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djoshuva's reviews
268 reviews
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell
4.0
"When we pry open the cracks in the concrete we stand to encounter life itself. Nothing less, and nothing more. As if there could be more."
Pilgrimage to India: A Woman Revisits Her Homeland by Pramila Jayapal
3.0
"The agony and the beauty of living in India is just this: that one is challenged every day to look at life not in absolutes but in relatives."
The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4.0
"Ah, at such moments one forgets both oneself and one's former failures! This I had gained by risking my very life. I had dared so to risk, and behold, again I was a member of mankind!"
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5.0
"And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?"
Zadig et autres contes by Voltaire
4.0
“It was agreed, on all hands, that the affairs of this world took sometimes a quite different turn from what the wisest patriots would wish them. The Hermit replied, the ways of Providence are often very intricate and obscure, and men were much to blame for casting reflections on the conduct of the whole, upon the bare inspection of the minutest part.”
Candide by Voltaire
5.0
In the neighbourhood there lived a very famous Dervish who was esteemed the best philosopher in all Turkey, and they went to consult him. Pangloss was the speaker.
"Master," said he, "we come to beg you to tell why so strange an animal as man was made."
"With what meddlest thou?" said the Dervish; "is it thy business?"
"But, reverend father," said Candide, "there is horrible evil in this world."
"What signifies it," said the Dervish, "whether there be evil or good? When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?"
"What, then, must we do?" said Pangloss.
"Hold your tongue," answered the Dervish.
"I was in hopes," said Pangloss, "that I should reason with you a little about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony."
At these words, the Dervish shut the door in their faces.
"Master," said he, "we come to beg you to tell why so strange an animal as man was made."
"With what meddlest thou?" said the Dervish; "is it thy business?"
"But, reverend father," said Candide, "there is horrible evil in this world."
"What signifies it," said the Dervish, "whether there be evil or good? When his highness sends a ship to Egypt, does he trouble his head whether the mice on board are at their ease or not?"
"What, then, must we do?" said Pangloss.
"Hold your tongue," answered the Dervish.
"I was in hopes," said Pangloss, "that I should reason with you a little about causes and effects, about the best of possible worlds, the origin of evil, the nature of the soul, and the pre-established harmony."
At these words, the Dervish shut the door in their faces.
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
5.0
"Only we who have erected the objectivity of a world of our own from what nature gives us, who have built it into the environment of nature so that we are protected from her, can look upon nature as something "objective." Without a world between men and nature, there is eternal movement, but no objectivity."
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4.0
"But how would things go if now all tranquillity, all prosperity, all contentment should come to a horrible end?"
Sadhana by Rabindranath Tagore
5.0
"Of course man is useful to man, because his body is a marvellous machine and his mind an organ of wonderful efficiency. But he is a spirit as well, and this spirit is truly known only by love. When we define a man by the market value of the service we can expect of him, we know him imperfectly. With this limited knowledge of him it becomes easy for us to be unjust to him and to entertain feelings of triumphant self-congratulation when, on account of some cruel advantage on our side, we can get out of him much more than we have paid for. But when we know him as a spirit we know him as our own. We at once feel that cruelty to him is cruelty to ourselves, to make him small is stealing from our own humanity, and in seeking to make use of him solely for personal profit we merely gain in money or comfort what we pay in truth."