Sense And Sensibility Book Quotes

If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter in all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both.

Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die.

And books! ...she would buy them all over and over again; she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree.

And Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.

[…] You are very right in supposing how my money would be spent – some of it, at least – my loose cash would certainly be employed in improving my collection of music and books.” – Marianne Dashwood

it made no sense, but sometimes you did a thing because that was just what you did, not because it was sensible.

Contemporary literature, in each and every epoch, is the worst enemy of culture. A reader’s limited time is wasted in reading a thousand books that blunt his critical sense and damage his literary sensibility. (I, 258)

He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings: the same books, the same music must charm us both.

Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me.

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward’s!

Grace was right: it made no sense, but sometimes you did a thing because that was just what you did, not because it was sensible.

And if it is true that we acquired our knowledge before our birth, and lost it at the moment of birth, but afterward, by the exercise of our senses upon sensible objects, recover the knowledge which we had once before, I suppose that what we call learning will be the recovery of our own knowledge . . . PLATO*

Encouraged by this to a further examination of his opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five-and-twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each -- or, if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm, and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.

In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving.

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

I am reading Ian Rankins book Doors Open and am enjoying his dark Edinburgh narrative will rate soon once I have read it. I am also a fan of Jane Austen and have visited her Museum House in Chawton, Hampshire every year for the last three years. My Favourite book is Sense and Sensibility.

We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.

Well it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths...," I began. "Go on," she said "The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy ending and all that. Like Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion. But the second kind, they show you life more like it is. Like in Huckleberry Finn where Huck's pa is a no-good drunk and Jim suffers so. The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up." "People like happy ending, Mattie. They don't want to be shaken up." "I guess not, ma'am. It's just that there are no Captain Wentworths, are there? But there are plenty of Pap Finns. And things go well for Anne Elliot in the end, but they don't go well for most people." My voice trembled as I spoke, as it did whenever I was angry. "I feel let down sometimes. The people in the books-the heroes- they're always so...heroic. And I try to be, but..." "...you're not," Lou said, licking deviled ham off her fingers. "...no, I'm not. People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way... and I feel, well... hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way?" I asked too loudly. "Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books, Miss Wilcox," I said, pointing at a pile of them," and I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like. I can, though. It stinks. Like meat gone bad and dirty clothes and bog water all mixed together. Why doesn't anyone tell you that?" No one spoke for a few seconds. I could hear the clock ticking and the sound of my own breathing. Then Lou quietly said, "Cripes, Mattie. You oughtn't to talk like that." I realized then that Miss Wilcox had stopped smiling. Her eyes were fixed om me, and I was certain she'd decided I was morbid and dispiriting like Miss Parrish had said and that I should leave then and there. "I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay." Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry.

That which is asserted universally, by everyone, cannot possibly be totally false. For a false opinion is a kind of infirmity of the understanding, just as a false judgment concerning a proper sensible happens as the result of a weakness of the sense power involved. But defects, being outside the intention of nature, are accidental. And nothing accidental can be always and in all things; the judgment about savors given by every tasting cannot be false. Thus, the judgment uttered by everyone concerning truth cannot be erroneous.

Ninguém pode amar mais que uma vez na vida.

Desejo à sua irmã a maior felicidade do mundo; e a Willoughby: Desejo que tente merecê-la.

... mas, sabe, nem todos nascemos com os mesmos poderes... os mesmos modos...

Books of engravings, drawers of medals, cameos, corals, shells, and every other family collection within his cabinets, had been prepared for his old friend, to while away the morning;

- Gostar dele! - replicou a sua mãe com um sorriso. - Não consigo sentir nenhum sentimento de aprovação inferior ao amor. - Pode estimá-lo. - Ainda não descobri como separar a estima do amor." Mrs. Dashwood

Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each — or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.

Reading creates a sense of human fellowship. It is never (or rarely) a public activity, but in putting us in direct contact with other minds and sensibilities, it is a form of solitude which banishes loneliness. It can offer the consolation of knowing we are not alone, in our pleasures or in our suffering. It is in situations of deprivation that the value of reading – the deep need for books – becomes more vividly apparent.

- Mas será de outro. E se esse for exactamente aquele, de entre todos os outros, que eu menos suporto... Mas não continuarei aqui, para perder toda a sua piedosa boa vontade, mostrando que onde fui mais magoado, menos posso perdoar. Adeus... Deus a abençoe.

The point is that you have here a direct, unmistakable assault on sanity and decency; and even - since some of Dali’s pictures would tend to poison the imagination like a pornographic postcard - on life itself. What Dali has done and what he has imagined is debatable, but in his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist. He is as anti-social as a flea. Clearly, such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it. Now, if you showed this book, with its illustrations, to Lord Elton, to Mr. Alfred Noyes, to The Times leader writers who exult over the “eclipse of the highbrow” - in fact, to any “sensible” art-hating English person - it is easy to imagine what kind of response you would get. They would flatly refuse to see any merit in Dali whatever. Such people are not only unable to admit that what is morally degraded can be æsthetically right, but their real demand of every artist is that he shall pat them on the back and tell them that thought is unnecessary. And they can be especially dangerous at a time like the present, when the Ministry of Information and the British Council put power into their hands. For their impulse is not only to crush every new talent as it appears, but to castrate the past as well. Witness the renewed highbrow-baiting that is now going on in this country and America, with its outcry not only against Joyce, Proust and Lawrence, but even against T. S. Eliot. But if you talk to the kind of person who can see Dali’s merits, the response that you get is not as a rule very much better. If you say that Dali, though a brilliant draughtsman, is a dirty little scoundrel, you are looked upon as a savage. If you say that you don’t like rotting corpses, and that people who do like rotting corpses are mentally diseased, it is assumed that you lack the æsthetic sense. Since “Mannequin rotting in a taxicab” is a good composition. And between these two fallacies there is no middle position, but we seldom hear much about it. On the one side Kulturbolschewismus: on the other (though the phrase itself is out of fashion) “Art for Art’s sake.” Obscenity is a very difficult question to discuss honestly. People are too frightened either of seeming to be shocked or of seeming not to be shocked, to be able to define the relationship between art and morals. It will be seen that what the defenders of Dali are claiming is a kind of benefit of clergy. The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K.

At any rate that year of reading novels was the only real education, in the sense of book–learning, that I've ever had. It did certain things to my mind. It gave me an attitude, a kind of questioning attitude, which I probably wouldn't have had if I'd gone through life in a normal sensible way.

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “’A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”’ Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ’You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ’The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

When a volcano lets fly or an earthquake brings down a mountainside, people look upon the event with surprise and report it to each other as news. People, in their whole history, have seen comparatively few such events; and only in the past couple of hundred years have they begun to sense the patterns the events represent. Human time, regarded in the perspective of geologic time, is much too thin to be discerned—the mark invisible at the end of a ruler. If geologic time could somehow be seen in the perspective of human time, on the other hand, sea level would be rising and falling hundreds of feet, ice would come pouring over continents and as quickly go away. Yucatáns and Floridas would be under the sun one moment and underwater the next, oceans would swing open like doors, mountains would grow like clouds and come down like melting sherbet, continents would crawl like amoebae, rivers would arrive and disappear like rainstreaks down an umbrella, lakes would go away like puddles after rain, and volcanoes would light the earth as if it were a garden full of fireflies. At the end of the program, man shows up—his ticket in his hand. Almost at once, he conceives of private property, dimension stone, and life insurance. When a Mt. St. Helens assaults his sensibilities with an ash cloud eleven miles high, he writes a letter to the New York Times recommending that the mountain be bombed.

Sensible men, however, really had very little to do with it. The war itself did not make very much sense, which may have affected the way it was directed. It was being fought because emotion had been evoked to deal with a crisis that called for intelligence. There had been the great argument between men and sections, with many old values endangered, and on each side there had arisen men with blazing eyes and hot hearts to arouse their fellows to imminent peril. Fear had been called forth (because it is thought that men are most surely to be aroused by fear), and then came the anger that goes with fear, and finally the great unreason that goes with both had come out to take control of things—a situation deeply lamented by all who had created it.

Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen—I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit,

Novels begin and end with, consist of, and indeed in one sense are nothing but voices. So reading is learning to listen sensitively, and to tune in accurately, to varying frequencies and a developing programme. From the opening words a narrative voice begins to create its own characteristic personality and sensibility, whether it belongs to an 'author' or a 'character'. At the same time a reader is being created, persuaded to become the particular kind of reader the book requires. A relationship develops, which becomes the essential basis of the experience. In the modulation of the fictive voice, finally, through the creation of 'author' and 'reader* and their relationship, there is a definition of the nature and status of the experience, which will always imply a particular idea of ordering the world. So much is perhaps familiar enough, and a useful rhetoric of Voice' has developed. Yet I notice in my students and myself, when its vocabulary is in play, a tendency to become rather too abstract or technical, and above all too spatial and static. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves what it can be like to listen to close friends, talking animatedly and seriously in everyday experience, in order to make sure that a vocabulary which often points only to broad strategies does not tempt us to underplay the extraordinary resourcefulness, variety and fluctuation of the novelist's voice.

I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!"—

Eighthly, none of our sense-perceptions is opposed to the acceptance of infinity, since we cannot deny infinity merely because we do not sensibly perceive it; but since sense in itself is included in infinity, and since reason doth confirm infinity, therefore needs must that we posit infinity. Moreover, if we consider well, sense doth present to us an infinite universe. For we perceive an endless series of objects, each one contained by another, nor do we ever perceive either with our external or our internal sense, an object which is not contained by another or similar object. Lastly before our eyes one thing is seen to bound another; air is as a well between the hills, and mountains between tracts of air, land bounds the sea and again sea bounds all lands; yet in truth there is nothing outside to limit the universe ... so far on every side spreads out huge room for things, free from limit in all directions everywhere. [6] From the testimony of our sight then we should rather infer the infinite, since there is no object which doth not terminate in another, nor can we experience aught which terminateth in itself.

Philotheo. No corporeal sense can perceive the infinite. None of our senses could be expected to furnish this conclusion; for the infinite cannot be the object of sense-perception; therefore he who demandeth to obtain this knowledge through the senses is like unto one who would desire to see with his eyes both substance and essence. And he who would deny the existence of a thing merely because it cannot be apprehended by the senses, nor is visible, would presently be led to the denial of his own substance and being. Wherefore there must be some measure in the demand for evidence from our sense-perception, for this we can accept only in regard to sensible objects, and even there it is not above all suspicion unless it cometh before the court aided by good judgement. It is the part of the intellect to judge, yielding due weight to factors absent and separated by distance of time and by space intervals. And in this matter our sense-perception doth suffice us and doth yield us adequate testimony, since it is unable to gainsay us; moreover it advertiseth and confesseth his own feebleness and inadequacy by the impression it giveth us of a finite horizon, an impression moreover which is ever changing. Since then we have experience that sense-perception deceiveth us concerning the surface of this globe on which we live, much more should we hold suspect the impression it giveth us of a limit to the starry sphere.

And Ghostly, everyone thinks they know Paleandghostly, everyone thinks Paleandghostly doesn’t need anything, doesn’t feel anything, can take care of herself and doesn’t need a thing. She is the single most terrifying woman Draxie has ever met, yes, she’s read every book Draxie knows of and a hell of a lot more of them that she couldn’t even understand, she’s got a mind like diamond-edged steel, she is awesome in a sense of the word older than the internet - and she lives with her mom, in her trailer, in the middle of nowhere, because there’s no-one else to look after her. She sits watching her mom’s mind slowly crumble from its edges inwards while she forgets to drink unless she’s told to and wants to go for a walk down streets she hasn’t lived anywhere near in decades, and Ghostly who should be - Draxie doesn’t even know, running the CIA, creating entire new disciplines of thought, running the country, Ghostly helps her mom wash and cleans the trailer and spends her mind, her ravenous, razor-bright, vicious mind, defending him from everyone on the internet. Even from other fanghosts half the time when she points out that they’re being creepy as all fuck and look maybe you can justify using a character with that name but don’t pretend for one second that you know who he is, because he’s a person you’ll never know the inside of and you don’t get to act like you’re entitled to that. Draxie doesn’t know what Ghostly would do without him. Hate the world, while her mind flayed itself to pieces from the inside. Hate the world and all the injustice in it, and no-one to give a fuck about it. But there’s him. And she says, Oh, good, at least someone’s being sensible …

What is a novel, anyway? Only a very foolish person would attempt to give a definitive answer to that, beyond stating the more or less obvious facts that it is a literary narrative of some length which purports, on the reverse of the title page, not to be true, but seeks nevertheless to convince its readers that it is. It's typical of the cynicism of our age that, if you write a novel, everyone assumes it's about real people, thinly disguised; but if you write an autobiography everyone assumes you're lying your head off. Part of this is right, because every artist is, among other things, a con-artist. We con-artists do tell the truth, in a way; but, as Emily Dickenson said, we tell it slant. By indirection we find direction out -- so here, for easy reference, is an elimination-dance list of what novels are not. -- Novels are not sociological textbooks, although they may contain social comment and criticism. -- Novels are not political tracts, although "politics" -- in the sense of human power structures -- is inevitably one of their subjects. But if the author's main design on us is to convert us to something -- - whether that something be Christianity, capitalism, a belief in marriage as the only answer to a maiden's prayer, or feminism, we are likely to sniff it out, and to rebel. As Andre Gide once remarked, "It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written." -- Novels are not how-to books; they will not show you how to conduct a successful life, although some of them may be read this way. Is Pride and Prejudice about how a sensible middle-class nineteenth-century woman can snare an appropriate man with a good income, which is the best she can hope for out of life, given the limitations of her situation? Partly. But not completely. -- Novels are not, primarily, moral tracts. Their characters are not all models of good behaviour -- or, if they are, we probably won't read them. But they are linked with notions of morality, because they are about human beings and human beings divide behaviour into good and bad. The characters judge each other, and the reader judges the characters. However, the success of a novel does not depend on a Not Guilty verdict from the reader. As Keats said, Shakespeare took as much delight in creating Iago -- that arch-villain -- as he did in creating the virtuous Imogen. I would say probably more, and the proof of it is that I'd bet you're more likely to know which play Iago is in. -- But although a novel is not a political tract, a how-to-book, a sociology textbook or a pattern of correct morality, it is also not merely a piece of Art for Art's Sake, divorced from real life. It cannot do without a conception of form and a structure, true, but its roots are in the mud; its flowers, if any, come out of the rawness of its raw materials. -- In short, novels are ambiguous and multi-faceted, not because they're perverse, but because they attempt to grapple with what was once referred to as the human condition, and they do so using a medium which is notoriously slippery -- namely, language itself.

Nonconformity is an affront to those in the mainstream. Our impulse is to dismiss this lifestyle, create reasons why it can’t work, why it doesn’t even warrant consideration. Why not? Living outdoors is cheap and can be afforded by a half year of marginal employment. They can’t buy things that most of us have, but what they lose in possessions, they gain in freedom. In Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, lead character Larry returns from the First World War and declares that he would like to “loaf.”23 The term “loafing” inadequately describes the life he would spend traveling, studying, searching for meaning, and even laboring. Larry meets with the disapproval of peers and would-be mentors: “Common sense assured…that if you wanted to get on in this world, you must accept its conventions, and not to do what everybody else did clearly pointed to instability.” Larry had an inheritance that enabled him to live modestly and pursue his dreams. Larry’s acquaintances didn’t fear the consequences of his failure; they feared his failure to conform. I’m no maverick. Upon leaving college I dove into the workforce, eager to have my own stuff and a job to pay for it. Parents approved, bosses gave raises, and my friends could relate. The approval, the comforts, the commitments wound themselves around me like invisible threads. When my life stayed the course, I wouldn’t even feel them binding. Then I would waiver enough to sense the growing entrapment, the taming of my life in which I had been complicit. Working a nine-to-five job took more energy than I had expected, leaving less time to pursue diverse interests. I grew to detest the statement “I am a…” with the sentence completed by an occupational title. Self-help books emphasize “defining priorities” and “staying focused,” euphemisms for specialization and stifling spontaneity. Our vision becomes so narrow that risk is trying a new brand of cereal, and adventure is watching a new sitcom. Over time I have elevated my opinion of nonconformity nearly to the level of an obligation. We should have a bias toward doing activities that we don’t normally do to keep loose the moorings of society. Hiking the AT is “pointless.” What life is not “pointless”? Is it not pointless to work paycheck to paycheck just to conform? Hiking the AT before joining the workforce was an opportunity not taken. Doing it in retirement would be sensible; doing it at this time in my life is abnormal, and therein lay the appeal. I want to make my life less ordinary.

Once or twice, at night, he planted himself in front of the type-writer, trying to get back to the book he'd come to New York to write. It was supposed to be about America, and freedom, and the kinship of time to pain, but in order to write about these things, he'd needed experience. Well, be careful what you wish for. For now all he seemed capable of producing was a string of sentences starting, Here was William. Here was William's courage, for example. And here was William's sadness, smallness of stature, size of hands. Here was his laugh in a dark movie theater, his unpunk love of the films of Woody Allen, not for any of the obvious ways they flattered his sensibility, but for something he called their tragic sense, which he compared to Chekhov's (whom Mercer knew he had not read). Here was the way he never asked Mercer about his work; the way he never talked about his own and yet seemed to carry it with him just beneath the skin; the way his skin looked in the sodium light from outside with the light off, with clothes off, in silver rain; the way he embodied qualities Mercer wanted to have, but without ruining them by wanting to have them; the way his genius overflowed its vessel, running off into the drain; the unfinished self-portrait; the hint of some trauma in his past, like the war a shell-shocked town never talks about; his terrible taste in friends; his complete lack of discipline; the inborn incapacity for certain basic things that made you want to mother him, fuck him, give your right and left arms for him, this man-child, this skinny American; and finally his wildness, his refusal to be imaginable by anyone.

But all the feelings we are made to experience by the joy or the misfortune of a real person are produced in us only through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist consisted in understanding that in the apparatus of our emotions, the image being the only essential element, the simplification that would consist in purely and simply abolishing real people would be a decisive improvement. A real human being, however profoundly we sympathize with him, is in large part perceived by our senses, that is to say, remains opaque to us, presents a dead weight which our sensibility cannot lift. If a calamity should strike him, it is only in a small part of the total notion we have of him that we will be able to be moved by this; even more, it is only in a part of the total notion he has of himself that he will be able to be moved himself. The novelist’s happy discovery was to have the idea of replacing these parts, impenetrable to the soul, by an equal quantity of immaterial parts, that is to say, parts which our soul can assimilate. What does it matter thenceforth if the actions, and the emotions, of this new order of creatures seem to us true, since we have made them ours, since it is within us that they occur, that they hold within their control, as we feverishly turn the pages of the book, the rapidity of our breathing and the intensity of our gaze. And once the novelist has put us in that state, in which, as in all purely internal states, every emotion is multiplied tenfold, in which his book will disturb us as might a dream but a dream more lucid than those we have while sleeping and whose memory will last longer, then see how he provokes in us within one hour all possible happinesses and all possible unhappinesses just a few of which we would spend years of our lives coming to know and the most intense of which would never be revealed to us because the slowness with which they occur prevents us from perceiving them (thus our heart changes, in life, and it is the worst pain; but we know it only through reading, through our imagination: in reality it changes, as certain natural phenomena occur, slowly enough so that, if we are able to observe successively each of its different states, in return we are spared the actual sensation of change).

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “ ‘A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false—a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.’ ” Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ‘You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.’ Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ‘The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?

acknowledgements Huge thanks, obviously, to the superhuman Jane Austen for her books. Besides those masterpieces, I also reviewed (obsessively) the BBC 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, as well as Emma (1996), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Persuasion (1995), and Patricia Rozema’s gorgeous revision of Mansfield Park (1999). I’m also indebted to Daniel Pool’s What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew for period information. The World of Jane Austen, by Nigel Nicholson, who also useful, and I scoured the Web site Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion for clothing information. Despite the research, I’d be surprised if I didn’t make mistakes, but they’re sure to be my fault, so please don’t blame my sources. Special thanks to the amazing Amanda Katz for her inspired editing, as well as to Nadia Cornier, Cordelia Brand, Ann Cannon, Rosi Hayes, and Mette Ivie Harrison. And can I just say again how much I love Bloomsbury? I do. Everyone there is so cool. And also quite attractive (though that hardly seems fair, does it?). And honey, you know that this Colin Firth thing isn’t really serious. You are my fantasy man and my real man. I need no other fella in all the world besides you. It’s just a girl thing, I swear.

Not everything disability produces is beautiful, but as a productive force, in the Foucauldian sense, disability produces specific sensibilities and discourses. I want to affirm the life that’s already here in the form of the knowledges of disabled and mad people, at the same time as calling to end violent debilitation and the conditions that make them viable. This book therefore understands disability as an (intersectional) optic that deconstructs the normative body/mind and uncovers the radical potential of living otherwise.

In the rein of ignorance, the constant state of war which lasted for twenty years did not stop a certain amount of rationality that allowed this writings. pg200 And young men are accustomed from the first to idleness, effeminacy and frivolity, coming eventually to the business of life with empty heads and hearts crammed with false ideals…less credit and wealth, less dignity and prestige. They display vanity, but legitimate pride never. The men of pleasure are well received in society because they are light-hearted, gay, witty, dissipated, easy-going, amateurs of every pleasure. Pg224 The fair dames of the period resorted to every means to stimulate their sensibilities. They seek excitement in dissecting dead bodies. “The young Contesse de Coigny was so passionately fond of this dreadful study (Anatomy), that she would never start on a journey without taking in the boot of her traveling carriage a corpse to dissect, just as one takes with one a book to read.” – Mme. de Gengis, Mémoires, vol I. This mania for dissection was for some time extremely fashionable with ladies of quality. Pg226 On these ridiculous types was built up the whole school of impotent and despairing lovers, who under a nauseous pretence of being so romantic and interesting, prolonged for half a century longer the silly affectation of sentimental melancholy, in other words, a green-sickness of skepticism complicated with pulmonary consumption! Pg227 A familiar axiom of economic science declares that “every vicious act is followed by diminution of force.” Pg229 The Mousquetaires had began by displaying a most laudable zeal, but it was soon discovered that these gentlemen were better at noise than real work. Pg230 “The deterioration of type among noble families,” says Moreau de Tours, “is noted in numerous writers; Pope remarks to Spencer on the sorry looks of members of the English aristocracy in his day; and in the same way physiologists had even earlier noted the short stature of the Spanish grandees at the court of Philip V.” As for Frenchmen, long before 1789, they were amongst the poorest specimens of humanity, according to the testimony of many witnesses. Pg237 The practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. Thus ends the Sword. A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.

There are no such things as material particles (enduring “things”). There are no forces in the sense of things that can be transferred from one thing to another. What actually exists is information. This is defined mathematically. Information is intelligible; “things” are sensible. The evolving cosmic wavefunction is an information wavefunction. It’s made of mathematical information. Every part of it reflects information. It’s this information that is mathematically interpreted by minds as matter, force, energy, sensory things, and so on. Because humans interpret information non-mathematically (i.e. empirically, not rationally), they are astounded by the assertion that the universe is entirely mathematical. Our own interpretations are what conceal the Truth from us. We must transcend our empirical viewpoint if we ever wish to attain the divine – rational – perspective. Science, as pure empiricism, is anti-divinity. It locks us into human sensory delusion. Mathematics frees us.

Human language is a clumsy tool. People have such a hard time understanding each other, so how can you even begin to imagine the subjectivities of animals and insects and plants, never mind pebbles and sand? Bound as you are by your senses -- so blunt and yet so beautiful -- it's impossible for you to imagine that the myriad beings you dismiss as insentient might have inner lives, too. Books are in an odd position, caught halfway in between. We are sensible, if not sentient. We are semi-living.

I usually think of rules as things that get in the way of all the stuff I really want to know. I mean, how can don’t ask questions ever be a good rule? Or only borrow one book at a time from the library. That’s just ludicrous. No one ever explains rules like that in a sensible way. But don’t hurt other dragons — that’s a rule I think everyone believes in, right? So … I guess I believe in some rules, and I think rules in general can be useful, but I also think it’s all right to stop and question some of the rules sometimes, if they feel wrong to you. Doesn’t that make sense?

Human language is a clumsy tool. People have such a hard time understanding each other, so how can you even begin to imagine the subjectivities of animals and insects and plants, never mind pebbles and sand? Bound as you are by your senses—so blunt and yet so beautiful—it’s impossible for you to imagine that the myriad beings you dismiss as insentient might have inner lives, too. Books are in an odd position, caught halfway in between. We are sensible, if not sentient. We are semi-living.

The visitors, seeing Theobald look shy and wholly unmoved by the exhibition of so much consideration for his wishes, would remark to themselves that the boy seemed hardly likely to be equal to his father and would set him down as an unenthusiastic youth, who ought to have more life in him and be more sensible of his advantages than he appeared to be. No one believed in the righteousness of the whole transaction more firmly than the boy himself; a sense of being ill at ease kept him silent, but it was too profound and too much without break for him to become fully alive to it, and come to an understanding with himself. He feared the dark scowl which would come over his father’s face upon the slightest opposition. His father’s violent threats, or coarse sneers, would not have been taken au serieux by a stronger boy, but Theobald was not a strong boy, and, rightly or wrongly, gave his father credit for being quite ready to carry his threats into execution. Opposition had never got him anything he wanted yet, nor indeed had yielding, for the matter of that, unless he happened to want exactly what his father wanted for him. If he had ever entertained thoughts of resistance, he had none now, and the power to oppose was so completely lost for want of exercise that hardly did the wish remain; there was nothing left save dull acquiescence as of an ass crouched between two burdens. He may have had an ill-defined sense of ideals that were not his actuals; he might occasionally dream of himself as a soldier or a sailor far away in foreign lands, or even as a farmer’s boy upon the wolds, but there was not enough in him for there to be any chance of his turning his dreams into realities, and he drifted on with his stream, which was a slow, and, I am afraid, a muddy one.

And books! Thomson, Cowper, Scott — she would buy them all over and over again; she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree.

My loose cash, would certainly be employed in improving my collection of music and books.

Question: It's a great book and its obvious that Guerin was very keen to blend what he felt were the best aspects of anarchism and the best aspects of socialism into this Libertarian Socialism. Do you think that those two terms Libertarian Socialism and Anarchism—are synonymous or do you think there are real differences between the two? Well, I don't think we can really say, because the terms of political discourse aren't well defined. Capitalism, trade, the state, pick any one... they are pretty loose terms. Which is okay, but it doesn't make sense to try to define these terms carefully when you don't have an explanatory theory to embed them in. But the fact is we can't really answer the question, anarchism covers too many things, libertarian socialism covers too many things. But I sympathize with what he's trying to do. I think it's the right thing. If you look carefully they are really close, there are similarities and relationships. The more anti-statist, antivanguardist left elements of the socialist movement, Marxist movement in fact—folks like Anton Pannekoek and others—there are close similarities between them and some of the wings of the anarchist movement, like the anarcho-syndicalists. It's pretty hard to make much of a distinction between, say, Pannekoek's workers' councils and anarcho-syndicalist conceptions of how to organize society. There are some differences, but they are the kind of differences that ought to exist when people are working together in comradely relationships. So, yes, that's a sensible blend in my view. The much sharper distinction is between all these movements and the various forms of totalitarianism like Bolshevism, corporate capitalism and so on. There you have a real break. Totalitarian structures on the one hand and free societies on the other. In fact, 1 think there are significant similarities between libertarian socialism and anarchism, this blend, and even very mainstream thinkers like John Dewey—there are striking similarities.

There are many faces to the horrors of war-- decimation, mutilation, barbarity, and, of course, death itself. But one of the most savage and dehumanizing consequences of armed conflict is the prison system that springs up to house enemy combatants--and ordinary citizens too. These hellish camps encapsulate the lowest depths of human depravity; ruled by violence and degeneracy, political prisoners are forced to endure unthinkable conditions and unchecked cruelty--all without any chance of reprieve. Uta Christensen's latest novel, Caught: Surviving the Turbulent River of Life, chronicles this appalling consequence of war, weaving a narrative of atrocity that, despite its artful inventions and complex characters, is so starkly based on grim realities... that one cannot help but shudder. Caught tells the story of Janos, a young German boy kidnapped by the Nazis during WWII--and forced into a Russian prison camp. There, Janos must survive against all odds, fighting off starvation and death at every turn as the years march on... and he becomes a man. It is, in fact, within the hardships of this very crucible, that Janos thrives, overcoming the frailties and ignobilities of existence to discover friendship, compassion, and love--making him into the apotheosis of an upstanding, self-reliant citizen: a true model to all his fellow countrymen. Told in flashbacks, Caught: Surviving the Turbulent River of Life explores the intricate nature of suffering and memory, delving into the complexities of how the past--even the most vicious episodes--informs the present... and the very nature of the self. Uta Christensen, with striking prose and a poetic sensibility, brings the darker chapters of history to life in such a way that one is instantly captivated by a concurrent horror and pity, a sense of tragedy, but too a catharsis in overcoming, in human resilience and beauty itself. A truly breathtaking novel, Caught is a tour de force of literary perfection; poignant, unremitting, and painfully real, this book is essential reading for all those willing to face hard truths--and grow from them.

Experience conclusively shows that index-fund buyers are likely to obtain results exceeding those of the typical fund manager, whose large advisory fees and substantial portfolio turnover tend to reduce investment yields. Many people will find the guarantee of playing the stock-market game at par every round a very attractive one. The index fund is a sensible, serviceable method for obtaining the market’s rate of return with absolutely no effort and minimal expense.

Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. “Take this, for example,” he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: “’A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condi- tion is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false-a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”’ Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn’t dream about was this” (he waved his hand), “us, the modern world. ’You can only be independent of God while you’ve got youth and prosperity; independence won’t take you safely to the end.

Let’s call it the theory of receptivity. It’s the idea, often cited by young people in their case against the relevance of even marginally older people, that one’s taste—in music or film, literature or fine cuisine—petrifies during life’s peak of happiness or nadir of misery. Or maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe a subtler spike on the charts—upward, downward, anomalous points in between—might qualify, so long as it’s formative. Let’s say that receptivity, anyway, can be tied to the moments when, for whatever reason, a person opens herself to the things we can all agree make life worth living in a new and definitive way, whether curiosity has her chasing down the world’s pleasures, or the world has torn a strip from her, exposing raw surface area to the winds. During these moments—sleepaway camp right before your bar mitzvah; the year you were captain of the hockey team and the baseball team; the time after you got your license and before you totaled the Volvo—you are closely attuned to your culture, reaching out and in to consume it in vast quantities. When this period ends, your senses seal off what they have absorbed and build a sensibility that becomes, for better or worse, definitive: This is the stuff I like. These films/books/artists tell the story of who I am. There is no better-suited hairstyle. This is as good/bad as it gets for me. The theory suggests that we only get a couple of these moments in life, a couple of sound tracks, and that timing is paramount. If you came of age in the early eighties, for instance, you may hold a relatively shitty cultural moment to be the last time anything was any good simply because that was the last time you were open and engaged with what was happening around you, the last time you felt anything really—appallingly—deeply. I worry about this theory. I worry because it suggests that receptivity is tied closely to youth, and firsts, and also because as with many otherwise highly rejectable theories—Reaganomics and communism come to mind—there is that insolent nub of truth in it.

Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6—right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds. That example comes from Stanislas Dehaene's book The Number Sense. As Dehaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is "si" and 7 "qi"). Their English equivalents—"four," "seven"—are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers. In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits. It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and five- teen. But we don't. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Similarly, we have forty and sixty, which sound like the words they are related to (four and six). But we also say fifty and thirty and twenty, which sort of sound like five and three and two, but not really. And, for that matter, for numbers above twenty, we put the "decade" first and the unit number second (twentyone, twenty-two), whereas for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two- tens-four and so on. That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don't reach forty until they're five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills. The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-yearold to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tensseven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine. "The Asian system is transparent," says Karen Fuson, a Northwestern University psychologist who has closely studied Asian-Western differences. "I think that it makes the whole attitude toward math different. Instead of being a rote learning thing, there's a pattern I can figure out. There is an expectation that I can do this. There is an expectation that it's sensible. For fractions, we say three-fifths. The Chinese is literally 'out of five parts, take three.' That's telling you conceptually

..the kind of influence printing has had on modern sensibility… : the shattering of the intellectual experience into uniform and repeatable units, the establishment of a sense of homogeneity and continuity that generated, at a distance of centuries, the assembly line, and presided over the ideology of the mechanical age, as well as the cosmology of infinitesimal calculation.

Do you know why we use Sense and Sensibility? Why Miss Havisham insisted on it, in fact?” “Don’t believe this,” murmured Miss Havisham. “It’s all poppycock. Her majesty is a verb short of a sentence.” “I’ll tell you why,” went on the Red Queen angrily, “because in Sense and Sensibility there are no strong father or husband figures!” Miss Havisham was silent. “Face the facts, Havisham. Neither the Dashwoods, the Steeles, the Ferrar brothers, Eliza Brandon or Willoughby have a father to guide them! Aren’t you taking your hatred of men just a little too far?

Why do people that ask for “evidence” never ask for rational explanation? What is more reliable? – analytic reason, or the unreliable, fallible, limited, frequently delusional human senses where it is guaranteed that they are showing us only phenomena and never noumena (i.e. things in themselves). You cannot understand reality as a phenomenon, although this is in fact exactly what science tries to do. You can understand reality only as a noumenon – as an intelligible thing in itself – and that’s exactly what ontological mathematics is all about. Anyone that obsesses over phenomenal evidence is an opponent of noumenal truth, which is never subject to phenomenal evidence.

ask how the uneven sedimentations of colonial reason and the affective sensibilities on which they depend—whether under the rubrics of “security,” “terrorism,” “defense of society,” or “race”—participate in shaping the possibilities for how differential futures are distributed and who are, and will be, targeted as those to be exposed, both external and internal enemies in the making. Rendering these histories to their contemporary valence, then, is as much about the inequities inscribed in how common sense is forged as it is in anticipatory dangers in the conditional and future tense.

I have shown small respect indeed for the Absolute, and I have until this moment spoken of no other superhuman hypothesis but that. But I trust that you see sufficiently that the Absolute has nothing but its superhumanness in common with the theistic God. On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. Now whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience shows that it certainly does work, and that the problem is to build it out and determine it, so that it will combine satisfactorily with all the other working truths. I cannot start upon a whole theology at the end of this last lecture; but when I tell you that I have written a book on men's religious experience, which on the whole has been regarded as making for the reality of God, you will perhaps exempt my own pragmatism from the charge of being an atheistic system. I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangents to the wider life of things. But, just as many of the dog's and cat's ideals coincide with our ideals, and the dogs and cats have daily living proof of the fact, so we may well believe, on the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own. You see that pragmatism can be called religious, if you allow that religion can be pluralistic or merely melioristic in type. But whether you will finally put up with that type of religion or not is a question that only you yourself can decide. Pragmatism has to postpone dogmatic answer, for we do not yet know certainly which type of religion is going to work best in the long run. The various overbeliefs of men, their several faith-ventures, are in fact what are needed to bring the evidence in. You will probably make your own ventures severally. If radically tough, the hurly-burly of the sensible facts of nature will be enough for you, and you will need no religion at all. If radically tender, you will take up with the more monistic form of religion: the pluralistic form, with its reliance on possibilities that are not necessities, will not seem to afford you security enough. But if you are neither tough nor tender in an extreme and radical sense, but mixed as most of us are, it may seem to you that the type of pluralistic and moralistic religion that I have offered is as good a religious synthesis as you are likely to find. Between the two extremes of crude naturalism on the one hand and transcendental absolutism on the other, you may find that what I take the liberty of calling the pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism is exactly what you require. The End

But there's a bigger lesson that I would like to draw from this experiment—and in fact from all that I have said in the preceding chapters. Standard economics assumes that we are rational—that we know all the pertinent information about our decisions, that we can calculate the value of the different options we face, and that we are cognitively unhindered in weighing the ramifications of each potential choice. The result is that we are presumed to be making logical and sensible decisions. And even if we make a wrong decision from time to time, the standard economics perspective suggests that we will quickly learn from our mistakes either on our own or with the help of “market forces.” On the basis of these assumptions, economists draw far-reaching conclusions about everything from shopping trends to law to public policy. But, as the results presented in this book (and others) show, we are all far less rational in our decision making than standard economic theory assumes. Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless—they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains. So wouldn't it make sense to modify standard economics and move away from naive psychology, which often fails the tests of reason, introspection, and—most important—empirical scrutiny? Wouldn't economics make a lot more sense if it were based on how people actually behave, instead of how they should behave? As I said in the Introduction, that simple idea is the basis of behavioral economics, an emerging field focused on the (quite intuitive) idea that people do not always behave rationally and that they often make mistakes in their decisions.

Like money or government or ethnicity, the “self” is also an arbitrary mental construct based on faith. There is no proof that your experience of “you” actually exists. It is merely the nexus of conscious experience, an interconnection of sense and sensibility. See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 199–280.

On Writing The most important is that the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the readers. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing god work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Four twentieth century writers; Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…. for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jubs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter. You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the pages what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you, or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again, you must not come lightly to the blank page. I am not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or to cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it isn’t the moral olympics and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car. If you take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.