It is the private life that holds out the mirror to infinity; personal intercourse, and that alone, that ever hints at a personality beyond our daily vision.

   ~~~ E.M. Forster, Howard’s End
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If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why read it? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make up happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply . . . . A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

   ~~~ Franz Kafka


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The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.

   ~~~ Gabriel Marcel

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