever he called upon his fellow-countrymen to assert the national honor, or to pursue some enterprise full of danger and glory, a loud clashing of shields and spears expressed the eager applause of the assembly. For the Germans always met in arms, and it was constantly to be dreaded, lest an irregular multitude, inflamed with faction and strong liquors, should use those arms to enforce, as well as to declare, their furious resolves. We may recollect how often the diets of Poland have been polluted with blood, and the more numerous party has been compelled to yield to the more violent and seditious. A general of the tribe was elected on occasions of danger; and, if the danger was
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3678-79  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 11:24 PM

The view of arms and of danger heightened the effect of the military song; and the passions which it tended to excite, the desire of fame, and the contempt of death, were the habitual sentiments of a German mind. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3761-64  | Added on Friday, April 13, 2012, 11:35 PM

Chapter X: Emperors Decius, Gallus, Æmilianus, Valerian And Gallienus.—Part I. From the great secular games celebrated by Philip, to the death of the emperor Gallienus, there elapsed twenty years of shame and misfortune. During that calamitous period, every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted, by barbarous invaders, and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3792-95  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:49 AM

This is the first considerable occasion in which history mentions that great people, who afterwards broke the Roman power, sacked the Capitol, and reigned in Gaul, Spain, and Italy. So memorable was the part which they acted in the subversion of the Western empire, that the name of Goths is frequently but improperly used as a general appellation of rude and warlike barbarism.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3812-18  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:54 AM

Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated temple subsisted at Upsal, the most considerable town of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched with the gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric superstition are contained in the Edda, * a system of mythology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their ancient traditions.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3812-24  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:54 AM

Till the end of the eleventh century, a celebrated temple subsisted at Upsal, the most considerable town of the Swedes and Goths. It was enriched with the gold which the Scandinavians had acquired in their piratical adventures, and sanctified by the uncouth representations of the three principal deities, the god of war, the goddess of generation, and the god of thunder. In the general festival, that was solemnized every ninth year, nine animals of every species (without excepting the human) were sacrificed, and their bleeding bodies suspended in the sacred grove adjacent to the temple. The only traces that now subsist of this barbaric superstition are contained in the Edda, * a system of mythology, compiled in Iceland about the thirteenth century, and studied by the learned of Denmark and Sweden, as the most valuable remains of their ancient traditions. Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity of the Edda, we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the name of Odin; the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia. The latter, the Mahomet of the North, instituted a religion adapted to the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the Baltic were subdued by the invincible valor of Odin, by his persuasive eloquence, and by the fame which he acquired of a most skilful magician. The faith that he had propagated, during a long and prosperous life, he confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths, he wounded himself in nine mortal places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the God of war.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3827-32  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:56 AM

It is supposed that Odin was the chief of a tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the Lake Mæotis, till the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the North with servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people, which, in some remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in numerous swarms from the neighborhood of the Polar circle, to chastise the oppressors of mankind.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3834-42  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:57 AM

To cross the Baltic was an easy and natural attempt. The inhabitants of Sweden were masters of a sufficient number of large vessels, with oars, and the distance is little more than one hundred miles from Carlscroon to the nearest ports of Pomerania and Prussia. Here, at length, we land on firm and historic ground. At least as early as the Christian æra, and as late as the age of the Antonines, the Goths were established towards the mouth of the Vistula, and in that fertile province where the commercial cities of Thorn, Elbing, Koningsberg, and Dantzick, were long afterwards founded. Westward of the Goths, the numerous tribes of the Vandals were spread along the banks of the Oder, and the sea-coast of Pomerania and Mecklenburgh. A striking resemblance of manners, complexion, religion, and language, seemed to indicate that the Vandals and the Goths were originally one great people. The latter appear to have been subdivided into Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidæ. The distinction among the Vandals was more strongly marked by the independent names of Heruli, Burgundians, Lombards, and a variety of other petty states, many of which, in a future age, expanded themselves into powerful monarchies.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3855-61  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 11:59 AM

The windings of that great stream through the plains of Poland and Russia gave a direction to their line of march, and a constant supply of fresh water and pasturage to their numerous herds of cattle. They followed the unknown course of the river, confident in their valor, and careless of whatever power might oppose their progress. The Bastarnæ and the Venedi were the first who presented themselves; and the flower of their youth, either from choice or compulsion, increased the Gothic army. The Bastarnæ dwelt on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains: the immense tract of land that separated the Bastarnæ from the savages of Finland was possessed, or rather wasted, by the Venedi; we have some reason to believe that the first of these nations, which distinguished itself in the Macedonian war, and was afterwards divided into the formidable tribes of the Peucini, the Borani, the Carpi, &c., derived its origin from the Germans. *
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3870-75  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:01 PM

The Goths were now in possession of the Ukraine, a country of considerable extent and uncommon fertility, intersected with navigable rivers, which, from either side, discharge themselves into the Borysthenes; and interspersed with large and leafy forests of oaks. The plenty of game and fish, the innumerable bee-hives deposited in the hollow of old trees, and in the cavities of rocks, and forming, even in that rude age, a valuable branch of commerce, the size of the cattle, the temperature of the air, the aptness of the soil for every species of gain, and the luxuriancy of the vegetation, all displayed the liberality of Nature, and tempted the industry of man. But the Goths withstood all these temptations, and still adhered to a life of idleness, of poverty, and of rapine.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Note Loc. 3875  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:01 PM

this is NOT kind to Germans...
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3889-97  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:04 PM

Intelligence was soon transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power. Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3889-3900  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:04 PM

Intelligence was soon transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power. Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians. After a long resistance, Philoppopolis, destitute of succor, was taken by storm. A hundred thousand persons are reported to have been massacred in the sack of that great city. Many prisoners of consequence became a valuable accession to the spoil; and Priscus, a brother of the late emperor Philip, blushed not to assume the purple, under the protection of the barbarous enemies of Rome.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3889-3904  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:04 PM

Intelligence was soon transmitted to the emperor Decius, that Cniva, king of the Goths, had passed the Danube a second time, with more considerable forces; that his numerous detachments scattered devastation over the province of Mæsia, whilst the main body of the army, consisting of seventy thousand Germans and Sarmatians, a force equal to the most daring achievements, required the presence of the Roman monarch, and the exertion of his military power. Decius found the Goths engaged before Nicopolis, one of the many monuments of Trajan's victories. On his approach they raised the siege, but with a design only of marching away to a conquest of greater importance, the siege of Philippopolis, a city of Thrace, founded by the father of Alexander, near the foot of Mount Hæmus. Decius followed them through a difficult country, and by forced marches; but when he imagined himself at a considerable distance from the rear of the Goths, Cniva turned with rapid fury on his pursuers. The camp of the Romans was surprised and pillaged, and, for the first time, their emperor fled in disorder before a troop of half-armed barbarians. After a long resistance, Philoppopolis, destitute of succor, was taken by storm. A hundred thousand persons are reported to have been massacred in the sack of that great city. Many prisoners of consequence became a valuable accession to the spoil; and Priscus, a brother of the late emperor Philip, blushed not to assume the purple, under the protection of the barbarous enemies of Rome. The time, however, consumed in that tedious siege, enabled Decius to revive the courage, restore the discipline, and recruit the numbers of his troops. He intercepted several parties of Carpi, and other Germans, who were hastening to share the victory of their countrymen, intrusted the passes of the mountains to officers of approved valor and fidelity, repaired and strengthened the fortifications of the Danube, and exerted his utmost vigilance to oppose either the progress or the retreat of the Goths. Encouraged by the return of fortune, he anxiously waited for an opportunity to retrieve, by a great and decisive blow, his own glory, and that of the Roman arms.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3905-27  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:06 PM

At the same time when Decius was struggling with the violence of the tempest, his mind, calm and deliberate amidst the tumult of war, investigated the more general causes, that, since the age of the Antonines, had so impetuously urged the decline of the Roman greatness. He soon discovered that it was impossible to replace that greatness on a permanent basis, without restoring public virtue, ancient principles and manners, and the oppressed majesty of the laws. To execute this noble but arduous design, he first resolved to revive the obsolete office of censor; an office which, as long as it had subsisted in its pristine integrity, had so much contributed to the perpetuity of the state, till it was usurped and gradually neglected by the Cæsars. Conscious that the favor of the sovereign may confer power, but that the esteem of the people can alone bestow authority, he submitted the choice of the censor to the unbiased voice of the senate. By their unanimous votes, or rather acclamations, Valerian, who was afterwards emperor, and who then served with distinction in the army of Decius, was declared the most worthy of that exalted honor. As soon as the decree of the senate was transmitted to the emperor, he assembled a great council in his camp, and before the investiture of the censor elect, he apprised him of the difficulty and importance of his great office. "Happy Valerian," said the prince to his distinguished subject, "happy in the general approbation of the senate and of the Roman republic! Accept the censorship of mankind; and judge of our manners. You will select those who deserve to continue members of the senate; you will restore the equestrian order to its ancient splendor; you will improve the revenue, yet moderate the public burdens. You will distinguish into regular classes the various and infinite multitude of citizens, and accurately view the military strength, the wealth, the virtue, and the resources of Rome. Your decisions shall obtain the force of laws. The army, the palace, the ministers of justice, and the great officers of the empire, are all subject to your tribunal. None are exempted, excepting only the ordinary consuls, the præfect of the city, the king of the sacrifices, and (as long as she preserves her chastity inviolate) the eldest of the vestal virgins. Even these few, who may not dread the severity, will anxiously solicit the esteem, of the Roman censor." A magistrate, invested with such extensive powers, would have appeared not so much the minister, as the colleague of his sovereign. Valerian justly dreaded an elevation so full of envy and of suspicion. He modestly argued the alarming greatness of the trust, his own insufficiency, and the incurable corruption of the times. He artfully insinuated, that the office of censor was inseparable from the Imperial dignity, and that the feeble hands of a subject were unequal to the support of such an immense weight of cares and of power. The approaching event of war soon put an end to the prosecution of a project so specious, but so impracticable; and whilst it preserved Valerian from the danger, saved the emperor Decius from the disappointment, which would most probably have attended it. A censor may maintain, he can never restore, the morals of a state.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3932-36  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:07 PM

The Goths were now, on every side, surrounded and pursued by the Roman arms. The flower of their troops had perished in the long siege of Philippopolis, and the exhausted country could no longer afford subsistence for the remaining multitude of licentious barbarians. Reduced to this extremity, the Goths would gladly have purchased, by the surrender of all their booty and prisoners, the permission of an undisturbed retreat. But the emperor, confident of victory, and resolving, by the chastisement of these invaders, to strike a salutary terror into the nations of the North, refused to listen to any terms of accommodation.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3936-37  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:08 PM

The high-spirited barbarians preferred death to slavery.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3938-48  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:09 PM

In the beginning of the action, the son of Decius, a youth of the fairest hopes, and already associated to the honors of the purple, was slain by an arrow, in the sight of his afflicted father; who, summoning all his fortitude, admonished the dismayed troops, that the loss of a single soldier was of little importance to the republic. The conflict was terrible; it was the combat of despair against grief and rage. The first line of the Goths at length gave way in disorder; the second, advancing to sustain it, shared its fate; and the third only remained entire, prepared to dispute the passage of the morass, which was imprudently attempted by the presumption of the enemy. "Here the fortune of the day turned, and all things became adverse to the Romans; the place deep with ooze, sinking under those who stood, slippery to such as advanced; their armor heavy, the waters deep; nor could they wield, in that uneasy situation, their weighty javelins. The barbarians, on the contrary, were inured to encounter in the bogs, their persons tall, their spears long, such as could wound at a distance." In this morass the Roman army, after an ineffectual struggle, was irrecoverably lost; nor could the body of the emperor ever be found. Such was the fate of Decius, in the fiftieth year of his age; an accomplished prince, active in war and affable in peace; who, together with his son, has deserved to be compared, both in life and death, with the brightest examples of ancient virtue.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3957-66  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:11 PM

In the age of the Scipios, the most opulent kings of the earth, who courted the protection of the victorious commonwealth, were gratified with such trifling presents as could only derive a value from the hand that bestowed them; an ivory chair, a coarse garment of purple, an inconsiderable piece of plate, or a quantity of copper coin. After the wealth of nations had centred in Rome, the emperors displayed their greatness, and even their policy, by the regular exercise of a steady and moderate liberality towards the allies of the state. They relieved the poverty of the barbarians, honored their merit, and recompensed their fidelity. These voluntary marks of bounty were understood to flow, not from the fears, but merely from the generosity or the gratitude of the Romans; and whilst presents and subsidies were liberally distributed among friends and suppliants, they were sternly refused to such as claimed them as a debt. But this stipulation, of an annual payment to a victorious enemy, appeared without disguise in the light of an ignominious tribute; the minds of the Romans were not yet accustomed to accept such unequal laws from a tribe of barbarians; and the prince, who by a necessary concession had probably saved his country, became the object of the general contempt and aversion.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3970-73  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:11 PM

But the Romans were irritated to a still higher degree, when they discovered that they had not even secured their repose, though at the expense of their honor. The dangerous secret of the wealth and weakness of the empire had been revealed to the world. New swarms of barbarians, encouraged by the success, and not conceiving themselves bound by the obligation of their brethren, spread devastation though the Illyrian provinces, and terror as far as the gates of Rome.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 3995-4006  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:13 PM

Valerian was about sixty years of age when he was invested with the purple, not by the caprice of the populace, or the clamors of the army, but by the unanimous voice of the Roman world. In his gradual ascent through the honors of the state, he had deserved the favor of virtuous princes, and had declared himself the enemy of tyrants. His noble birth, his mild but unblemished manners, his learning, prudence, and experience, were revered by the senate and people; and if mankind (according to the observation of an ancient writer) had been left at liberty to choose a master, their choice would most assuredly have fallen on Valerian. Perhaps the merit of this emperor was inadequate to his reputation; perhaps his abilities, or at least his spirit, were affected by the languor and coldness of old age. The consciousness of his decline engaged him to share the throne with a younger and more active associate; the emergency of the times demanded a general no less than a prince; and the experience of the Roman censor might have directed him where to bestow the Imperial purple, as the reward of military merit. But instead of making a judicious choice, which would have confirmed his reign and endeared his memory, Valerian, consulting only the dictates of affection or vanity, immediately invested with the supreme honors his son Gallienus, a youth whose effeminate vices had been hitherto concealed by the obscurity of a private station. The joint government of the father and the son subsisted about seven, and the sole administration of Gallien continued about eight, years. But the whole period was one uninterrupted series of confusion and calamity.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4006-10  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:14 PM

As the Roman empire was at the same time, and on every side, attacked by the blind fury of foreign invaders, and the wild ambition of domestic usurpers, we shall consult order and perspicuity, by pursuing, not so much the doubtful arrangement of dates, as the more natural distribution of subjects. The most dangerous enemies of Rome, during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus, were, 1. The Franks; 2. The Alemanni; 3. The Goths; and, 4. The Persians. Under these general appellations, we may comprehend the adventures of less considerable tribes, whose obscure and uncouth names would only serve to oppress the memory and perplex the attention of the reader.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4049-53  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 12:18 PM

They were distinguished from the other Germans by their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into a rude knot on the crown of the head; and they delighted in an ornament that showed their ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy. Jealous as the Germans were of military renown, they all confessed the superior valor of the Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who, with a vast army, encountered the dictator Cæsar, declared that they esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people to whose arms the immortal gods themselves were unequal.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 268-70  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 09:51 PM

The old man swung his head back and forth. The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didnt make it to suit everbody, did he? I dont believe he much had me in mind. Aye, said the old man. But where does a man come by his notions. What world's he seen that he liked better?
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 274-76  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 09:52 PM

You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that? I dont know. Believe that.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 304-8  | Added on Saturday, April 14, 2012, 09:56 PM

You see old Lonnie down there you tell him get a piece for me. Tell him old Oren. He'll buy ye a drink if he aint blowed all his money in. In the morning they ate flapjacks with molasses and the herders saddled up and moved on. When he found his mule there was a small fibre bag tied to the animal's rope and inside the bag there was a cupful of dried beans and some peppers and an old greenriver knife with a handle made of string. He saddled up the mule, the mule's back galled and balding, the hooves cracked. The ribs like fishbones. They hobbled on across the endless plain.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 387-93  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:36 PM

through the sacristy into the church again and got his saddle. He drank the rest of the bottle and he put the saddle on his shoulder and went out. The facade of the building bore an array of saints in their niches and they had been shot up by American troops trying their rifles, the figures shorn of ears and noses and darkly mottled with leadmarks oxidized upon the stone. The huge carved and paneled doors hung awap on their hinges and a carved stone Virgin held in her arms a headless child. He stood blinking in the noon heat. Then he saw the mule's tracks. They were just the palest disturbance of the dust and they came out of the door of the church and crossed the lot to the gate in the east wall. He hiked the saddle higher onto his shoulder and set out after them.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 402-5  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:37 PM

He found it about a hundred yards downriver. It was wet to its belly and it looked up at him and then lowered its head again into the lush river grass. He threw down the saddle and took up the trailing rope and tied the animal to a limb and kicked it halfheartedly. It shifted slightly to the side and continued to graze. He reached atop his head but he had lost the crazy hat somewhere. He made his way down through the trees and stood looking at the cold swirling waters. Then he waded out into the river like some wholly wretched baptismal candidate.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 434-41  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:40 PM

I dont know nothin about soldierin. The man eyed him. He took the unlit cigar from his teeth and turned his head and spat and put it back again. Where ye from? he said. Tennessee. Tennessee. Well I dont misdoubt but what you can shoot a rifle. The kid squatted in the grass. He looked at the man's horse. The horse was fitted out in tooled leather with worked silver trim. It had a white blaze on its face and four white stockings and it was cropping up great teethfuls of the rich grass. Where you from, said the kid. I been in Texas since thirty-eight. If I'd not run up on Captain White I dont know where I'd be this day. I was a sorrier sight even than what you are and he come along and raised me up like Lazarus. Set my feet in the path of righteousness. I'd done took to drinkin and whorin till hell wouldnt have me. He seen somethin in me worth savin and I see it in you. What do ye say?
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 551-53  | Added on Sunday, April 15, 2012, 04:52 PM

human flesh seemed outrageous presences even in that fabled company. The recruits rode with their animals close reined and they turned up past the courthouse and along the high walls of the carcel with the broken glass imbedded in the topmost course. In the Main Plaza a band had assembled and were at tuning their instruments. The riders turned down Salinas Street past small
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 583-89  | Added on Tuesday, April 17, 2012, 08:24 PM

He looks at his comrades. He leans toward the Mennonite. What does that mean, old man? Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed yell not cross it back. Dont aim to cross it back. We goin to Sonora. What's it to you, old man? The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making onto a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs. But they berated the old man and swore at him until he moved off down the bar muttering, and how else could it be?
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 639-43  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 11:40 AM

They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 645-48  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 11:41 AM

Now wolves had come to follow them, great pale lobos with yellow eyes that trotted neat of foot or squatted in the shimmering heat to watch them where they made their noon halt. Moving on again. Loping, sidling, ambling with their long noses to the ground. In the evening their eyes shifted and winked out there on the edge of the firelight and in the morning when the riders rode out in the cool dark they could hear the snarling and the pop of their mouths behind them as they sacked the camp for meatscraps.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 665-70  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:26 PM

They took to riding by night, silent jornadas save for the trundling of the wagons and the wheeze of the animals. Under the moonlight a strange party of elders with the white dust thick on their moustaches and their eyebrows. They moved on and the stars jostled and arced across the firmament and died beyond the inkblack mountains. They came to know the nightskies well. Western eyes that read more geometric constructions than those names given by the ancients. Tethered to the polestar they rode the Dipper round while Orion rose in the southwest like a great electric kite. The sand lay blue in the moonlight and the iron tires of the wagons rolled among the shapes of the riders in gleaming hoops that veered and wheeled woundedly and vaguely navigational like slender astrolabes and the
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 673-75  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:26 PM

All night the wind blew and the fine dust set their teeth on edge. Sand in everything, grit in all they ate. In the morning a urinecolored sun rose blearily through panes of dust on a dim world and without feature. The animals were failing. They halted and made a dry camp without wood or water and the wretched ponies huddled and whimpered like dogs.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 684-88  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:27 PM

Pray it up, some called, and kneeling he cried out among the thunder and the wind: Lord we are dried to jerky down here. Just a few drops for some old boys out here on the prairie and a long ways from home. Amen, they said, and catching up their mounts they rode on. Within the hour the wind cooled and drops of rain the size of grapeshot fell upon them out of that wild darkness. They could smell wet stone and the sweet smell of the wet horses and wet leather. They rode on.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 739-44  | Added on Friday, April 20, 2012, 04:30 PM

What do you make of that, Captain? I make it a parcel of heathen stockthieves is what I make it. What do you? Looks like it to me. The captain watched through the glass. I suppose they've seen us, he said. They've seen us. How many riders do you make it? A dozen maybe. The captain tapped the instrument in his gloved hand. They dont seem concerned, do they? No sir. They dont. The captain smiled grimly. We may see a little sport here before the day is out.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 859-67  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 01:27 PM

Atrides saw, and thus, reproachful, spoke: "O son of Peteus, Heav'n-descended King! And thou too, master of all tricky arts, Why, ling'ring, stand ye thus aloof, and wait For others coming? ye should be the first The hot assault of battle to confront; For ye are first my summons to receive, Whene'er the honour'd banquet we prepare: And well ye like to eat the sav'ry meat, And, at your will, the luscious wine-cups drain: Now stand ye here, and unconcern'd would see Ten columns pass before you to the fight." To whom, with stern regard, Ulysses thus: "What words have pass'd the barrier of thy lips, Atrides? how with want of warlike zeal Canst thou reproach us? when the Greeks again The furious war shall waken, thou shalt see (If that thou care to see) amid the ranks Of Troy, the father of Telemachus In the fore-front: thy words are empty wind." Atrides saw him chafed, and smiling, thus Recalled his former words: "Ulysses sage, Laertes' high-born son, not over-much I give thee blame, or orders; for I know Thy mind to gentle counsels is inclin'd; Thy thoughts are one with mine; then come, henceforth Shall all be well; and if a hasty word Have pass'd, may Heaven regard it as unsaid." Thus saying, them he left, and onward mov'd.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 893-914  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 01:30 PM

When to the midst they came, together rush'd Bucklers and lances, and the furious might Of mail-clad warriors; bossy shield on shield Clatter'd in conflict; loud the clamour rose. Then rose too mingled shouts and groans of men Slaying and slain; the earth ran red with blood. As when, descending from the mountain's brow, Two wintry torrents, from their copious source Pour downward to the narrow pass, where meet Their mingled waters in some deep ravine, Their weight of flood; on the far mountain's side The shepherd hears the roar; so loud arose The shouts and yells of those commingling hosts. First 'mid the foremost ranks Antilochus A Trojan warrior, Echepolus, slew, A crested chief, Thalesius' noble son. Beneath his horsehair-plumed helmet's peak The sharp spear struck; deep in his forehead fix'd It pierc'd the bone; then darkness veil'd his eyes, And, like a tow'r, amid the press he fell. Him Elephenor, brave Abantian chief, Son of Chalcodon, seizing by the feet, Dragg'd from beneath the darts, in haste to strip His armour off; but short-liv'd was th' attempt; For bold Agenor mark'd him as he drew The corpse aside, and with his brass-tipp'd spear Thrust through his flank, unguarded, as he stoop'd, Beside his shield; and slack'd his limbs in death. The spirit was fled; but hotly o'er him rag'd The war of Greeks and Trojans; fierce as wolves They fought, man struggling hand to hand with man. Then Ajax Telamon a stalwart youth, Son of Anthemion, Simoisius, slew; Whose mother gave him birth on Simois' banks, When with her parents down from Ida's heights She drove her flock; thence Simoisius nam'd: Not destined he his parents to repay Their early care; for short his term of life, By godlike Ajax' mighty spear subdued. Him, to the front advancing, in the breast, By the right nipple, Ajax struck; right through, From front to back, the brass-tipp'd spear was driv'n, Out through the shoulder; prone in dust he fell; As some tall poplar, grown in marshy mead, Smooth-stemm'd, with branches tapering tow'rd the head; Which with the biting axe the wheelwright fells, To bend the felloes of his well-built car; Sapless, beside the river, lies the tree; So lay the youthful Simoisius, felled By godlike Ajax' hand. At him, in turn, The son of Priam, Antiphus, encas'd In radiant armour, from amid the crowd His jav'lin threw; his mark, indeed, he miss'd; But through the groin Ulysses' faithful friend, Leucus, he struck, in act to bear away The youthful dead; down on the corpse he fell, And, dying, of the dead relax'd his grasp. Fierce anger, at his comrade's slaughter, filled Ulysses' breast; in burnished armour clad Forward he rush'd; and standing near, around He look'd, and pois'd on high his glitt'ring lance: Beneath his aim the Trojans back recoil'd; Nor vainly flew the spear; Democoon, A bastard son of Priam, met the blow: He from Abydos came, his high-bred mares There left to pasture; him Ulysses, fill'd With fury at his lov'd companion's death, Smote on the head; through either temple pass'd The pointed spear, and darkness veil'd his eyes.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 959-63  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:48 PM

Him, Phyleus' warrior son, approaching near, Thrust through the junction of the head and neck; Crash'd through his teeth the spear beneath the tongue; Prone in the dust he gnash'd the brazen point. Eurypylus, Euaemon's noble son, Hypsenor slew, the worthy progeny Of Dolopion brave; Scamander's priest, And by the people as a God rever'd: Him, as he fled before him, from behind Eurypylus, Euaemon's noble son, Smote with the sword; and from the shoulder-point The brawny arm he sever'd; to the ground Down fell the gory hand; the darkling shades Of death, and rig'rous doom, his eyelids clos'd.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1002-7  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:51 PM

Nor horse have I, nor car on which to mount; But in my sire Lycaon's wealthy house Elev'n fair chariots stand, all newly built, Each with its cover; by the side of each Two steeds on rye and barley white are fed; And in his well-built house, when here I came, Lycaon, aged warrior, urg'd me oft With horses and with chariots high upborne, To lead the Trojans in the stubborn fight; I hearken'd not--'twere better if I had-- Yet fear'd I lest my horses, wont to feed In plenty unstinted, by the soldiers' wants Might of their custom'd forage be depriv'd; I left them there, and hither came on foot, And trusting to my bow: vain trust, it seems; Two chiefs already have I struck, the sons Of Tydeus and of Atreus; with true aim Drawn blood from both, yet but increas'd their rage. Sad was the hour when down from where it hung I
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1028-44  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:56 PM

began, To Diomed, Lycaon's noble son: "Great son of Tydeus, warrior brave and skill'd, My shaft, it seems, has fail'd to reach thy life; Try we then now what hap attends my spear." He said; and, poising, hurl'd his pond'rous spear, And struck Tydides' shield; right through the shield Drove the keen weapon, and the breastplate reach'd. Then shouted loud Lycaon's noble son: "Thou hast it through the flank, nor canst thou long Survive the blow; great glory now is mine." To whom, unmov'd, the valiant Diomed: "Thine aim hath failed, I am not touch'd; and now I deem we part not hence till one of ye Glut with his blood th' insatiate Lord of War." He said: the spear, by Pallas guided, struck Beside the nostril, underneath the eye; Crash'd thro' the teeth, and cutting thro' the tongue Beneath the angle of the jaw came forth: Down from the car he fell; and loudly rang His glitt'ring arms: aside the startled steeds Sprang devious: from his limbs the spirit fled. Down leap'd AEneas, spear and shield in hand, Against the Greeks to guard the valiant dead; And like a lion, fearless in his strength, Around the corpse he stalk'd, this way and that, His spear and buckler round before him held, To all who dar'd approach him threat'ning death, With fearful shouts; a rocky fragment then Tydides lifted up, a mighty mass, Which scarce two men could raise, as men are now: But he, unaided, lifted it with ease. With this he smote AEneas near the groin, Where the thigh-bone, inserted in the hip, Turns in the socket-joint; the rugged mass The socket crush'd, and both the tendons broke, And tore away the flesh: down on his knees, Yet resting on his hand, the hero fell; And o'er his eyes the shades of darkness spread. Then had AEneas, King of men, been slain, Had not his mother, Venus, child of Jove, Who to Anchises, where he fed his flocks, The hero bore, his peril quickly seen: Around her son she threw her snowy arms, And with a veil, thick-folded, wrapt him round, From hostile spears to guard him, lest some Greek Should pierce his breast, and rob him of his life. She from the battle thus her son removed; Nor did the son of Capaneus neglect The strict injunction by Tydides giv'n; His reins attaching to the chariot-rail, Far from the battle-din he check'd, and left, His own fleet steeds; then rushing forward, seiz'd, And from the Trojans tow'rd the camp drove off, The sleek-skinn'd horses of AEneas' car.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1070-72  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:59 PM

The blue-ey'd Pallas, well I know, has urg'd Tydides to assail thee; fool and blind! Unknowing he how short his term of life Who fights against the Gods! for him no child Upon his knees shall lisp a father's name, Safe from the war and battle-field return'd.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Note Loc. 1072  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 05:59 PM

macbeth
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1102-5  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 06:03 PM

As when the wind from off a threshing-floor, Where men are winnowing, blows the chaff away; When yellow Ceres with the breeze divides The corn and chaff, which lies in whit'ning heaps; So thick the Greeks were whiten'd o'er with dust, Which to the brazen vault of Heav'n arose Beneath the horses' feet, that with the crowd Were mingled, by their drivers turn'd to flight.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1231-37  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 06:19 PM

Whom answer'd thus the Cloud-compeller, Jove, With look indignant: "Come no more to me, Thou wav'ring turncoat, with thy whining pray'rs: Of all the Gods who on Olympus dwell I hate thee most; for thou delight'st in nought But strife and war; thou hast inherited Thy mother, Juno's, proud, unbending mood, Whom I can scarce control; and thou, methinks, To her suggestions ow'st thy present plight. Yet since thou art my offspring, and to me Thy mother bore thee, I must not permit That thou should'st long be doom'd to suffer pain; But had thy birth been other than it is, For thy misdoings thou hadst long ere now Been banish'd from the Gods' companionship." He said: and straight to Paeon gave command To heal the wound; with soothing anodynes He heal'd it quickly; soon as liquid milk Is curdled by the fig-tree's juice, and turns In whirling flakes, so soon was heal'd the wound.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Bookmark Loc. 1243  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 06:20 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1417-33  | Added on Sunday, April 22, 2012, 08:02 PM

Glanton crossed in front of his horse, passing the reins behind his back. Watch her, Cap. She bites. She had raised her eyes to the level of his knees. Glanton pushed the horse back and took one of the heavy saddle pistols from its scabbard and cocked it. Watch yourself there. Several of the men stepped back. The woman looked up. Neither courage nor heartsink in those old eyes. He pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired. The explosion filled all that sad little park. Some of the horses shied and stepped. A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman's head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy. Glanton had already put the pistol at halfcock and he flicked away the spent primer with his thumb and was preparing to recharge the cylinder. McGill, he said. A Mexican, solitary of his race in that company, came forward. Get that receipt for us. He took a skinning knife from his belt and stepped to where the old woman lay and took up her hair and twisted it about his wrist and passed the blade of the knife about her skull and ripped away the scalp. Glanton looked at the men. They were stood some looking down at the old woman, some already seeing to their mounts or their equipage. Only the recruits were watching Glanton. He seated a pistolball in the mouth of the chamber and then he raised his eyes and looked across the square. The juggler and his family stood aligned like witnesses and beyond them in the long mud facade faces that had been watching from the doors and the naked windows dropped away like puppets in a gallery before the slow sweep of his eyes. He levered the ball home and capped the piece and spun the heavy pistol in his hand and returned it to the scabbard at the horse's shoulder and took the dripping trophy from McGill and turned it in the sun the way a man might qualify the pelt of an animal and then handed it back and took up the trailing reins and led his horse out through the square toward the water at the ford.
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 92 | Loc. 4248-50  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 05:18 PM

mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.”
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The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Highlight on Page 92 | Loc. 4248-55  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 05:19 PM

mood—“you have erred perhaps in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing.” “It seems to me that I have done you full justice in the matter,” I remarked with some coldness, for I was repelled by the egotism which I had more than once observed to be a strong factor in my friend’s singular character. “No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words. “If I claim full justice for my art, it is because it is an impersonal thing—a thing beyond myself. Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell. You have degraded what should have been a course of lectures into a series of tales.”
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4126-35  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 09:41 PM

enclosure of walls seemed to defy the fury of the Goths, and the usual garrison had been strengthened by a reenforcement of ten thousand men. But there are not any advantages capable of supplying the absence of discipline and vigilance. The numerous garrison of Trebizond, dissolved in riot and luxury, disdained to guard their impregnable fortifications. The Goths soon discovered the supine negligence of the besieged, erected a lofty pile of fascines, ascended the walls in the silence of the night, and entered the defenceless city sword in hand. A general massacre of the people ensued, whilst the affrighted soldiers escaped through the opposite gates of the town. The most holy temples, and the most splendid edifices, were involved in a common destruction. The booty that fell into the hands of the Goths was immense: the wealth of the adjacent countries had been deposited in Trebizond, as in a secure place of refuge. The number of captives was incredible, as the victorious barbarians ranged without opposition through the extensive province of Pontus. The rich spoils of Trebizond filled a great fleet of ships that had been found in the port. The robust youth of the sea-coast were chained to the oar; and the Goths, satisfied with the success of their first naval expedition, returned in triumph to their new establishment in the kingdom of Bosphorus.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4241-48  | Added on Sunday, April 29, 2012, 09:52 PM

Valerian was reduced to the necessity of intrusting his life and dignity to the faith of an enemy. The interview ended as it was natural to expect. The emperor was made a prisoner, and his astonished troops laid down their arms. In such a moment of triumph, the pride and policy of Sapor prompted him to fill the vacant throne with a successor entirely dependent on his pleasure. Cyriades, an obscure fugitive of Antioch, stained with every vice, was chosen to dishonor the Roman purple; and the will of the Persian victor could not fail of being ratified by the acclamations, however reluctant, of the captive army. The Imperial slave was eager to secure the favor of his master by an act of treason to his native country. He conducted Sapor over the Euphrates, and, by the way of Chalcis, to the metropolis of the East. So rapid were the motions of the Persian cavalry, that, if we may credit a very judicious historian, the city of Antioch was surprised when the idle multitude was fondly gazing on the amusements of the theatre. The splendid
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May

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4328-34  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 02:52 PM

The lieutenants of Valerian were grateful to the father, whom they esteemed. They disdained to serve the luxurious indolence of his unworthy son. The throne of the Roman world was unsupported by any principle of loyalty; and treason against such a prince might easily be considered as patriotism to the state. Yet if we examine with candor the conduct of these usurpers, it will appear, that they were much oftener driven into rebellion by their fears, than urged to it by their ambition. They dreaded the cruel suspicions of Gallienus; they equally dreaded the capricious violence of their troops. If the dangerous favor of the army had imprudently declared them deserving of the purple, they were marked for sure destruction; and even prudence would counsel them to secure a short enjoyment of empire, and rather to try the fortune of war than to expect the hand of an executioner.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4337-40  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 02:53 PM

The apprehensions of Saturninus were justified by the repeated experience of revolutions. Of the nineteen tyrants who started up under the reign of Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace, or a natural death. As soon as they were invested with the bloody purple, they inspired their adherents with the same fears and ambition which had occasioned their own revolt.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4534-41  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 09:47 PM

The pestilence which swept away such numbers of the barbarians, at length proved fatal to their conqueror. After a short but glorious reign of two years, Claudius expired at Sirmium, amidst the tears and acclamations of his subjects. In his last illness, he convened the principal officers of the state and army, and in their presence recommended Aurelian, one of his generals, as the most deserving of the throne, and the best qualified to execute the great design which he himself had been permitted only to undertake. The virtues of Claudius, his valor, affability, justice, and temperance, his love of fame and of his country, place him in that short list of emperors who added lustre to the Roman purple. Those virtues, however, were celebrated with peculiar zeal and complacency by the courtly writers of the age of Constantine, who was the great grandson of Crispus, the elder brother of Claudius. The voice of flattery was soon taught to repeat, that gods, who so hastily had snatched Claudius from the earth, rewarded his merit and piety by the perpetual establishment of the empire in his family.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4558-62  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 09:50 PM

The reign of Aurelian lasted only four years and about nine months; but every instant of that short period was filled by some memorable achievement. He put an end to the Gothic war, chastised the Germans who invaded Italy, recovered Gaul, Spain, and Britain out of the hands of Tetricus, and destroyed the proud monarchy which Zenobia had erected in the East on the ruins of the afflicted empire. It was the rigid attention of Aurelian, even to the minutest articles of discipline, which bestowed such uninterrupted success on his arms.
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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 (Edward Gibbon)
- Highlight Loc. 4575-82  | Added on Friday, May 04, 2012, 09:52 PM

the Gothic and Vandalic tribes embraced the favorable opportunity, abandoned their settlements of the Ukraine, traversed the rivers, and swelled with new multitudes the destroying host of their countrymen. Their united numbers were at length encountered by Aurelian, and the bloody and doubtful conflict ended only with the approach of night. Exhausted by so many calamities, which they had mutually endured and inflicted during a twenty years' war, the Goths and the Romans consented to a lasting and beneficial treaty. It was earnestly solicited by the barbarians, and cheerfully ratified by the legions, to whose suffrage the prudence of Aurelian referred the decision of that important question. The Gothic nation engaged to supply the armies of Rome with a body of two thousand auxiliaries, consisting entirely of cavalry, and stipulated in return an undisturbed retreat, with a regular market as far as the Danube, provided by the emperor's care, but at their own expense. The treaty was observed with such
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SEAL Team Six (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)
- Highlight Loc. 143-47  | Added on Saturday, May 05, 2012, 09:53 AM

Chaos erupted inside and outside of the garage. People ran everywhere. Little Birds and Black Hawks filled the skies with deafening rotor blasts. I was in my own little world, though. Nothing existed outside my scope and my mission. Let the Unit guys handle their business in the garage. My business was reaching out and touching the enemy. This wasn’t the first time I’d killed for my country. It wouldn’t be the last.
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SEAL Team Six (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)
- Highlight Loc. 152-72  | Added on Saturday, May 05, 2012, 09:56 AM

A year earlier I’d been stationed at SEAL Team Six in Virginia Beach, Virginia. While on standby, I wore my hair longer than standard navy regulations, so I could travel anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice without being marked as military. Usually I stayed clean-shaven. When I deployed with SEAL Team Two to Norway, I wore a beard, but normally I didn’t like wearing facial hair. Waiting for a callout, I practiced my skills in a building called the “kill house,” used for urban counterterrorist training, and on the shooting range. After standby would come three months in individual training phase, when we could go off to school: Bill Rogers’s shooting academy, driving school, free climbing, or whatever we put in for. The great thing about being at SEAL Team Six was that I got to go to almost any of the best schools anywhere I wanted. Training phase was also a good opportunity to take leave, maybe a vacation with the family, especially for those returning from an overseas deployment. Then came three months of getting together for Team training: diving, parachuting, and shooting school—each part of training followed by a simulated operation using the skill recently trained in. *   *   * One night I was sitting in a pizza place called the Ready Room (the same place Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn stood outside of arguing in the movie Navy SEALs) talking about golf with my seven-year-old son, Blake, and a playful grizzly bear of a guy nicknamed Smudge. In the background, a Def Leppard tune was playing on the jukebox. We inhaled a pepperoni, sausage, and onion pizza—my favorite. When on standby, I wasn’t allowed to drink more than two beers. In SEAL Team Six, we took the limit seriously. Our drink was Coors Light. Whenever traveling in groups, my Teammates and I used the cover story that we were members of the Coors Light skydiving team—our explanation for why thirty buff guys, most of us good-looking, would walk into a bar wearing Teva flip-flops, shorts, tank tops, and a Spyderco CLIPIT knife in our front pocket. Every time we walked into a bar, the men started changing their drinks to Coors Light. Then the women would begin drinking Coors Light. Coors should’ve sponsored us. The cover worked well because if people asked us about skydiving, we could answer any question. Besides, our story was too preposterous not to be real.
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SEAL Team Six (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)
- Highlight Loc. 193-97  | Added on Saturday, May 05, 2012, 10:02 AM

Three SEAL snipers joined me: Casanova, Little Big Man, and Sourpuss. In the Teams, many of the guys went by nicknames. Some guys called me Waz-man. Others had tried to call me Howie, but that didn’t stick because I wouldn’t answer to it. Sometimes a guy gets his nickname for doing something really stupid—there’s a reason a guy gets named “Drippy.” Other times a difficult name like Bryzinski becomes “Alphabet.” A Team Two friend of mine was called “Tripod.”
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 6511-30  | Added on Friday, May 11, 2012, 04:10 PM

"Wait a minute," Dawes said. "I have something for him to try." Fergesson waited wearily, as Dawes groped inside his coarse gray shirt. He fumbled and brought out something wrapped in old newspaper. It was a cup, a wooden drinking cup, crude and ill-shaped. There was a strange wry smile on his face as he squatted down and placed the cup in front of the Biltong. Charlotte watched, vaguely puzzled. "What's the use? Suppose he does make a print of it." She poked listlessly at the rough wooden object with the toe of her slipper. "It's so simple you could duplicate it yourself." Fergesson started. Dawes caught his eye -- for an instant the two men gazed at each other, Dawes smiling faintly, Fergesson rigid with burgeoning understanding. "That's right," Dawes said. "I made it." Fergesson grabbed the cup. Trembling, he turned it over and over. "You made it with what? I don't see how! What did you make it out of?" "We knocked down some trees." From his belt, Dawes slid something that gleamed metallically, dully, in the weak sunlight. "Here -- be careful you don't cut yourself." The knife was as crude as the cup -- hammered, bent, tied together with wire. "You made this knife?" Fergesson asked, dazed. "I can't believe it. Where do you start? You have to have tools to make this. It's a paradox!" His voice rose with hysteria. "It isn't possible!" Charlotte turned despondently away. "It's no good -- you couldn't cut anything with that." Wistfully, pathetically, she added, "In my kitchen I had that whole set of stainless steel carving knives -- the best Swedish steel. And now they're nothing but black ash." There were a million questions bursting in Fergesson's mind. "This cup, this knife -- there's a group of you? And that material you're wearing -- you wove that?"
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 6612-18  | Added on Friday, May 11, 2012, 04:14 PM

Dawes arranged three objects on the ash. The exquisite Steuben glassware, his own crude wooden drinking cup and the blob, the botched print the dying Biltong had attempted. "This is the way is was," he said, indicating the Steuben cup. "Someday it'll be that way again. . . but we're going up the right way -- the hard way -- step by step, until we get back there." He carefully replaced the glassware back in its metal box. "We'll keep it -- not to copy, but as a model, as a goal. You can't grasp the difference now, but you will." He indicated the crude wooden cup. "That's where we are right now. Don't laugh at it. Don't say it's not civilization. It is -- it's simple and crude, but it's the real thing. We'll go up from here."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 6674-78  | Added on Friday, May 11, 2012, 05:54 PM

He sat on the park bench, eye half shut, wasted lips twisted in a snarl of bitterness and defeat. Nobody was interested in a decrepit half-blind old man. Nobody wanted to hear his garbled, rambling tales of the battles he had fought and strategies he had witnessed. Nobody seemed to remember the war that still burned like a twisting, corroding fire in the decaying old man's brain. A war he longed to speak of, if he could only find listeners.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 7909-27  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 02:05 AM

"They didn't call it politics, back in those days. The industrialists hammered away at the people to buy and consume. It centered around this hair-sweat-teeth purity; the city people got it and developed an ideology around it." Betty set the table and brought in the dishes of food. "You mean the Purist political movement was deliberately started?" "They didn't realize what a hold it was getting on them. They didn't know their children were growing up to take such things as underarm perspiration and white teeth and nice-looking hair as the most important things in the world. Things worth fighting and dying for. Things important enough to kill those who didn't agree." "The Naturalists were country people?" "People who lived outside the cities and weren't conditioned by the stimuli." Walsh shook his head irritably. "Incredible, that one man will kill another over trivialities. All through history men murdering each other over verbal nonsense, meaningless slogans instilled in them by somebody else -- who sits back and benefits." "It isn't meaningless if they believe in it." "It's meaningless to kill another man because he has halitosis! It's meaningless to beat up somebody because he hasn't had his sweat glands removed and artificial waste-excretion tubes installed. There's going to be senseless warfare; the Naturalists have weapons stored up at party headquarters. Men'll be just as dead as if they died for something real." "Time to eat, dear," Betty said, indicating the table. "I'm not hungry." "Stop sulking and eat. Or you'll have indigestion, and you know what that means."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 8053  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 02:12 AM

consumerism taken to absurdextreme
takeover of companies
surrealism
robots
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2732-36  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 10:11 PM

"Sad!" Lehrer bristled. "Good riddance." There: that had been the foremost eccentric and idiot of the world. All Lehrer needed was the opportunity to rub shoulders with a follower of the newly parasitic Anarch. He shivered, recalling from his professional eclectic books -- examining at the library the accounts of mid-twentieth century race violence; out of the riots, lootings and killings of those days had come Sebastian Peak, originally a lawyer, then a master spellbinder, at last a religious fanatic with his own devout following. . . a following which extended over the planet, although operating primarily in the F.N.M. environs.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2754-59  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 10:13 PM

"You must recall. But that's so. You're under Phase, here. I'm oriented in the opposite, normal time-direction; therefore what for you will soon happen is for me an experience of the immediate past. My immediate past. May I take a few minutes of your time? I could well be of great use to you, sir." The man chuckled. " 'Your time.' Well-put, if I do say so. Yes, decidedly your time, not mine. Just consider that this visit by myself took place yesterday." Again he smiled his mechanical smile -- and mechanical it was; Niehls now perceived the small but brilliant
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2887-94  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 11:48 PM

On a tree branch a butterfly had begun the intricate, mysterious process of squeezing itself into a dull brown cocoon, and Eng paused to inspect its slow, labored efforts. It had its task, too, but that task, unlike his, was not hopeless. However the butterfly did not know that; it continued mindlessly, a reflex machine obeying the urgings programmed into it from the remote future. The sight of the insect at work gave Eng something to ponder; he perceived the moral in it, and, turning, walked back to confront the child who squatted on the grass with his circle of gaily-colored luminous marbles. "Look at it this way," he said to the Anarch Peak; this was probably his last try, and he meant to bring in everything available. "Even if you can't remember what a swabble is or what the Hobart Phase does, all you need to do is sign; I have the document here."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3003-16  | Added on Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 11:59 PM

"This is extremely difficult," the Bard said, with agitation. "Eng will probably throw together his first swabble at any moment. And once more we will be cycled in a retrograde direction." What worried him now was one terrible, swift insight. This would occur again and again, and each time the interval would be shortened further. Until, he ruminated, it becomes a stall within a single microsecond; no time-progression in either direction will be able to take place. A morbid prospect indeed. But one redemptive factor existed. Eng undoubtedly would perceive the problem, too. And he would seek a way out. Logically, it could be solved by him in at least one way: he could voluntarily abstain from inventing the swabble. The Hobart Phase, then, would never assert itself, at least not effectively But such a decision lay with Ludwig Eng alone. Would he cooperate, if the idea were presented to him? Probably not. Eng had always been a violent and autistic man; no one could influence him. This, of course, had helped him become an original personality; without this Eng would not have amounted to anything as an inventor, and the swabble, with its enormous effect on contemporary society, would never have come into existence. Which would have been a good thing, the Bard thought morosely. But until now we could not appreciate this. He appreciated it now.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3059-65  | Added on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 12:02 AM

"Tell him I died in office," Lehrer said harshly. "But you can't die, sir. You're under the Hobart Phase. And Mr. Arbuthnot knows that, because he mentioned it. He's been sitting out here doing a Hobart type horoscope on you, and he predicts that great things have happened to you during the previous year. Frankly he makes me nervous; some of his predictions sound so accurate." "Fortune-telling about the past doesn't interest me," Lehrer said. "In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's a hoax. Only the future is knowable." The man is a crank, all right, Lehrer realized.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3072-81  | Added on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 12:03 AM

Undoubtedly, Ludwig Eng did not intend to show up. The time, Lehrer said to himself, must be two o'clock by now. He glanced at his wristwatch. And blinked. The watch hands semaphored two-forty. "Miss Tomsen," Lehrer said into the intercom, "What time do you have?" "Leaping J. Lizards," Miss Tomsen said. "It's earlier than I thought. I distinctly recall it being two-twenty just a moment ago. My watch must have stopped." "You mean it's later than you thought. Two-forty is later than two-thirty." "No sir, if you don't resent my disagreeing with you. I mean, it's not my place to tell you what's what, but I am right. You can ask anybody. I'll ask this gentleman out here. Mr. Arbuthnot, isn't two-forty earlier than two-twenty?" Over
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3148-57  | Added on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, 12:19 AM

The wind, rushing about, gathered up a quantity of leaves, swirled them onto the branches of the trees, adhered them in a neat arrangement which decidedly added to the beauty of the trees. Already, some of the brown leaves had turned green. In a short while autumn would give way to summer, and summer to spring. He watched appreciatively. As he waited for the Erad sent out by the syndicate. Due to the crank's deranged thesis, time had once more returned to normal. Except -- Lehrer rubbed his chin. Bristles. He frowned. "Miss Tomsen," he said into the intercom, "will you step in here and tell me whether or not I need a shave?" He had a feeling that he did. And soon. Probably within the previous half hour.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3247-62  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:26 PM

"Without feedback the computer does not possess any method of determining that there has been no counterattack by its military arm. In the abeyance it will have to assume that the counterattack has taken place, but that the enemy strike was at least partially successful." Stafford said, "But there is no enemy. Who's attacking us?" Silence. Sweat made Stafford's forehead slick with moisture. "Do you know what would cause a Genux-B to conclude that we're under attack? A million separate factors, all possible known data weighed, compared, analyzed -- and then the absolute gestalt. In this case, the gestalt of an imminent attacking enemy. No one thing would have raised the threshold; it was quantitative. A shelter-building program in Asiatic Russia, unusual movements of cargo ships around Cuba, concentrations of rocket freight unloadings in Red Canada. . ." "No one," the man at the controls of the flapple said placidly, "no nation or group of persons either on Terra or Luna or Domed Mars is attacking anybody. You can see why we've got to get you over there fast. You have to make it absolutely certain that no orders emanate from Genux-B to SAC. We want Genux-B sealed off so it can't talk to anybody in a position of authority and it can't hear anybody besides us. What we do after that we'll worry about then. 'But the evil of the day --' " "You assert that in spite of everything available to it, Genux-B can't distinguish an attack on us?" Stafford demanded. "With its manifold data-collecting sweepers?" He thought of something then, that terrified him in a kind of hopeless, retrospective way. "What about our attack on France in '82 and then on little Israel in '89?"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3288-91  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:29 PM

"And you're certain," Stafford said, "that we're not under attack?" Even if Genux-B had been wrong both times before, it at least theoretically could be right this time. "If we are about to be attacked," the nearest FBI man said, "we can't make out any indication of it -- by human data processing, anyhow.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3338-40  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:32 PM

genuine threat faces us --" "I wonder," Stafford said slowly, pondering, "what's meant by 'artificial' color."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3404-20  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:41 PM

"What you're doing," the engineer said, "is implicitly maintaining that Genux-B is functioning properly. That it's somehow right; there is a hostile warlike menace to us. One so great it justifies pacification of Northern California by hard first-line weapons. As I see it, isn't it easier simply to operate from the fact that the computer is malfunctioning?" Stafford, as they walked down the familiar corridors of the vast government building, said, "Genux-B was built to sift a greater amount of data simultaneously than any man or group of men could. It handles more data than we, and it handles them faster. Its response comes in microseconds. If Genux-B, after analyzing all the current data, feels that war is indicated, and we don't agree, then it may merely show that the computer is functioning as it was intended to function. And the more we disagree with it, the better this is proved. If we could perceive, as it does, the need for immediate, aggressive war on the basis of the data available, then we wouldn't require Genux-B. It's precisely in a case like this, where the computer has given out a Red Alert and we see no menace, that the real use of a computer of this class comes into play." After a pause, one of the FBI men said, as if speaking to himself, "He's right, you know. Absolutely right. The real question is, Do we trust Genux-B more than ourselves? Okay, we built it to analyze faster and more accurately and on a wider scale than we can. If it had been a success, this situation we face now is precisely what could have been predicted. We see no cause for launching an attack; it does." He grinned harshly. "So what do we do? Start Genux-B up again, have it go ahead and program SAC into a war? Or do we neutralize it -- in other words, unmake it?" His eyes were cold and alert on Stafford. "A decision one way or the other has to be made by someone. Now. At once. Someone who can make a good educated guess as to which it is, functioning or malfunctioning."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3421-28  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:42 PM

"An ultimate decision like this has to be his. He bears the moral responsibility." "But the decision," the engineer spoke up, "is not a moral question, Stafford. It only looks like it is. Actually the question is only a technical one. Is Genux-B working properly or has it broken down?" And that's why you rousted me from bed, Stafford realized with a thrill of icy dismal grief. You didn't bring me here to implement your jerry-built jamming of the computer. Genux-B could be neutralized by one shell from one rocket launcher towed up and parked outside the building. In fact, he realized, in all probability it's effectively neutralized now. You can keep that Phillips screwdriver wedged in there forever. And you helped design and build the thing. No, he realized, that's not it. I'm not here to repair or destroy; I'm here to decide.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3431-37  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:43 PM

A diagnosis, he realized. That's all you want. This is a consultation of computer doctors -- and one repairman. The decision evidently lay with the repairman, because the others had given up. He wondered how much time he had. Probably very little. Because if the computer were correct -- Sidewalk gum machines, he pondered. Penny-operated. For kids. And for that it's willing to pacify all Northern California. What could it possibly have extrapolated? What, looking ahead, did Genux-B see?
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3464-76  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:45 PM

"I have one more spurious datum I want to feed it," Stafford said. Again he put a card in the typewriter and began to punch. IT APPEARS NOW THAT THERE NEVER WAS AN INDIVIDUAL NAMED HERBERT SOUSA; NOR DID THIS MYTHOLOGICAL PERSON EVER GO INTO THE PENNY GUM MACHINE BUSINESS. As he rose to his feet, Stafford said, "That should cancel out everything Genux-B knows or ever did know about Sousa and his penny-ante operation." As far as the computer was concerned, the man had been retroactively expunged. In which case, how could the computer initiate war against a man who had never existed, who operated a marginal concession which also never existed? A few moments later the engineer, tensely monitoring the output signal of Genux-B, said, "Now there's been a change." He studied his oscilloscope, then accepted the reel of tape being voided by the computer and began a close inspection of that, too. For a time he remained silent, intent on the job of reading the tape; then all at once he glanced up and grinned humorously at the rest of them. He said, "It says that the datum is a lie."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3478-82  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:45 PM

"A lie!" Stafford said unbelievingly. The engineer said, "It's discarded the last datum on the grounds that it can't be true. It contradicts what it knows to be valid. In other words, it still knows that Herb Sousa exists. Don't ask me how it knows this; probably it's an evaluation from wide-spectrum data over an extensive period of time." He hesitated, then said, "Obviously, it knows more about Herb Sousa then we do."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3487-89  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:46 PM

"What it must be doing," he said to the engineer, "is to go on the assumption if if X is true, that Sousa never existed, then Y must be true -- whatever 'Y' is. But Y remains untrue. I wish we knew which of all its millions of data units Y is."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3493-3509  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:47 PM

"Instruct it to produce its stored data inventory on Herb Sousa. All of it." The engineer kept his voice deliberately patient. "God knows what it's sitting on. And once we get it, let's look it over and see if we can spot what it spotted." Typing the proper requisition, Stafford fed the card to Genux-B. "It reminds me," one of the FBI men said reflectively, "of a philosophy course I took at U.C.L.A. There used to be an ontological argument to prove the existence of God. You imagine what He would be like, if He existed: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, immortal, plus being capable of infinite justice and mercy." "So?" the engineer said irritably. "Then, when you've imagined Him possessing all those ultimate qualities, you notice that He lacks one quality. A minor one - a quality which every germ and stone and piece of trash by the freeway possesses. Existence. So you say: If He has all those others, He must possess the attribute of being real. If a stone can do it, obviously He can." He added, "It's a discarded theory; they knocked it down back in the Middle Ages. But" -- he shrugged -- "it's interesting." "What made you think of that at this particular time?" the engineer demanded. "Maybe," the FBI man said, "there's no one fact or even cluster of facts about Sousa that prove to Genux-B he exists. Maybe it's all the facts. There may be just plain too many. The computer had found, on the basis of past experience, that when so much data exists on a given person, that person must be genuine. After all, a computer of the magnitude of Genux-B is capable of learning; that's why we make use of it."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3617-25  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:52 PM

The engineer, paying attention to his headphones, interrupted all at once. "An answer's coming." He began rapidly to scribble; the others collected around him to see. HERBERT SOUSA OF SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, IS THE DEVIL. SINCE HE IS THE INCARNATION OF SATAN ON EARTH, PROVIDENCE DEMANDS HIS DESTRUCTION. I AM ONLY AN AGENCY, A SO TO SPEAK CREATURE, OF THE DIVINE MAJESTY, AS ARE ALL OF YOU. There was a pause as the engineer waited, clenching the ballpoint metal government-issue pen, and then he spasmodically added: UNLESS YOU ARE ALREADY IN HIS PAY AND THEREFORE WORKING FOR HIM. Convulsively, the engineer tossed the pen against the far wall. It bounced, rolled off, disappeared. No one spoke.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3627-37  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 04:52 PM

The engineer said finally, "We have here a sick, deranged piece of electronic junk. We were right. Thank God we caught it in time. It's psychotic. Cosmic, schizophrenic delusions of the reality of archetypes. Good grief, the machine regards itself as an instrument of God! It has one more of those 'God talked to me, yes, He truly did' complexes." "Medieval," one of the FBI men said, with a twitch of enormous nervousness. He and his group had become rigid with tension. "We've uncovered a rat's nest with that last question. How'll we clear this up? We can't let this leak out to the newspapers; no one'll ever trust a GB-class system again. I don't. I wouldn't." He eyed the computer with nauseated aversion. Stafford wondered, What do you say to a machine when it acquires a belief in witchcraft? This isn't New England in the seventeenth century. Are we supposed to make Sousa walk over hot coals without being burned? Or get dunked without drowning? Are we supposed to prove to Genux-B that Sousa is not Satan? And if so, how? What would it regard as proof? And where did it get the idea in the first place?
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3692-3719  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 05:06 PM

A machine, he thought. Believing in the Evil Spirit entrenched solidly on Earth. A mass of solid-state circuitry diving deep into age-old theology, with divine creation and miracles on one side and the diabolic on the other. Plunged back into the Dark Ages, and by a man-made electronic construct, not by one of us humans. And they say humans are prone to error. When he returned home that night -- after participating in the dismantling of every Genux-B-style computer on Earth -- seven colored spheres of candy-coated gum lay in a group of the vanity table, waiting for him. It would create quite a gum empire, he decided as he scrutinized the seven bright balls, all the same color. Not much overhead, to say the least. And no dispenser would ever become empty -- not at this rate. Going to the vidphone, he picked up the receiver and began to dial the emergency number which the FBI men had given him. And then reluctantly hung up. It was beginning to look as if the computer had been right, hard as that was to admit. And it had been his decision to go ahead and dismantle it. But the other part was worse. How could he report to the FBI that he had in his possession seven candy-coated balls of gum? Even if they did divide. That in itself would be even harder to report. Even if he could establish that they consisted of illegal -- and rare -- nonterrestrial primitive life forms smuggled to Terra from God knew what bleak planet. Better to live and let live. Perhaps their reproduction cycle would settle down; perhaps after a period of swift binary fission they would adapt to a terran environment and stabilize. After that he could forget about it. And he could flush them down the incinerator chute of his conapt. He did so. But evidently he missed one. Probably, being round, it had rolled off the vanity table. He found it two days later, under the bed, with fifteen like it. So once more he tried to get rid of them all -- and again he missed one; again he found a new nest the following day, and this time he counted forty of them. Naturally, he began to chew up as many as possible -- and as fast. And he tried boiling them -- at least the ones he could find -- in hot water. He even tried spraying them with an indoor insect bomb. At the end of a week, he had 15,832 of them filling the bedroom of his conapt. By this time chewing them out of existence, spraying them out of existence, boiling them out of existence -- all had become impractical. At the end of the month, despite having a scavenger truck haul away as much as it could take, he computed that he owned two million. Ten days later -- from a pay phone down at the corner -- he fatalistically called the FBI. But by then they were no longer able to answer the vidphone.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 8223-32  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 09:11 PM

Half to himself, Fred Doubledome said, "It's psychotic, all right. I asked it if it knew where it was and it said it was floating on a raft in the Mississippi. Now get a confirm for me; ask it who it is." Dr. Pacemaker touched command-request buttons on the console of the vast computer, asking it: WHO ARE YOU? The answer appeared on the vidscreen at once. TOM SAWYER "You see?" Doubledome said. "It is totally out of touch with the reality situation. Has reactivation of Ms. Simpson begun?" "That's affirmative, Doubledome," Pacemaker said. And, as if proving him correct, doors slid aside to reveal the lead-lined container in which Ms. Simpson slept, listening to her favorite daytime soap opera, Ma Perkins.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 8416-21  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 10:20 PM

Once he had experienced vague dreams. They had to do with giving to the poor. In high school he had read Charles Dickens and a vivid idea of the oppressed had fixed itself in his mind to the point where he could see them: all those who did not have a one-room apartment and a job and a high school education. Certain vague place names had floated through his head, gleaned from TV, places like India, where heavy-duty machinery swept up the dying. Once a teaching machine had told him, You have a good heart. That amazed him -- not that a machine would say so, but that it would say it to him. A girl had told him the same thing. He marveled at this. Vast forces colluding to tell him that he was not a bad person! It was a mystery and a delight.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9247-51  | Added on Friday, May 18, 2012, 10:57 PM

McVane turned on the dome's vacuum circuit and it sucked up the spilled tea. He said nothing. He felt amorphous anger all through him, directed at nothing, fury without object, and he sensed that this was the quality of her own hate: it was a passion which went both nowhere and everywhere. Hate, he thought, like a flock of flies. God, he thought, how I want out of here. How I hate to hate like this, hating spilled tea with the same venom as I hate terminal illness. A one-dimensional universe. It has dwindled to that.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9672-83  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 04:34 PM

After a pause, Martine said, "Call Ray." "The cat --" he said. "What cat?" "There." He pointed. "In the poster. On Fat Freddy's lap. That's Dorky. Dorky killed Ray." Silence. "The presence told me," Kemmings said. "It was God. I didn't realize it at the time, but God saw me commit the crime. The murder. And he will never forgive me." His wife stared at him numbly. "God sees everything you do," Kemmings said. "He sees even the falling sparrow. Only in this case it didn't fall; it was grabbed. Grabbed out of the air and torn down. God is tearing this house down which is my body, to pay me back for what I've done. We should have had a building contractor look this house over before we bought it. It's just falling goddam to pieces. In a year there won't be anything left of it. Don't you believe me?"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9696-9705  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 04:35 PM

"Just a moment," the ship said. "I'm not equipped to do psychiatric reconstruction of you; I am a simple mechanism, that's all. What is it you want? Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing?" "I want to arrive at our destinalion," Kemmings said. "I want this trip to be over." Ah, the ship thought. That is the solution. One by one the cryonic systems shut down. One by one the people returned to life, among them Victor Kemmings. What amazed him was the lack of a sense of the passage of time. He had entered the chamber, lain down, had felt the membrane cover him and the temperature begin to drop -- And now he stood on the ship's external plaiform, the unloading plalform, gazing down at a verdant planetary landscape. This, he realized, is LR4-6, the colony world to which I have come in order to begin a new life.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 9762-72  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 04:37 PM

"You could hardly have a memory of completing the trip." "Wish fulfillment, then. It's the same thing. I'll prove it to you. Do you have a screwdriver?" "Why?" Kemmings said, "I'll remove the back of the TV set and you'll see; there's nothing inside it; no components, no parts, no chassis -- nothing." "I don't have a screwdriver." "A small knife, then. I can see one in your surgical supply bag." Bending, Kemmings lifted up a small scalpel. "This will do. If I show you, will you believe me?" "If there's nothing inside the TV cabinet --" Squatting down, Kemmings removed the screws holding the back panel of the TV set in place. The panel came loose and he set it down on the floor.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 10059-64  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:10 PM

"Both propositions are true," I said. "It is a genuine window on the next world and it is a presentation of Rautavaara's own cultural racial propensities." What we had, in essence, was a model into which we could introduce carefully selected variables. We could introduce into Rautavaara's brain our own conception of the Guide of the Soul, and thereby see how our rendition differed practically from the puerile one of the Earth persons'. This was a novel opportunity to test our own theology. In our opinion, the Earth persons' had been tested sufficiently and been found wanting.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 10065  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:11 PM

emerging theme of these stories ss
eems to be mentality and subjectivity. internalness.

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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 10137-43  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:15 PM

It is striking, the gulf which separates races developing in different star systems. We have tried to understand the Earth persons and we have failed. We are aware, too, that they do not understand us and are appalled in turn by some of our customs. This was demonstrated in the Rautavaara Case. But were we not serving the purposes of detached scientific study? I myself was amazed at Rautavaara's reaction when the Savior ate Mr. Travis. I would have wished to see this most holy of the sacraments fulfilled with the others, with Rautavaara and Elms as well. But we were deprived of this. And the experiment, from our standpoint, failed. And we live now, too, under the ban of unnecessary moral blame.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.2 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 79-82  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:19 PM

The Earth reduced to a nuclear ash heap. Robot weapons systems evolving towards baleful anti-empathetic pseudo-life. Human freedom ground down in the name of military security, economic prosperity, or even order for its own sake. Interpenetrating realities. Ironic time-loops and paradoxes. Ordinary people holding ordinary jobs as the heroes and heroines trying to muddle through.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.2 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 112-20  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:21 PM

Paranoia, in some respects, I think, is a modern-day development of an ancient, archaic sense that animals still have -- quarry-type animals -- that they're being watched. . . I say paranoia is an atavistic sense. It's a lingering sense, that we had long ago, when we were -- our ancestors were -- very vulnerable to predators, and this sense tells them they're being watched. And they're being watched probably by something that's going to get them. . . And often my characters have this feeling. But what really I've done is, I have atavized their society. That although it's set in the future, in many ways they're living -- there is a retrogressive quality in their lives, you know? They're living like our ancestors did. I mean, the hardware is in the future, the scenery's in the future, but the situations are really from the past. -- Philip K. Dick in an interview, 1974
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 94-99  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:27 PM

Think of Tung Chien in Faith of Our Fathers, and Ragel Gumm in Time Out of Joint. Their prosaic drudgery proves central to the fate of their worlds. Recall Herb Ellis in Prominent Author, an ordinary guy rewrites the Old Testament for inch-tall goatherds. Reflect on the significance of Herb Sousa's gumballs in Holy Quarrel; on the moral influence of wub-fur, in NotBy Its Cover, and the battle with the sentient pinball machine in Return Match. Small is written large. Large is written small. Shop clerks and storekeepers are just as likely as warlords and messiahs to be at Dick's ontological foci. Old Mrs. Berthelsen, in Captive Market, possesses the ultimate secret of time and space, and uses it to sell vegetables out of a wagon.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 105-11  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:29 PM

Perhaps Dick, who began his writing career in Berkeley, California, absorbed the sensibilities of a town that had a carefully nurtured liberal commitment. Perhaps Joe McCarthy and the Korean War sensitized a beginning writer's imagination. We know little of his juvenile years during the Second World War. But we can identify, early and consistently, a mistrust of the military mentality, a fear of what he had seen of the total war machine on either side. He had a great disinclination to accept the slogans of the period that supported the ends over the means. Victory at all cost for Democracy, for Freedom, for the Flag are hollow aphorisms when the price of victory is totalitarian submission to a heartless military bureaucracy: Phil feared this particular future for all of us.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 203  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:31 PM

wings time machine stability
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 599  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:31 PM

toy soldiers movement
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 1028  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:32 PM

self repairing gun as sole artifact of a civilization
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1437-49  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:37 PM

"The First Church has an interesting past," he said. "I suppose you are familiar with it, but I'd like to speak of a few points that are of relevancy to us. "It was in the twentieth century that the Movement began -- during one of the periodic wars. The Movement developed rapidly, feeding on the general sense of futility, the realization that each war was breeding greater war, with no end in sight. The Movement posed a simple answer to the problem: Without military preparations -- weapons -- there could be no war. And without machinery and complex scientific technocracy there could be no weapons. "The Movement preached that you couldn't stop war by planning for it. They preached that man was losing to his machinery and science, that it was getting away from him, pushing him into greater and greater wars. Down with society, they shouted. Down with factories and science! A few more wars and there wouldn't be much left of the world. "The Founder was an obscure person from a small town in the American Middle West. We don't even know his name. All we know is that one day he appeared, preaching a doctrine of non-violence, non-resistance; no fighting, no paying taxes for guns, no research except for medicine. Live out your life quietly, tending your garden, staying out of public affairs; mind your own business. Be obscure, unknown, poor. Give away most of your possessions, leave the city. At least that was what developed from what he told the people."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1457-62  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:38 PM

"But the wars," Conger said. "About them?" "The wars? Well, there were no more wars. It must be acknowledged that the elimination of war was the direct result of non-violence practiced on a general scale. But we can take a more objective view of war today. What was so terrible about it? War had a profound selective value, perfectly in accord with the teachings of Darwin and Mendel and others. Without war the mass of useless, incompetent mankind, without training or intelligence, is permitted to grow and expand unchecked. War acted to reduce their numbers; like storms and earthquakes and droughts, it was nature's way of eliminating the unfit.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1467-75  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:38 PM

They crossed the dark roof. "Doubtless you now know whom those bones belonged to, who it is that we are after. He has been dead just two centuries, now, this ignorant man from the Middle West, this Founder. The tragedy is that the authorities of the time acted too slowly. They allowed him to speak, to get his message across. He was allowed to preach, to start his cult. And once such a thing is under way, there's no stopping it. "But what if he had died before he preached? What if none of his doctrines had ever been spoken? It took only a moment for him to utter them, that we know. They say he spoke just once, just one time. Then the authorities came, taking him away. He offered no resistance; the incident was small." The Speaker turned to Conger. "Small, but we're reaping the consequences of it today."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1486-90  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:39 PM

The Speaker nodded. "You will be instructed on the use of the gun and the operation of the cage. You will be given all data we have on the time and location. The exact spot was a place called Hudson's field. About 1960 in a small community outside Denver, Colorado. And don't forget -- the only means of identification you will have will be the skull. There are visible characteristics of the front teeth, especially the left incisor --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1567-80  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:42 PM

He walked back through the main section of town, past the library, past the grocery store. It would not be hard; the hard part was over. He would go there; rent a room, prepare to wait until the man appeared. He turned the corner. A woman was coming out of a doorway loaded down with packages. Conger stepped aside to let her pass. The woman glanced at him. Suddenly her face turned white. She stared, her mouth open. Conger hurried on. He looked back. What was wrong with her? The woman was still staring; she had dropped the packages to the ground. He increased his speed. He turned a second corner and went up a side street. When he looked back again the woman had come to the entrance of the street and was starting after him. A man joined her, and the two of them began to run toward him. He lost them and left town, striding quickly, easily, up into the hills at the edge of town. When he reached the cage he stopped. What had happened? Was it something about his clothing? His dress? He pondered. Then, as the sun set, he stepped into the cage. Conger sat before the wheel. For a moment he waited, his hands resting lightly on the control. Then he turned the wheel, just a little, following the control readings carefully. The grayness settled down around him.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1789-98  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:50 PM

Conger looked toward the shelf. There was the neat package. He took it down and unwrapped it. He held the skull in his hands, turning it over. In spite of himself, a cold feeling rushed through him. This was the man's skull, the skull of the Founder, who was still alive, who would come here, this day, who would stand on the field not fifty yards away. What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and corroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring? What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull? Better they should enjoy their temporary lives, while they still had them to enjoy. A man who could hold his own skull in his hands would believe in few causes, few movements. Rather, he would preach the opposite --
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1887-99  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:53 PM

"Throw a bomb! You with the beard! Throw a bomb!" "Let 'em have it!" "Toss a few A Bombs!" They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands to his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken." There was a flurry of murmuring. "I have a gun," he went on. "A very good one. Made by science even more advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that, either." They were puzzled. "Why not?" someone called. At the edge of the group an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where? He remembered. The day at the library. As he had turned the corner he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1887-1902  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:54 PM

"Throw a bomb! You with the beard! Throw a bomb!" "Let 'em have it!" "Toss a few A Bombs!" They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands to his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken." There was a flurry of murmuring. "I have a gun," he went on. "A very good one. Made by science even more advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that, either." They were puzzled. "Why not?" someone called. At the edge of the group an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where? He remembered. The day at the library. As he had turned the corner he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why. Conger grinned. So he would escape death, the man who right now was voluntarily accepting it. They were laughing, laughing at a man who had a gun but didn't use it. But by a strange twist of science he would appear again, a few months later, after his bones had been buried under the floor of a jail.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1908-15  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:54 PM

A police car came on the edge of the field and stopped. The people retreated a little. Conger raised his hands. "I have an odd paradox for you," he said. "Those who take lives will lose their own. Those who kill, will die. But he who gives his own life away will live again!" They laughed, faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, remember it. Smiling, Conger awaited a death foreordained.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 1357  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 05:57 PM

back n time to kill The Founder. skull. reds. denver. sixties.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 230-72  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:03 PM

"What is it?" Bill demanded. "What's the matter, Doug?" Laura caught his arm. "What's wrong? Are you sick? Say something! Doug!" Professor Douglas jerked free and pulled open the front door. He stepped out onto the porch. There was a faint moon. A soft light hovered over everything. "Professor Douglas!" The voice again, sweet and fresh -- a girl's voice. Outlined by the moonlight, at the foot of the porch steps, stood a girl. Blonde-haired, perhaps twenty years old. In a checkered skirt, pale Angora sweater, a silk kerchief around her neck. She was waving at him anxiously, her small face pleading. "Professor, do you have a minute? Something terrible has gone wrong with. . ." Her voice trailed off as she moved nervously away from the house, into the darkness. "What's the matter?" he shouted. He could hear her voice faintly. She was moving off. Douglas was torn with indecision. He hesitated, then hurried impatiently down the stairs after her. The girl retreated from him, wringing her hands together, her full lips twisting wildly with despair. Under her sweater, her breasts rose and fell in an agony of terror, each quiver sharply etched by the moonlight. "What is it?" Douglas cried. "What's wrong?" He hurried angrily after her. "For God's sake, stand still!" The girl was still moving away, drawing him farther and farther away from the house, toward the great green expanse of lawn, the beginning of the campus. Douglas was overcome with annoyance. Damn the girl! Why couldn't she wait for him? "Hold on a minute!" he said, hurrying after her. He started out onto the dark lawn, puffing with exertion. "Who are you? What the hell do you --" There was a flash. A bolt of blinding light crashed past him and seared a smoking pit in the lawn a few feet away. Douglas halted, dumfounded. A second bolt came, this one just ahead of him. The wave of heat threw him back. He stumbled and half fell. The girl had abruptly stopped. She stood silent and unmoving, her face expressionless. There was a peculiar waxy quality to her. She had become, all at once, utterly inanimate. But he had no time to think about that. Douglas turned and lumbered back toward the house. A third bolt came, striking just ahead of him. He veered to the right and threw himself into the shrubs growing near the wall. Rolling and gasping, he pressed against the concrete side of the house, squeezing next to it as hard as he could. There was a sudden shimmer in the star-studded sky above him. A faint motion. Then nothing. He was alone. The bolts ceased. And -- The girl was gone, also. A decoy. A clever imitation to lure him away from the house, so he'd move out into the open where they could take a shot at him. He got shakily to his feet and edged around the side of the house. Bill Henderson and Laura and Berg were on the porch, talking nervously and looking around for him. There was his car, parked in the driveway. Maybe, if he could reach it -- He peered up at the sky. Only stars. No hint of them. If he could get in his car and drive off, down the highway, away from the mountains, toward Denver, where it was lower, maybe he'd be safe. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Only ten yards to the car. Thirty feet. If he could once get in it -- He ran. Fast. Down the path and along the driveway. He grabbed open the car door and leaped inside. With one quick motion he threw the switch and released the brake. The car glided forward. The motor came on with a sputter. Douglas bore down desperately on the gas. The car leaped forward. On the porch, Laura shrieked and started down the stairs. Her cry and Bill's startled shout were lost in the roar of the engine. A moment later he was on the highway, racing away from town, down the long, curving road toward Denver.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 326-32  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:04 PM

Douglas peered up. He couldn't see them, but they were there, waiting for him to get out of his car. His knowledge, his ability, would be utilized by an alien culture. He would become an instrument in their hands. All his learning would be theirs. He would be a slave and nothing more. Yet, in a way, it was a complement. From a whole society, he alone had been selected. His skill and knowledge, over everything else. A faint glow rose in his cheeks. Probably they had been studying him for some time. The great eye had no doubt often peered down through its telescope, or microscope, or whatever it was, peered down and seen him. Seen his ability and realized what that would be worth to its own culture.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 345-57  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:05 PM

Shapes. Two enormous shapes squatting down. Two incredibly huge figures bending over. One was drawing in the net. The other watched, holding something in its hand. A landscape. Dim forms too vast for Douglas to comprehend. At last, a thought came. What a struggle. It was worth it, thought the other creature. Their thoughts roared through him. Powerful thoughts, from immense minds. I was right. The biggest yet. What a catch! Must weigh all of twenty-four ragets! At last! Suddenly Douglas's composure left him. A chill of horror flashed through his mind. What were they talking about? What did they mean? But then he was being dumped from the net. He was falling. Something was coming up at him. A flat, shiny surface. What was it? Oddly, it looked almost like a frying pan.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 28  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 06:06 PM

nuclear physics professor eaten by aother race
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 28  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:26 PM

fair game ... nuclear physics professor eaten by aother race
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 360  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:30 PM

hanging stranger ... strangerhaging from lamppost to id non insect non fake humans
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 711  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:31 PM

the eyes have it ... various uses of eyes that lead one to think of them as aliens
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 3739  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:33 PM

to serve the master ... abandoned computer relic wit fake story to trick imtorebuilding
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4028-33  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:34 PM

"Try to understand, Fleming. By accustoming myself to everyday objects of my research period I transform my relation from mere intellectual curiosity to genuine empathy. You have frequently noticed I pronounce certain words oddly. The accent is that of an American businessman of the Eisenhower administration. Dig me?" "Eh?" Fleming muttered. "Dig me was a twentieth-century expression." Miller laid out his study spools on his desk. "Was there anything you wanted? If
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4033-38  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:35 PM

I've uncovered fascinating evidence to indicate that although twentieth-century Americans laid their own floor tiles, they did not weave their own clothing. I wish to alter my exhibits on this matter." "There's no fanatic like an academician," Fleming grated. "You're two hundred years behind times. Immersed in your relics and artifacts. Your damn authentic replicas of discarded trivia." "I love my work," Miller answered mildly.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4179-98  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:43 PM

Miller rubbed his forehead vaguely. "I don't know. It's all confused. I don't remember looking for any newspaper. I remember coming back in the house. Then it gets clear. But before that it's all tied up with the History Agency and my quarrel with Fleming." "What was that again about your briefcase? Go over that." "Fleming said it looked like a squashed Jurassic lizard. And I said --" "No. I mean, about looking for it in the closet and not finding it." "I looked in the closet and it wasn't there, of course. It's sitting beside my desk at the History Agency. On the Twentieth Century level. By my exhibits." A strange expression crossed Miller's face. "Good God, Grunberg. You realize this may be nothing but an exhibit? You and everybody else -- maybe you're not real. Just pieces of this exhibit." "That wouldn't be very pleasant for us, would it?" Grunberg said, with a faint smile. "People in dreams are always secure until the dreamer wakes up," Miller retorted. "So you're dreaming me," Grunberg laughed tolerantly. "I suppose I should thank you." "I'm not here because I especially like you. I'm here because I can't stand Fleming and the whole History Agency." Grunberg protested. "This Fleming. Are you aware of thinking about him before you went out looking for the newspaper?" Miller got to his feet and paced around the luxurious office, between the leather-covered chairs and the huge mahogany desk. "I want to face this thing. I'm an exhibit. An artificial replica of the past. Fleming said something like this would happen to me."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4281-93  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:47 PM

Fleming grunted sourly. "In other words, you're going to stay in there." "It's a pleasant place," Miller said easily. "Of course, my position is better than average. Let me describe it for you. I have an attractive wife: marriage is permitted, even sanctioned in this era. I have two fine kids -- both boys -- who are going up to the Russian River this weekend. They live with me and my wife -- we have complete custody of them. The State has no power of that, yet. I have a brand new Buick --" "Illusions," Fleming spat. "Psychotic delusions." "Are you sure?" "You damn fool! I always knew you were too ego-recessive to face reality. You and your anachronistic retreats. Sometimes I'm ashamed I'm a theoretician. I wish I had gone into engineering." Fleming's lips twitched. "You're insane, you know. You're standing in the middle of an artificial exhibit, which is owned by the History Agency, a bundle of plastic and wire and struts. A replica of a past age. An imitation. And you'd rather be there than in the real world." "Strange," Miller said thoughtfully. "Seems to me I've heard the same thing very recently. You don't know a Doctor Grunberg, do you? A psychiatrist."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4319-29  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:48 PM

"Of course. The exhibit is only a bridge, a link with the past. I passed through the exhibit, but I'm not there now. I'm beyond the exhibit." He grinned tightly. "Your demolition can't reach me. But seal me off, if you want. I don't think I'll be wanting to come back. I wish you could see this side, Carnap. It's a nice place here. Freedom, opportunity. Limited government, responsible to the people. If you don't like a job here you quit. There's no euthanasia, here. Come on over. I'll introduce you to my wife." "We'll get you," Carnap said. "And all your psychotic figments along with you." "I doubt if any of my 'psychotic figments' are worried. Grunberg wasn't. I don't think Marjorie is --" "We've already begun demolition preparations," Carnap said calmly. "We'll do it piece by piece, not all at once. So you may have the opportunity to appreciate the scientific and -- artistic way we take your imaginary world apart." "You're wasting your time,"
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4331-38  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:49 PM

In the living room he threw himself down in the easy chair and snapped on the television set. Then he went to the kitchen and got a can of ice cold beer. He carried it happily back into the safe, comfortable living room. As he was seating himself in front of the television set he noticed something rolled up on the low coffee table. He grinned wryly. It was the morning newspaper, which he had looked so hard for. Marjorie had brought it in with the milk, as usual. And of course forgotten to tell him. He yawned contentedly and reached over to pick it up. Confidently, he unfolded it -- and read the big black headlines. RUSSIA REVEALS COBALT BOMB TOTAL WORLD DESTRUCTION AHEAD
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 4015  | Added on Saturday, May 19, 2012, 10:49 PM

exhibit piece ... twentieth century exhibt time gate cobalt bmb world destruction
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4447-48  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:36 AM

The old woman's eyes flashed. "You people and your machines. See what you've done!" She jabbed a bony finger at him excitedly. "Now you have to fix it. You have to do something."
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 4515-24  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:40 AM

He built, and the more he built the more he enjoyed building. By now the city was over eighty miles deep and five miles in diameter. The whole island had been converted into a single vast city that honeycombed and interlaced farther each day. Eventually it would reach the land beyond the ocean; then the work would begin in earnest. To his right, a thousand methodically moving companions toiled silently on the structural support that was to reinforce the main breeding chamber. As soon as it was in place everyone would feel better; the mothers were just now beginning to bring forth their young. That was what worried him. It took some of the joy out ot building. He had seen one of the first born -- before it was quickly hidden and the thing hushed up. A brief glimpse of a bulbous head, foreshortened body, incredibly rigid extensions. It shrieked and wailed and turned red in the face. Gurgled and plucked aimlessly and kicked its feet. In horror, somebody had finally mashed the throwback with a rock. And hoped there wouldn't be any more.
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The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick Vol. 3 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 4341  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:41 AM

the crawlers ... subterranean human species branch. caused by radiation lab.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 3160  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:36 AM

holy qarrel ... supercomputer n control of military sets off red alert over gumball machines
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8172  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:42 AM

the day mr computer fell out of its tree ... computer crazy because joe contemptible is crazy
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8352  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:45 AM

the exit door leadsin ... bob bibleman gets selected to attend military college remote place. trns out to be a test re classified information about engine.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8352  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:45 AM

the exit door leads in ... bob bibleman gets selected to attend military college remote place. trns out to be a test re classified information about engine.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 9374  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:46 AM

strange memoriesof death ... apartment. lysol lady. paranoia. money separaing sane and insane. buying apartment.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 8833  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:48 AM

chains of air web of aether ... technicians on remote stations. one gets sick. death spreading organism. 
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 9492  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:49 AM

i hopei shall arrive soon ... ship suspended consciousness feeding memories depression last time real
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 9919  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 11:51 AM

rautavaaras case ... plasma beings rescue human. brain still alive. afterlife experiment. our version of god
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.5 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 10145  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 12:03 PM

the alien mind ... ship is redirected off course. kills cat. lands. takes off.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 228-34  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:14 PM

"Isn't there some limiting injunction?" Ferine asked nervously. "Were they set up to expand indefinitely?" "Each factory is limited to its own operational area," O'Neill said, "but the network itself is unbounded. It can go on scooping up our resources forever. The Institute decided it gets top priority; we mere people come second." "Will there be anything left for us?" Morrison wanted to know. "Not unless we can stop the network's operations. It's already used up half a dozen basic minerals.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 282-87  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:17 PM

The factory representative moved toward the door. "Until such time as your community finds other sources of milk supply, the network will continue to supply you. Analytical and evaluating apparatus will remain in this area, conducting the customary random sampling." Ferine shouted futilely, "How can we find other sources? You have the whole setup! You're running the whole show!" Following after it, he bellowed, "You say we're not ready to run things -- you claim we're not capable. How do you know? You don't give us a chance! We'll never have a chance!"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 330-38  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:19 PM

"Ruins-squatters," O'Neill said gloomily. "Too far from the network -- not tangent to any of the factories." "It's their own fault," Morrison told him angrily. "They could come into one of the settlements." "That was their town. They're trying to do what we 're trying to do -- build up things again on their own. But they're starting now, without tools or machines, with their bare hands, nailing together bits of rubble. And it won't work. We need machines. We can't repair ruins; we've got to start industrial production." Ahead lay a series of broken hills, chipped remains that had once been a ridge. Beyond stretched out the titanic ugly sore of an H-bomb crater, half filled with stagnant water and slime, a disease-ridden inland sea.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 375-79  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 02:21 PM

"What happens when we've identified the missing element?" Morrison asked O'Neill. "What happens when we've got two tangent factories short on the same material?" "Then," O'Neill said grimly, "we start collecting the material ourselves -- even if we have to melt down every object in the settlements."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 529-45  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 04:59 PM

A single battered ore-gathering cart was creeping clumsily toward the factory. One last damaged mobile unit trying to complete its task. The cart was virtually empty; a few meager scraps of metal lay strewn in its hold. A scavenger. . . the metal was sections ripped from destroyed equipment encountered on the way. Feebly, like a blind metallic insect, the cart approached the factory. Its progress was incredibly jerky. Every now and then, it halted, bucked and quivered, and wandered aimlessly off the path. "Control is bad," Judith said, with a touch of horror in her voice. "The factory's having trouble guiding it back." Yes, he had seen that. Around New York, the factory had lost its high-frequency transmitter completely. Its mobile units had floundered in crazy gyrations, racing in random circles, crashing against rocks and trees, sliding into gullies, overturning, finally unwinding and becoming reluctantly inanimate. The ore cart reached the edge of the ruined plain and halted briefly. Above it, the dot of black still circled the sky. For a time, the cart remained frozen. "The factory's trying to decide," Ferine said. "It needs the material, but it's afraid of that hawk up there." The factory debated and nothing stirred. Then the ore cart again resumed its unsteady crawl. It left the tangle of vines and started out across the blasted open plain. Painfully, with infinite caution, it headed toward the slab of dark concrete and metal at the base of the mountains. The hawk stopped circling. "Get down!" O'Neill said sharply. "They've got those rigged with the new bombs."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 109  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 05:17 PM

autofac .. automatic factory that wont stop producing. war started. multilevel plant. bottom is generating miniature factories.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 995-1001  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:11 PM

"And your job," Pesbroke muttered, "is to keep the swibbles working?" "They do get out of adjustment, left to themselves." "Isn't it a kind of paradox?" Pesbroke pursued. "The swibbles keep us in adjustment, and we keep them in adjustment. . . it's a closed circle." The repairman was intrigued. "Yes, that's an interesting way of putting it. But we must keep control over the swibbles, of course. So they don't die." He shivered. "Or worse."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1009-19  | Added on Sunday, May 20, 2012, 08:13 PM

"The swibble has direct access to human minds?" Anderson asked, fascinated. "Naturally. It's an artificially evolved telepathic metazoan. And with it, Wright solved the basic problem of modern times: the existence of diverse, warring ideological factions, the presence of disloyalty and dissent. In the words of General Steiner's famous aphorism: War is an extension of the disagreement from the voting booth to the battlefield. And the preamble of the World Service Charter: war, if it is to be eliminated, must be eliminated from the minds of men, for it is in the minds of men that disagreement begins. Up until 1963, we had no way to get into the minds of men. Up until 1963, the problem was unsolvable." "Thank God," Fay said clearly. The repairman failed to hear her; he was carried away by his own enthusiasm. "By means of the swibble, we've managed to transform the basic sociological problem of loyalty into a routine technical matter: to the mere matter of maintenance and repair. Our only concern is keep the swibbles functioning correctly; the rest is up to them."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1405-18  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:05 PM

Masterson and Crowley looked uneasily at each other. "She sure is mad," Masterson said apprehensively. Tellman hurried up, glanced at the old woman getting into her truck, and then bent down to root around in one of the cartons of groceries. Childish greed flushed across his thin face. "Look," he gasped. "Coffee -- fifteen pounds of it. Can we open some? Can we get one tin open, to celebrate?" "Sure," Crowley said tonelessly, his eyes on the truck. With a muffled roar, the truck turned in a wide arc and rumbled off down the crude platform, toward the ash. It rolled off into the ash, slithered for a short distance, and then faded out. Only the bleak, sun-swept plain of darkness remained. "Coffee!" Tellman shouted gleefully. He tossed the bright metal can high in the air and clumsily caught it again. "A celebration! Our last night -- last meal on Earth!" It was true. As the red pickup truck jogged metallically along the road, Mrs Berthelson scanned "ahead" and saw that the men were telling the truth. Her thin lips writhed; in her mouth an acid taste of bile rose. She had taken it for granted that they would continue to buy -- there was no competition, no other source of supply. But they were leaving. And when they left, there would be no more market.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1467-76  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:08 PM

On Masterson's shattered face glittered the first stirrings of hysteria. "Do you think--" "No, Crowley muttered. "It isn't possible." Masterson began to giggle. Tears streaked the grime of his cheeks; drops of thick moisture dripped down his neck into his charred collar. "She did it. She fixed us. She wants us to stay here." "No," Crowley repeated. He shut out the thought. It couldn't be. It just couldn't, "We'll get away," he said. "We'll assemble the remains -- start over." "She'll be back," Masterson quavered. "She knows we'll be here waiting for her. Customers!" "No," Crowley said. He didn't believe it; he made himself not believe it. "We'll get away. We've got to get away!"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 672  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:09 PM

service call ... service for unknown device by service man from future. 
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.4 (Philip K. Dick)
- Note Loc. 1096  | Added on Monday, May 21, 2012, 07:10 PM

captive market ... woman travels through time to find a captive market
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Bookmark Loc. 831  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:54 PM


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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 826-35  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:55 PM

The Optus went off, wordless. Franco joined the first mate at the bottom of the gangplank. "How's it coming?" he asked. He looked at his watch. "We got a good bargain here." The mate glanced at him sourly. "How do you explain that?" "What's the matter with you? We need it more than they do." "I'll see you later, Captain." The mate threaded his way up the plank, between the long-legged Martian go-birds, into the ship. Franco watched him disappear. He was just starting up after him, up the plank toward the port, when he saw it. "My God!" He stood staring, his hands on his hips. Peterson was walking along the path, his face red, leading it by a string.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 864-77  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:56 PM

"Let's have a look at it." He advanced, squinting critically. "You got this for fifty cents?" "Yes, sir," Peterson said. "It eats almost anything. I fed it on grain and it liked that. And then potatoes, and mash, and scraps from the table, and milk. It seems to enjoy eating. After it eats it lies down and goes to sleep." "I see," Captain Franco said. "Now, as to its taste. That's the real question. I doubt if there's much point in fattening it up any more. It seems fat enough to me already. Where's the cook? I want him here. I want to find out --" The wub stopped lapping and looked up at the Captain. "Really, Captain," the wub said. "I suggest we talk of other matters." The room was silent. "What was that?" Franco said. "Just now." "The wub, sir," Peterson said. "It spoke." They all looked at the wub. "What did it say? What did it say?" "It suggested we talk about other things."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 880-90  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:57 PM

"Oh, goodness!" the wub cried. "Is that all you people can think of, killing and cutting?" Franco clenched his fists. "Come out of there! Whoever you are, come out!" Nothing stirred. The men stood together, their faces blank, staring at the wub. The wub swished its tail. It belched suddenly. "I beg your pardon," the wub said. "I don't think there's anyone in there," Jones said in a low voice. They all looked at each other. The cook came in. "You wanted me, Captain?" he said. "What's this thing?" "This is a wub," Franco said. "It's to be eaten. Will you measure it and figure out --" "I think we should have a talk," the wub said. "I'd like to discuss this with you, Captain, if I might. I can see that you and I do not agree on some basic issues."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 903-13  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:57 PM

"And you speak English? You've been in contact with Earthmen before?" "No." "Then how do you do it?" "Speak English? Am I speaking English? I'm not conscious of speaking anything in particular. I examined your mind --" "My mind?" "I studied the contents, especially the semantic warehouse, as I refer to it --" "I see," the Captain said. "Telepathy. Of course." "We are a very old race," the wub said. "Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life. There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run, too soft to fight, too good-natured to hunt for game --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 924-32  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:58 PM

"Indeed." The Captain nodded. "But to get back to the problem. . ." "Quite so. You spoke of dining on me. The taste, I am told, is good. A little fatty, but tender. But how can any lasting contact be established between your people and mine if you resort to such barbaric attitudes? Eat me? Rather you should discuss questions with me, philosophy, the arts --" The Captain stood up. "Philosophy. It might interest you to know that we will be hard put to find something to eat for the next month. An unfortunate spoilage --" "I know." The wub nodded. "But wouldn't it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws, or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from just such infringements. Now, if each of us casts one vote
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 937-44  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 07:59 PM

The room was quiet. "So you see," the wub said, "we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Ishtar, Odysseus --" Peterson sat silently, staring at the floor. He shifted in his chair. "Go on," he said. "Please go on." "I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 973-78  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 08:00 PM

"You are quite afraid, aren't you?" the wub said. "Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you. I suggested to the native --" The gun jerked. "See," Franco said. "I thought so."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 973-87  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 08:00 PM

"You are quite afraid, aren't you?" the wub said. "Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you. I suggested to the native --" The gun jerked. "See," Franco said. "I thought so." The wub settled down, panting. It put its paws out, pulling its tail around it. "It is very warm," the wub said. "I understand that we are close to the jets. Atomic power. You have done many wonderful things with it -- technically. Apparently your scientific hierarchy is not equipped to solve moral, ethical --" Franco turned to the men, crowding behind him, wide-eyed, silent. "I'll do it. You can watch." French nodded. "Try to hit the brain. It's no good for eating. Don't hit the chest. If the rib cage shatters, we'll have to pick bones out." "Listen," Peterson said, licking his lips. "Has it done anything? What harm has it done? I'm asking you. And anyhow, it's still mine. You have no right to shoot it. It doesn't belong to you."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 1013-26  | Added on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, 08:02 PM

"It is only organic matter, now," he said. "The life essence is gone." He ate, spooning up the gravy with some bread. "I, myself, love to eat. It is one of the greatest things that a living creature can enjoy. Eating, resting, meditation, discussing things." Peterson nodded. Two more men got up and went out. The Captain drank some water and sighed. "Well," he said. "I must say that this was a very enjoyable meal. All the reports I had heard were quite true -- the taste of wub. Very fine. But I was prevented from enjoying this in times past." He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. Peterson stared dejectedly at the table. The Captain watched him intently. He leaned over. "Come, come," he said. "Cheer up! Let's discuss things." He smiled. "As I was saying before I was interrupted, the role of Odysseus in the myths --" Peterson jerked up, staring. "To go on," the Captain said. "Odysseus, as I understand him --"
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June

The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2912-24  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:09 AM

One day he and the Professor had been sitting together in the school chapel, talking leisurely. "Well, you'll be out of school, soon," the Professor had said. "What are you going to do?" "Do? Work at one of the Government Research Projects, I suppose." "And eventually? What's your ultimate goal?" Kramer had smiled. "The question is unscientific. It presupposes such things as ultimate ends." "Suppose instead along these lines, then: What if there were no war and no Government Research Projects? What would you do, then?" "I don't know. But how can I imagine a hypothetical situation like that? There's been war as long as I can remember. We're geared for war. I don't know what I'd do. I suppose I'd adjust, get used to it." The Professor had stared at him. "Oh, you do think you'd get accustomed to it, eh? Well, I'm glad of that. And you think you could find something to do?"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3137-40  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:55 AM

"I don't doubt that. My conception, my plan, came to me as soon as you began to describe your project, that day at my house. I saw at once that you were wrong; you people have no understanding of the mind at all. I realized that the transfer of a human brain from an organic body to a complex artificial spaceship would not involve the loss of the intellectualization faculty of the mind. When a man thinks, he is.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3145-53  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:56 AM

The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so. "But is it innate in mankind? I don't think so. No social custom is innate. There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians never took to it well. "But these dissenters were wiped out, and a cultural pattern was established that became the standard for the whole planet. Now it has become ingrained in us. "But if someplace along the line some other way of settling problems had arisen and taken hold, something different than the massing of men and to
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3145-53  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 09:56 AM

The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so. "But is it innate in mankind? I don't think so. No social custom is innate. There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians never took to it well. "But these dissenters were wiped out, and a cultural pattern was established that became the standard for the whole planet. Now it has become ingrained in us. "But if someplace along the line some other way of settling problems had arisen and taken hold, something different than the massing of men and to --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 3163-67  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 10:46 AM

That would be time enough, sufficient to see the direction of the new colony. After that -- Well, after that it would be up to the colony itself. "Which is just as well, of course. Man must take control eventually, on his own. One hundred years, and after that they will have control of their destiny. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps war is more than a habit. Perhaps it is a law of the universe, that things can only survive as groups by group violence.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Bookmark Loc. 16  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 10:50 AM


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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 2475  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 10:50 AM

mr spaceship ... old man brain in ship new eden
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2044-55  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 11:05 AM

The door beyond the wall opened. Taylor peered through his view slot. He saw something advancing slowly, a slender metallic figure moving on a tread, its arm grips at rest by its sides. The figure halted and scanned the lead wall. It stood, waiting. "We are interested in learning something," Franks said. "Before I question you, do you have anything to report on surface conditions?" "No. The war continues." The leady's voice was automatic and toneless. "We are a little short of fast pursuit craft, the single-seat type. We could use also some --" "That has all been noted. What I want to ask you is this. Our contact with you has been through vidscreen only. We must rely on indirect evidence, since none of us goes above. We can only infer what is going on. We never see anything ourselves. We have to take it all secondhand. Some top leaders are beginning to think there's too much room for error." "Error?" the leady asked. "In what way? Our reports are checked carefully before they're sent down. We maintain constant contact with you; everything of value is reported. Any new weapons which the enemy is seen to employ --"
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2073-87  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:12 PM

He put his shoulder against the wall and a section slid aside. Taylor gasped -- Franks and Moss were hurrying up to the leady! "Good God!" Taylor said. "But it's radioactive!" The leady stood unmoving, still holding the metal. Soldiers appeared in the chamber. They surrounded the leady and ran a counter across it carefully. "OK, sir," one of them said to Franks. "It's as cold as a long winter evening." "Good. I was sure, but I didn't want to take any chances." "You see," Moss said to Taylor, "this leady isn't hot at all. Yet it came directly from the surface, without even being bathed." "But what does it mean?" Taylor asked blankly. "It may be an accident," Franks said. "There's always the possibility that a given object might escape being exposed above. But this is the second time it's happened that we know of. There may be others." "The second time?" "The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2116-21  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:13 PM

He stood for a long time, staring ahead. Slowly, he reached for the newspaper and held it up to the light. "It looks real," he murmured. "Ruins, deadness, slag. It's convincing. All the reports, photographs, films, even air samples. Yet we haven't seen it for ourselves, not after the first months. . . ." "What are you talking about?" "Nothing." He put the paper down. "I'm leaving early after the next Sleep Period. Let's turn in."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2186-2211  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:27 PM

"This is Security," Franks said. "Have an A-class sent to me at once." The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around. "Obey!" Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. "You've been ordered!" The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building, a door slid back. Two Class-A leadies appeared, coming slowly toward them. Each had a green stripe across its front. "From the Surface Council," Franks whispered tensely. "This is above ground, all right. Get set." The two leadies approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close by the men, looking them up and down. "I'm Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to --" "This is incredible," one leady interrupted him coldly. "You know you can't live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You can't possibly remain on the surface." "These suits will protect us," Franks said. "In any case, it's not your responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be arranged?" "You human beings can't survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is directed at this area. It is in considerable danger." "We know that. Please assemble the Council." Franks looked around him at the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain quality came into his voice. "Is it night or day right now?" "Night," one of the A-class leadies said, after a pause. "Dawn is coming in about two hours." Franks nodded. "We'll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can observe the sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it." A stir went through the leadies. "It is an unpleasant sight," one of the leadies said. "You've seen the photographs; you know what you'll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film can convey."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2223-27  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:29 PM

"This astonishes and perplexes us," it said. "Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here --" "We know," Franks said impatiently. "However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise." "If you insist."
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2223-36  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:29 PM

"This astonishes and perplexes us," it said. "Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here --" "We know," Franks said impatiently. "However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise." "If you insist." There was silence. The leadies seemed to be conferring with each other, although the three men heard no sound. "For your own good," the leader said at last, "you must go back down. We have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong thing for your own good." "We are human beings," Franks said sharply. "Don't you understand? We're men, not machines." "That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for over fifty more minutes. Therefore --" The leadies moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon, his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal figures.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2237-2306  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:33 PM

"We must insist," the leader said, its voice without emotion. "We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary." "What'll we do?" Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. "Shall we blast them?" Franks shook his head. "All right," he said to the leader. "We'll go back." He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadies followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking. At the lip, Franks turned. "We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if --" "Here comes the car," Taylor said. There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadies moved toward the edge to receive it. "I am sorry," the leader said, "but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit." The car rose to the surface. Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men. Moss breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this does change things. It came off just right." The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadies. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse. "Even now," the leader said, "we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared." "Very carefully," Franks said. They closed in. "How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands --" The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadies were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies. "They can't fire back," Franks said calmly. "This is another bluff. They've tried to bluff us all the way." He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. "They can only try to frighten us. Remember that." They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out. Then it was over. The leadies were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadies were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them. Franks breathed a shuddering sigh. "All right," he said. "You can take us back to the windows. It won't be long now." The leadies separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks.and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows. "Take us outside," Franks said impatiently. "We'll see it directly, not in here." A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily. "Come on," Franks said. "Outside." He walked out through the door, the others following him. They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible. "It'll be bright enough to see in a few minutes," Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. "It's worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it's the last thing we see --" "Watch," Franks snapped. They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed. "A chicken!" Taylor murmured. "Did you hear?" Behind them, the leadies had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them. "God in heaven!" Franks exclaimed. Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them. "Look!" Moss whispered. Color came into the sky. The sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind. Franks turned to the row of leadies behind them. "Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface --" "Yes," an A-class leady admitted. "As soon as you left, the war ceased. You're right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up." "But why?" Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below, "Why?" "You created us," the leady said, "to pursue the
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2237-2308  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:33 PM

"We must insist," the leader said, its voice without emotion. "We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary." "What'll we do?" Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. "Shall we blast them?" Franks shook his head. "All right," he said to the leader. "We'll go back." He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadies followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking. At the lip, Franks turned. "We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if --" "Here comes the car," Taylor said. There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadies moved toward the edge to receive it. "I am sorry," the leader said, "but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit." The car rose to the surface. Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men. Moss breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this does change things. It came off just right." The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadies. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse. "Even now," the leader said, "we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared." "Very carefully," Franks said. They closed in. "How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands --" The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadies were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies. "They can't fire back," Franks said calmly. "This is another bluff. They've tried to bluff us all the way." He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. "They can only try to frighten us. Remember that." They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out. Then it was over. The leadies were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadies were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them. Franks breathed a shuddering sigh. "All right," he said. "You can take us back to the windows. It won't be long now." The leadies separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks.and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows. "Take us outside," Franks said impatiently. "We'll see it directly, not in here." A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily. "Come on," Franks said. "Outside." He walked out through the door, the others following him. They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible. "It'll be bright enough to see in a few minutes," Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. "It's worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it's the last thing we see --" "Watch," Franks snapped. They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed. "A chicken!" Taylor murmured. "Did you hear?" Behind them, the leadies had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them. "God in heaven!" Franks exclaimed. Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them. "Look!" Moss whispered. Color came into the sky. The sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind. Franks turned to the row of leadies behind them. "Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface --" "Yes," an A-class leady admitted. "As soon as you left, the war ceased. You're right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up." "But why?" Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below, "Why?" "You created us," the leady said, "to pursue the war for you, while you human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose, except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Bookmark Loc. 2308  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:33 PM


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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2308-11  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:34 PM

"We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2311-21  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:35 PM

"At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost -- not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind. "It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him." Taylor was listening intently. "Do you think this time will come?" "Of course. It has almost arrived now. This is the last war. Man is almost united into one final culture -- a world culture. At this point he stands continent against continent, one half of the world against the other half. Only a single step remains, the jump to a unified culture. Man has climbed slowly upward, tending always toward unification of his culture.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2463-70  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:45 PM

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn't be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles. "It has taken thousands of generations to achieve," the A-class leady concluded. "Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history." "The conquest of space," breathed Colonel Borodoy. "The meaning of life," Moss added. "Eliminating hunger and poverty," said Taylor.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Highlight Loc. 2463-74  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:45 PM

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn't be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles. "It has taken thousands of generations to achieve," the A-class leady concluded. "Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history." "The conquest of space," breathed Colonel Borodoy. "The meaning of life," Moss added. "Eliminating hunger and poverty," said Taylor. The leady opened the door of the ship. "All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great." The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.
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The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol.1 (Philip K Dick)
- Note Loc. 1916  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:46 PM

the defenders ... underground.robots on surface. leadies. new civilization.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 85-120  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 02:56 PM

An enormous man dressed in an oilcloth slicker had entered the tent and removed his hat. He was bald as a stone and he had no trace of beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them. He was close on to seven feet in height and he stood smoking a cigar even in this nomadic house of God and he seemed to have removed his hat only to chase the rain from it for now he put it on again. The reverend had stopped his sermon altogether. There was no sound in the tent. All watched the man. He adjusted the hat and then pushed his way forward as far as the crateboard pulpit where the reverend stood and there he turned to address the reverend's congregation. His face was serene and strangely childlike. His hands were small. He held them out. Ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man holding this revival is an imposter. He holds no papers of divinity from any institution recognized or improvised. He is altogether devoid of the least qualification to the office he has usurped and has only committed to memory a few passages from the good book for the purpose of lending to his fraudulent sermons some faint flavor of the piety he despises. In truth, the gentleman standing here before you posing as a minister of the Lord is not only totally illiterate but is also wanted by the law in the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Oh God, cried the reverend. Lies, lies! He began reading feverishly from his opened bible. On a variety of charges the most recent of which involved a girl of eleven years—I said eleven—who had come to him in trust and whom he was surprised in the act of violating while actually clothed in the livery of his God. A moan swept through the crowd. A lady sank to her knees. This is him, cried the reverend, sobbing. This is him. The devil. Here he stands. Let's hang the turd, called an ugly thug from the gallery to the rear. Not three weeks before this he was run out of Fort Smith Arkansas for having congress with a goat. Yes lady, that is what I said. Goat. Why damn my eyes if I wont shoot the son of a bitch, said a man rising at the far side of the tent, and drawing a pistol from his boot he leveled it and fired. The young teamster instantly produced a knife from his clothing and unseamed the tent and stepped outside into the rain. The kid followed. They ducked low and ran across the mud toward the hotel. Already gunfire was general within the tent and a dozen exits had been hacked through the canvas walls and people were pouring out, women screaming, folk stumbling, folk trampled underfoot in the mud. The kid and his friend reached the hotel gallery and wiped the water from their eyes and turned to watch. As they did so the tent began to sway and buckle and like a huge and wounded medusa it slowly settled to the ground trailing tattered canvas walls and ratty guyropes over the ground. The baldheaded man was already at the bar when they entered. On the polished wood before him were two hats and a double handful of coins. He raised his glass but not to them. They stood up to the bar and ordered whiskeys and the kid laid his money down but the barman pushed it back with his thumb and nodded. These here is on the judge, he said. They drank. The teamster set his glass down and looked at the kid or he seemed to, you couldnt be sure of his gaze. The kid looked down the bar to where the judge stood. The bar was that tall not every man could even get his elbows up on it but it came just to the judge's waist and he stood with his hands placed flatwise on the wood, leaning slightly, as if about to give another address. By now men were piling through the doorway, bleeding, covered in mud, cursing. They gathered about the judge. A posse was being drawn to pursue the preacher. Judge, how did you come to have the goods on that no-account? Goods? said the judge. When was you in Fort Smith? Fort Smith? Where did you know him to know all that stuff on him? You mean the Reverend Green? Yessir. I reckon you was in Fort Smith fore ye come out here. I was never in Fort Smith in my life. Doubt that he was. They looked from one to the other. Well where was it you run up on him? I never laid eyes on the man before today. Never even heard of him. He raised his glass and drank. There was a strange silence in the room. The men looked like mud effigies. Finally someone began to laugh. Then another. Soon they were all laughing together. Someone bought the judge a drink.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 171-83  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:07 PM

You got a match? The kid searched his pockets and came up with a crushed and stained wooden box. The man took it from him. Need a little tinder here, he said. He was crumbling the box and stacking the bits against the door. He struck a match and set the pieces alight. He pushed the little pile of burning wood under the door and added more matches. Is he in there? said the boy. That's what we're fixin to see. A dark curl of smoke rose, a blue flame of burning varnish. They squatted in the hallway and watched. Thin flames began to run up over the panels and dart back again. The watchers looked like forms excavated from a bog. Tap on the door now, said Toadvine. The kid rose. Toadvine stood up and waited. They could hear the flames crackling inside the room. The kid tapped. You better tap louder than that. This man drinks some. He balled his fist and lambasted the door about five times. Hell fire, said a voice. Here he comes. They waited. You hot son of a bitch, said the voice. Then the knob turned and the door opened. He stood in his underwear holding in one hand the towel he'd used to turn the doorknob with. When he saw them he turned and started back into the room but Toadvine seized him about the neck and rode him to the floor and held him by the hair and began to pry out an eyeball with his thumb. The man grabbed his wrist and bit it.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 191-93  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:08 PM

Toadvine was running down the street, waving his fists above his head crazily and laughing. He looked like a great clay voodoo doll made animate and the kid looked like another. Behind them flames were licking at the top corner of the hotel and clouds of dark smoke rose into the warm Texas morning.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 311-14  | Added on Friday, June 01, 2012, 03:51 PM

His eyes lay dark and tunneled in a caved and haunted face and a foul stench rose from the wells of his boot tops. The sun was just down and to the west lay reefs of bloodred clouds up out of which rose little desert nighthawks like fugitives from some great fire at the earth's end. He spat a dry white spit and clumped the cracked wooden stirrups against the mule's ribs and they staggered into motion again.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 595-96  | Added on Wednesday, June 06, 2012, 10:14 PM

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. He had been holding his hat in his hands and now he set it upon his head again and turned and went out the gate.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Bookmark Loc. 634  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:01 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 635-38  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:01 PM

On this day two men fell sick and one died before dark. In the morning there was another ill to take his place. The two of them were laid among sacks of beans and rice and coffee in the supply-wagon with blankets over them to keep them from the sun and they rode with the slamming and jarring of the wagon half shirring the meat from their bones so that they cried out to be left and then they died. The men turned out in the early morning darkness to dig their graves with the bladebones of antelope and they covered them with stones and rode on again.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 657-63  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:04 PM

In two days they began to come upon bones and cast-off apparel. They saw halfburied skeletons of mules with the bones so white and polished they seemed incandescent even in that blazing heat and they saw panniers and packsaddles and the bones of men and they saw a mule entire, the dried and blackened carcass hard as iron. They rode on. The white noon saw them through the waste like a ghost army, so pale they were with dust, like shades of figures erased upon a board. The wolves loped paler yet and grouped and skittered and lifted their lean snouts on the air. At night the horses were fed by hand from sacks of meal and watered from buckets. There was no more sickness. The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 739-87  | Added on Thursday, June 07, 2012, 06:30 PM

What do you make of that, Captain? I make it a parcel of heathen stockthieves is what I make it. What do you? Looks like it to me. The captain watched through the glass. I suppose they've seen us, he said. They've seen us. How many riders do you make it? A dozen maybe. The captain tapped the instrument in his gloved hand. They dont seem concerned, do they? No sir. They dont. The captain smiled grimly. We may see a little sport here before the day is out. The first of the herd began to swing past them in a pall of yellow dust, rangy slatribbed cattle with horns that grew agoggle and no two alike and small thin mules coalblack that shouldered one another and reared their malletshaped heads above the backs of the others and then more cattle and finally the first ofthe herders riding up the outer side and keeping the stock between themselves and the mounted company. Behind them came a herd of several hundred ponies. The sergeant looked for Candelario. He kept backing along the ranks but he could not find him. He nudged his horse through the column and moved up the far side. The lattermost of the drovers were now coming through the dust and the captain was gesturing and shouting. The ponies had begun to veer off from the herd and the drovers were beating their way toward this armed company met with on the plain. Already you could see through the dust on the ponies' hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes niade from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies. A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. Oh my god, said the sergeant. A rattling drove of arrows passed through the company and men tottered and dropped from their mounts. Horses were rearing and plunging and the mongol hordes swung up along their flanks and turned and rode full upon them with lances. The company was now come to a halt and the first shots were fired and the gray riflesmoke rolled through the dust as the lancers breached their ranks. The kid's horse sank beneath him with a long pneumatic sigh. He had already fired his rifle and now he sat on the ground and fumbled with his shotpouch. A man near him sat with an arrow hanging out of his neck. He was bent slightly as if in prayer. The kid would have reached for the bloody hoop-iron point but then he saw that the man wore another arrow in his breast to the fletching and he was dead. Everywhere there were horses down and men scrambling and he saw a man who sat charging his rifle while blood ran from his ears and he saw men with their revolvers disassembled trying to fit the spare loaded cylinders they carried and he saw men kneeling who tilted and clasped their shadows on the ground and he saw men lanced and caught up by the hair and scalped standing and he saw the horses of war trample down the fallen and a little whitefaced pony with one clouded eye leaned out of the murk and snapped at him like a dog and was gone. Among the wounded some seemed dumb and without understanding and some were pale through the masks of dust and some had fouled themselves or tottered brokenly onto the spears of the savages. Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows. And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 796-802  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 11:45 AM

With darkness one soul rose wondrously from among the new slain dead and stole away in the moonlight. The ground where he'd lain was soaked with blood and with urine from the voided bladders of the animals and he went forth stained and stinking like some reeking issue of the incarnate dam of war herself. The savages had moved to higher ground and he could see the light from their fires and hear them singing, a strange and plaintive chanting up there where they'd gone to roast mules. He made his way among the pale and dismembered, among the sprawled and legflung horses, and he took a reckoning by the stars and set off south afoot. The night wore a thousand shapes out there in the brush and he kept his eyes to the ground ahead. Starlight and waning moon made a faint shadow of his wanderings on the dark of the desert and all along the ridges the wolves were howling and moving north toward the slaughter. He walked all night and still he could see the fires behind him.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 833-36  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 11:48 AM

They went slowly through the little mud streets. There were goats and sheep slain in their pens and pigs dead in the mud. They passed mud hovels where people lay murdered in all attitudes of death in the doorways and the floors, naked and swollen and strange. They found plates of food half eaten and a cat came out and sat in the sun and watched them without interest and flies snarled everywhere in the still hot air.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 941-49  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:19 PM

He swung the stopper up from where it hung by a thong and drove it home with the heel of his hand. He pitched the canteen to the man behind him and looked down at the travelers. Why you no hide? he said. From you? From I. We were thirsty. Very thirsty. Eh? They didnt answer. He was tapping the flat of the sword lightly against the horn of his saddle and he seemed to be forming words in his mind. He leaned slightly to them. When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf. He smiled at them and raised the sword and ran it back where it had come from and turned the horse smartly and trotted it through the horses behind him and the men mounted up and followed and soon all were gone. Sproule sat without moving. The kid looked at him but he would look away. He was wounded in an enemy country far from home and although his eyes took in the alien stones about yet the greater void beyond seemed to swallow up his soul.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1053-55  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:47 PM

the birds holding out their own dark vestments in postures of strange benevolence while about them flapped on the wind the dried scalps of slaughtered indians strung on cords, the long dull hair swinging like the filaments of certain seaforms and the dry hides clapping against the stones.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1056-60  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:48 PM

They passed old alms-seekers by the church door with their seamy palms outheld and maimed beggars sad-eyed in rags and children asleep in the shadows with flies walking their dreamless faces. Dark coppers in a clackdish, the shriveled eyes of the blind. Scribes crouched by the steps with their quills and inkpots and bowls of sand and lepers moaning through the streets and naked dogs that seemed composed of bone entirely and vendors of tamales and old women with faces dark and harrowed as the land squatting in the gutters over charcoal fires where blackened strips of anonymous meat sizzled and spat.
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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Highlight Loc. 1056-63  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:48 PM

They passed old alms-seekers by the church door with their seamy palms outheld and maimed beggars sad-eyed in rags and children asleep in the shadows with flies walking their dreamless faces. Dark coppers in a clackdish, the shriveled eyes of the blind. Scribes crouched by the steps with their quills and inkpots and bowls of sand and lepers moaning through the streets and naked dogs that seemed composed of bone entirely and vendors of tamales and old women with faces dark and harrowed as the land squatting in the gutters over charcoal fires where blackened strips of anonymous meat sizzled and spat. Small orphans were abroad like irate dwarfs and fools and sots drooling and flailing about in the small markets of the metropolis and the prisoners rode past the carnage in the meatstalls and the waxy smell where racks of guts hung black with flies and flayings of meat in great red sheets now darkened with the advancing day and the flensed and naked skulls of cows and sheep with their dull blue eyes glaring wildly and the stiff bodies of deer and javelina and ducks and quail and parrots, all wild things from the country round hanging head downward from hooks.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1246-49  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:52 PM

First through the Trojan phalanx broke his way The son of Telamon, the prop of Greece, The mighty Ajax; on his friends the light Of triumph shedding, as Eusorus' son He smote, the noblest of the Thracian bands, Valiant and strong, the gallant Acamas. Full in the front, beneath the plumed helm, The sharp spear struck, and crashing thro' the bone, The warrior's eyes were clos'd in endless night.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1257-68  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 12:54 PM

Then Menelaus, good in battle, took Adrastus captive; for his horses, scar'd And rushing wildly o'er the plain, amid The tangled tamarisk scrub his chariot broke, Snapping the pole; they with the flying crowd Held city-ward their course; he from the car Hurl'd headlong, prostrate lay beside the wheel, Prone on his face in dust; and at his side, Poising his mighty spear, Atrides stood. Adrastus clasp'd his knees, and suppliant cried, "Spare me, great son of Atreus! for my life Accept a price; my wealthy father's house A goodly store contains of brass, and gold, And well-wrought iron; and of these he fain Would pay a noble ransom, could he hear That in the Grecian ships I yet surviv'd." His words to pity mov'd the victor's breast; Then had he bade his followers to the ships The captive bear; but running up in haste. Fierce Agamemnon cried in stern rebuke; "Soft-hearted Menelaus, why of life So tender? Hath thy house receiv'd indeed Nothing but benefits at Trojan hands? Of that abhorred race, let not a man Escape the deadly vengeance of our arms; No, not the infant in its mother's womb; No, nor the fugitive; but be they all, They and their city, utterly destroy'd, Uncar'd for, and from mem'ry blotted out." Thus as he spoke, his counsel, fraught with death, His brother's purpose chang'd; he with his hand Adrastus thrust aside, whom with his lance Fierce Agamemnon through the loins transfix'd; And, as he roll'd in death, upon his breast Planting his foot, the ashen spear withdrew.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Highlight Loc. 1304-7  | Added on Saturday, June 09, 2012, 01:03 PM

Nine days he feasted him, nine oxen slew; But with the tenth return of rosy morn He question'd him, and for the tokens ask'd He from his son-in-law, from Proetus, bore. The tokens' fatal import understood, He bade him first the dread Chimaera slay; A monster, sent from Heav'n, not human born, With head of lion, and a serpent's tail, And body of a goat; and from her mouth There issued flames of fiercely-burning fire: Yet her, confiding in the Gods, he slew.
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The Iliad (Homer)
- Bookmark Loc. 1326  | Added on Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:46 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Bookmark Loc. 1073  | Added on Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:47 PM


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Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
- Bookmark Loc. 1447  | Added on Sunday, June 24, 2012, 12:44 PM

December


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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 112-13  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:45 PM

By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mindbending crisis.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 112-15  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:45 PM

By bringing in hundreds of thugs, fixers and fascists to run the Government, he was able to crank almost every problem he touched into a mindbending crisis. About the only disaster he hasn't brought down on us yet is a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both. . . but he still has time, and the odds on his actually doing it are not all that long.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 127-28  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:46 PM

which is understandable, perhaps, because when you're locked into that kind of do-or-die gig, you keep pushing and ask questions later.
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hunter s thompson - the great shark hunt (The Great Shark Hunt)
- Highlight Loc. 147-52  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 01:48 PM

And how much longer will we have to wait before some high-powered shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face-to-face with the ugly question that is already so close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it? Is the democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn't worked out, to hell with it. That milkman who made me his bagman was no fool. I took my orders from him and it never 11 occurred to me to wonder where his came from.
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Soul Music (Terry Pratchett)
- Highlight Loc. 48-52  | Added on Saturday, December 15, 2012, 02:57 PM

Miss Butts knew how to handle these occasions. It was painful, but the thing ran its course. There was shock, and tears, and then, eventually, it was all over. People had ways of dealing with it. There was a sort of script built into the human mind. Life went on. But the child had just sat there. It was the politeness that scared the daylights out of Miss Butts. She was not an unkind woman, despite a lifetime of being gently dried out on the stove of education, but she was conscientious and a stickler for propriety and thought she knew how this sort of thing should go and was vaguely annoyed that it wasn’t going.
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