small passages in books that mean a lot to you

[ed miliband]

or not books but poems, plays, novels, etc

a few for me:

this bit towards the end of othello - just before othello stabs himself:


Soft you, a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know ’t.
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme. Of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe. Of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcisèd dog,
And smote him, thus.


i first read it probably four years ago for gcse english and i always come back to it for some reason - i'll probably know it off by heart some time

also this - from the burgess and busby translation of marie de france's lais:


But he who does not let his infirmity be known can scarcely expect to receive a cure. Love is an invisible wound within the body, and, since it has its source in nature, it is a long-lasting ill.

kinda sums up how i feel atm basically (lol)

also the final paragraph of 'saturday night and sunday morning' which begins something like "why do they make soldiers out of us when we're fighting from the moment we're born?" and turns into a poignant denunciation of work

[Os Cangaceiros]

I guess this might sound dumb or something, but when I first read 1984 I was struck by the very last line in the book "He loved Big Brother." At the time I was like, whoa dude, that's deep. That was the first book I read with an ending like that, a real downer ending with no hope.

I still like 1984 as a novel. I think the political allegories in the book have been kind of overused/misused in popular culture, though.

[a rebel]

"Who can depart from his pain and aloneness without regret? Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and i cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache. It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin I tear with my own hands." The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, great book.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

"A bastard and its mother
Nevertheless, we intend to struggle against the old morality to the end, and live like the sun.
Please, [do] continue to fight your battle.
The revolution still hasn't taken place to the slightest degree.
Many, many more precious, noble victims seem to be necessary.
In the present world, the most beautiful thing is a victim." -Dazai Osamu


I don't completely agree with it but sometimes it resonates after you have done so much but seen so little.

[Per Levy]

since i cant find it online and in english i have to, sadly, translate it(i try my very best). anyway

Ilja Ehrenburg - Conspiracy of the Equals:

Paris, intervene! They're going to murder Babeuf...
Some of the Guards yelled something to each other, then there was silence again. Paris remaind silent.

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Sometimes, instead of shouting revolutionary slogans he simply told the
Fascists how much better we were fed than they were. His account of the
Government rations was apt to be a little imaginative.' Buttered toast!'--you
could hear his voice echoing across the lonely valley--'We're just sitting down
to buttered toast over here! Lovely slices of buttered toast!' I do not doubt
that, like the rest of us, he had not seen butter for weeks or months past, but
in the icy night the news of buttered toast probably set many a Fascist mouth
watering.
- Homage to Catalonia

[Ose]

The passage I'm thinking of is much longer than this, but for the sake of brevity this is all I'll type:

And then, all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost its harmless appearance as an abstract category: it was the very stuff of things, that root was steeped in existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the sparse grass on the lawn, all that had vanished; the diversity of things, their individuality, was only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous masses, in disorder - naked, with a frightening, obscene nakedness.

[...]superfluous[...]

-Nausea

[Stadtsmasher]

"Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves."
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

[NewLeft]

This is a quote that I keep going back to.. I just love this play and I love Howard Zinn! It's preaching to the choir now, but it was a shock the first time I read it.. as a confused social democrat.


Brothers and sisters, the San Francisco police have said I cannot speak here tonight. There are three thousand people in this hall, and if you are here to listen to me, then, police or no police, I am here to speak to you. This past month I have gone from city to city in this nation that calls itself a democracy, speaking at sixteen meetings. Eleven were broken up by the police. We should all know by now that the Constitution of the United States does not give us freedom of speech — that cannot be given, it must be taken. By people who insist on speaking, as I insist on speaking here tonight.

In general, Emma Goldman spoke to me. Her prose is very accessible.. She's a gateway to revolutionary socialism. I don't care if this is pretentious, fuck you.

[Dr Doom]

..
“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have.”

[Bronco]

"The fascists are warm, he thought, and they are comfortable, and tomorrow night we will kill them. It is a strange thing and I do not like to think of it. I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travellers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing."

"How many is that you have killed? he asked himself. I don’t know. Do you think you have a right to kill any one? No. But I have to. How many of those you have killed have been real fascists? Very few. But they are all the enemy to whose force we are opposing force. But you like the people of Navarra better than those of any other part of Spain. Yes. And you kill them. Yes. If you don’t believe it go down there to the camp. Don’t you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do it? Yes. And you still believe absolutely that your cause is right? Yes.

It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I believe in the people and their right to govern themselves as they wish. But you mustn’t believe in killing, he told himself. You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. If you believe in it the whole thing is wrong."

Both from For Whom the Bell Tolls
____

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

Wilfred Owen - Strange Meeting
____

"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but there-- there you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity-- like yours--the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend"

Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

[Bostana]

It is actually in my signature.

In Marian Wright Edelmen's book, 'The Measure for Our Success', she wrote:


"The standard for success for too man Americans has become personnel greed rather than Common Good."

[BE_]

Dr. Suess Green Eggs and Ham

Do you like
green eggs and ham

I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.
I do not like
green eggs and ham.

Moving but at the same time philosophical. That shit changed my life.

[Hermes]

It might happen that I was a jackal—oh, those were horrible, shameful moments, not very frequent to be sure, but occurring all the same; people would shun me and turn their backs; a deep sorrow would pierce my heart and suddenly out would step the doe—such a perfect doe, with slender legs, and antlers fashioned by the gods, nuzzling people and resting her muzzle on their shoulders with the tenderness and love only a doe is capable of…
I am a coward, because I have been capable of boldness only in my dreams, but I’ve lived my life as a despicable ass, incapable either of running away or of kicking—
from Dream Through a Crack, by Vasilii Rozanov

[ed miliband]

Dr. Suess Green Eggs and Ham

Do you like
green eggs and ham

I do not like them,
Sam-I-am.
I do not like
green eggs and ham.

Moving but at the same time philosophical. That shit changed my life.

i fucking adored dr suess as a kid

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Letters From Abroad, Vladimir Lenin


Such a militia [workers' militia] would be the executive organ of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers Deputies, it would enjoy boundless respect and confidence of the people, for it itself would be an organisation of the entire people. Such a militia would transform democracy from a beautiful signboard, which covers up the enslavement and torment of the people by the capitalists, into a means of actually training the masses for participation in all affairs of state.

[Dr Doom]

Letters From Abroad, Vladimir Lenin

boringggggggg

[pluckedflowers]

"To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. For historical materialism it is a question of holding fast to a picture of the past, just as if it had unexpectedly thrust itself, in a moment of danger, on the historical subject. The danger threatens the stock of tradition as much as its recipients. For both it is one and the same: handing itself over as the tool of the ruling classes. In every epoch, the attempt must be made to deliver tradition anew from the conformism which is on the point of overwhelming it. For the Messiah arrives not merely as the Redeemer; he also arrives as the vanquisher of the Anti-Christ. The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of this: that not even the dead will be safe from the enemy, if he is victorious. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious." -- Walter Benjamin

[Ravachol]

The bleak and miserable ending to Nanni Balestrini's "The Unseen". Spoiler for those who still wish to read the book.

we made holes in all the wire mesh grilles and then
we made the torches the torches were made with bits
of sheets tied tightly together and then soaked in oil
and for this too we agreed a time in the middle of the
night we all lit the oil of the torches and we pushed
these brands through the holes in the grilles but there
was no one there to see this either the torches burned
for a long time it must have been a beautiful sight
from outside all those torches flickering against the
black wall of the prison in the middle of that
boundless plain but the only ones who could see the
torchlight were those few people driving their cars
that sped like tiny darts in the distance on that black
ribbon of the motorway several kilometres from the
prison or maybe an aeroplane flying above but they
fly very high up there in the silent black sky and they
see nothing.
- The unseen, Nanni Balestrini

[Bostana]

Edgar Allen Poe



"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect."
- from "Eleanora"

[#FF0000]

"They won't let me ... I can't be good!" I managed to articulate; then I went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a quarter of an hour in genuine hysterics. She came close to me, put her arms round me and stayed motionless in that position. But the trouble was that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the loathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust into my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a far-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward now for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face. Why was I ashamed? I don't know, but I was ashamed. The thought, too, came into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely changed, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed and humiliated creature as she.

Basically all of Notes From Underground, though.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Henry Metelmann, ex-Hitler Youth, 19 year old Nazi Germany Wehrmacht soldier of Paulus' Sixth Army in the winter of 1942 retreating from the Battle of Stalingrad on the Eastern Front - in conversation to his elder Captain.


"'So what is going to happen to us?, for if i understand you correctly, then we have as good as lost this war.'

'Well, when i talk about losing the war, i talk about the military situation, not of the economic one. Even if beaten on the Battlefield, economically we will remain a very powerful nation. . . The demise of Hitler and the Nazis will not mean the end of Germany. If we get out of all this in one piece, we will see the West vie with the East to have us on their side, and if we are wise and far-sighted enough as a people, we will go with the Soviet Union,'

He must have noticed how perplexed this conclusion left me, for he went on: 'Of course, you have not read Karl Marx, they kept that from you! For otherwise you would understand which way the wind is blowing.
Capitalism, young soldier, is corrupt to the core and in an advanced state of dying. And to save it from its inevitable collapse, you and I are here, killing, burning, destroying - and perhaps dying. When they tell you that you are fighting for your country, forget it, because you are fighting for something quite different. I appreciate your having listened to me attentively, thank you, young soldier.' And with that he turned on his heel to leave me standing by the burning barn, thoroughly confused." - Through Hell for Hitler, Henry Metelmann

[black magick hustla]

The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off. The father never speaks her name, the child does not know it. He has a sister in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale and unwashed. He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.

Blood Meridian, Cormac Mccarthy

[gorillafuck]

that'll do, pig. that'll do.

[Leftsolidarity]

When I read this for the first time a tear really did come to my eye. That's probably weird but I give no sort of fuck.


In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.

- Socialism: Utopian and Scientific