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Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy Quotes

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Famous Cormac McCarthy Quotes

“This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence.War is god.”

WarLastsFormGamesExistenceAuthorityUltimateUnityStakesJustificationTestingSelectTruest
Book:Blood Meridian: Picador Classic
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“What do you believe? I believe that the last and the first suffer equally. Pari passu. Equally? It is not alone in the dark of death that all souls are one soul. Of what would you repent? Nothing. Nothing? One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.”

FirstsBelieveSaidSoulLastsSufferingNamesI BelieveDarkMy OwnOne ThingStonesVanitySpokesBitternessVoidRepentOblivionNot AloneMonstrousSlanderAlone In The Dark
Author:Cormac McCarthy
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“A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone.”

MenWorldWellsHeartHas BeensSaidHardLastsCoursesDestinyFateJudgingBrokenStonesEmptyOppositesDesertBarrenReckoning
Author:Cormac McCarthy
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“He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception. The straight and the winding way are one and now that you are here what do the years count since last we two met together? Men's memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.”

MenWorldWayYearsLittlesSaidTwoTogetherLastsPastNightMemoriesGoes OnDrinkMetsDancingExceptionUncertain
Book:Blood Meridian: Picador Classic
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“Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.”

MenWorldMayLittlesMadeSaidSeemsEarthLastsDarkExistenceKnowingRocksCreationCreaturesForestsNakedSmallestEntityConsentCrumbs
Book:Blood Meridian: Picador Classic
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“But this man had set down with a hammer and chisel and carved out a stone water trough to last ten thousand years. Why was that? What was it that he had faith in? It wasn't that nothin' would change. Which is what you might think, I suppose. He had to know better'n that. I've thought about it a good deal. . . And I have to say that the only thing I can think is that there was some sort of promise in his heart. And I don't have no intentions of carvin' a stone water trough. But I would like to be able to make that kind of promise. I think that's what I would like most of all.”

ThinkingKnowsMenYearsHeartKindI CanMightAbleLastsWaterDealsPromiseThousandTenStonesIntentionThousand YearsHammersChiselsTrough
Author:Cormac McCarthy
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“The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.”

MenFirstsDoeLastsFireWindFlamesDividedExileLiving ThingsEmbers
Book:Blood Meridian: Picador Classic
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