A terrible book to read. It is a social-satirical novel, "invites us to consider which is to blame: the opportunist or the society that makes opportunism necessary". It is hard to read since not a single main character is likeable. The book is over 700 pages long, and there are often passages where the author seems to be talking to his contemporaries, during which I had absolutely no idea what he was saying, or even cared to know.
"Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?"
"Who has not remarked the readiness with which the closest of friends and honestest of men suspect and accuse each other of cheating when they fall out on money matters? Everybody does it. Everybody is right, I suppose, and the world is a rogue."
"At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw."
"Praise, everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word."
"It was his counsel had brought about this marriage, and all that was to ensue from it. And why was it? Because he loved her so much that he could not bear to see her unhappy: or because his own sufferings of suspense were so unendurable that he was glad to crush them at once--as we hasten a funeral after a death, or, when a separation from thos we love is imminent, cannot rest until the parting be over."
"He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with which dullness take the lead in the world?"
"And whereas, there is now hardly a town of France or Italy in which you shall not see some noble countryman of our own, with that happy swagger and insolence of demeanour which we carry everywhere, swindling inn-landlords, passing fictitious cheques of upon crdulous bankers...easy travellers of their money at cards,--even public libraries of their books:--thirty years ago you needed but to be a Milor Anglais, travelling in a private carriage, and credit was at your hand wherever you chose to seek it, and gentlemen, instead of cheating, were cheated."
"And as dubious goods or letters are passed through an oven at quarantine, sprinkled with aromatic vinegar, and then pronounced clean--many a lady whose reputation would be doubtful otherwise and liable to give infection, passes through the wholesome ordeal of the royal presence, and issues from it free from all taint."
Georgy's genius - "On Selfishness.--Of all the vices which degrade the human characte, Selfishness is the most odious and contemptible. An undue love ofSelf leads to the most monstrous crimes; and occasions the greatest misfortunes both in States and Families..." uses examples of Achilles and Napoleon to further his point.
On Amelia's captivity. "The hidden and awful Wisdom which apportions the destinies of mankind is pleased so to humiliate and cast down the tender, good, and wise; and to set up the selfish, the foolish, or the wicked. oh, be humble, my brother, in your prosperity! Be gentle with those who are less lucky, if not more deserving. Think, what right have you to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire." (someone wrote best passage ever)
Matilda, by Roald Dahl
This was one of my favorite books as a child. I was actually a little disappointed when I read it again, but it is a great children's book as Dahl puts a fun spin on many harsh truths about life.
"She seemed to know that neither crying nor sulking ever got anyone anywhere. The only sensible thing to do when you are attacked is, as Napoleon once said, to counter-attack."
"I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl."
"Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable. No parent is going to believe this pigtail story, not in a million years. Mine wouldn't. They'd call me a liar."
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, by Kurt Vonnegut
Another satire about human nature with topics including capitalism, socialism and sexuality.
Wisdom of the Senator, Eliot's super capitilistic father:
"In summation: he said, I see two alternaties before us. We can write morals into law, and enforce those morals harshly, or we can return to a true Free Enterprise System, which has the sink-or-swim justice of Caesar Augustus built into it. I emphatically favor the latter alternative. We must be hard, for we must become again a nation of swimmers, with the sinkers quietly disposing of themselves.""Eliot did to the word love what the Russians did to the word democracy. If Eliot is going to love everybody, no matter what they are, no matter what they do, then those of us who love particular people for particular reasons had better find ourselves a new word." He looked up at an oil painting of his deceased wife. "For instance--I loved her more than I loved our garbage collector, which makes me guilty of the most unspeakable of modern crimes: Dis-crim-i-nay-tion."
About the law he tried to create that would make publication or possession of obscene materials a Federal offense, which currently exists in the Comstock Laws, but in addition defined obscenity. "The difference between pornography and art is bodily hair." So are women who have gotten a Brazilian considered art?
The only character in the book that I would say is a hero, and I believe the only person Vonnegut is defining as truly good--Harry Pena
"He lit a cigar, departed--went fishing for real fish with his two real sons--in a real boat on a salty sea."
"There were opera glasses on each table, in order that guests might watch Harry and his boys clean out their traps. And when the fisherfoldk were performing out there on the briny deep, Bunny went from table to table, explaining with gusto and expertise what they were doing, and why."
"All three were as satisfied with life as men can ever be."
"Real people don't make their livings that way any more. Those three romantics out there make as much sense as marie Antoinette and her milkmaids. When the bankruptcy proceedings begin--in a week, a month, a year--they'll find out that their only economic value was as animated wallpaper for my restaurant here." Bunny, to his credit, was not happy about this. "that's all over, men working with their hands and backs. They are not needed."
What is wrong with much of society: "Your fortune is the most important single determinant of what you think of yourself and of what others think of you. Because of the money, you are extraordinary. Without it, for example, you would not now be taking the priceless time of a senior partner in mcAlister, Robjent, Reed and McGee. "If you give away your money you will become utterly ordinary, unlessyou happen to be a genius...And genius or not, without money you'll surely be less comfortable and free. Not only that, but you will be volunteering your descendents for the muggy, sorehead way of life peculiar to persons who might have been rich and free, had not a soft-headed ancestor piddled a fortune away...Money is dehydrated Utopia...to be born rich and to stay rich is something less than a felony."
"This is America! And america is one place in this sorry world where people shouldn't have to apologize for being poor. The question in America should be, 'Is this guy a good citizen? Is he honest? Does he pull his own weight?'"
"What you did in Rosewater County was far from insane. It was quite possibly the most important social experiment of our time, for it dealt on a ver small scale with a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use? "In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. Soo--if we can't find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out."
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