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Quote by Jacqueline Winspear

“After the war, however, in the early 1920s, the government had launched a series of advertisements aimed at getting the population out into the fresh air, encouraging people to go hill walking, which some master of the slogan had abbreviated to hiking.”

Quote by Jacqueline Winspear

Work

Elegy for Eddie

Set in the early 1930s, this installment of the Maisie Dobbs series follows the detective as she investigates the suspicious death of Eddie Pettit, a gentle, intellectually disabled man known for his work with horses. The tragedy draws Maisie back to her own childhood roots in Lambeth, where she must navigate the loyalties and secrets of the tight-knit community she once left behind. As she probes deeper, the case reveals tensions between tradition and progress, and the cost of social change on ordinary lives. more

Author

Jacqueline Winspear
Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear is a British author renowned for her detective novel series. Her works are characterized by historical background and complex character development, which have won her a wide readership. more

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“Siamangs—large black members of the gibbon family—swing high up in the tallest trees of the Asian Jungle. Every morning, the male and female burst into spectacular duets. Their song begins with a few loud whoops, which gradually build into ever louder, more elaborate sequences. Amplified by balloonlike throat sacs, the sound carries far and wide. I have heard them in Indonesia, where the whole forest echoed with their sound. The siamangs listen to one another during breaks. Whereas most territorial animals need only to know where their boundaries run and how strong and healthy their neighbors are, siamangs face the added complexity that territories are jointly defended by pairs. This means that pair-bonds matter. Troubled pairs will be weak defenders, while bonded pairs will be strong ones. Since the song of a pair reflects their marriage, the more beautiful it is, the more their neighbors realize not to mess with them. A close-harmony duet communicates not only “stay out!” but also “we’re one!” If a pair duets poorly, on the other hand, uttering discordant vocalizations that interrupt one another, neighbors hear an opportunity to move in and exploit the pair’s troubled relationship.”

“I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

“Modernism, philosophically speaking, is in a sense the ‘‘worship’’ of time and the transient, a kind of deification of time and becoming and all that flows in the temporal order. That is why it resulted quickly in historicism and evolutionism and the theories all of those 19th-century philosophers such as Hegel and Marx and scientists such as Darwin. Such people are very different from one point of view, but they all in a sense divinize history even if Marx rejected the category of ‘‘divine.’’ The historical process is the reality that is domi- nant in modern thought. It is that which determines values and even real- ity today in the dominant Western paradigm.”

“Język wyewoluował jako narzędzie koordynacji wspólnych działań, a fakt, że można w nim opisywać świat nie leży w jego naturze — jest raczej produktem ubocznym ewolucji języka. Mówiąc, że główną funkcją języka jest obrazowanie świata (wychwytywanie istot rzeczy czy odzwierciedlanie formalnych aspektów opisywanych sytuacji), dajemy się zwieść głęboko zakorzenionemu w tradycji Zachodu, ale poniekąd sztucznemu sposobowi myślenia. Jak słusznie zauważyli Wittgenstein i J.L. Austin, ograniczenie roli języka do narzędzia opisu świata sprawia, stajemy się ślepi na rozmaite funkcje, które język faktycznie spełnia; na to, że język jest narzędziem działania w świecie.”

“Sometimes, in the ancient writing samples found in the Indian subcontinent, we find that a mixture of Harappan and Brahmi features has been used. This definitely points towards a continuous evolutionary process that transformed the Harappan script into the later day Brahmi. This also explains why many of the Harappan signs seem to have been simply carried forward (even in actual form) in the Brahmi script.”

“Whether an island such as Easter Island can be considered remote is simply a matter of perspective. Those who live there, the Rapa Nui, call their homeland Te Pito Te Henua, 'the navel of the world'. Any point on the infinite globe of the Earth can become a centre.”

“The same solution--that Easter Island was once part of a much larger landmass--would also explain another, very different puzzle, namely the so-called Rongo Rongo script. It is unprecedented in human history for a sophisticated fully developed writing system to be invented and put into use by a small, isolated island community. Yet Easter Island does have its own script, examples of which, mostly incised on wooden boards, copies of copies of copies of much older lost originals, were collected in the nineteenth century and have found their way into a number of museums around the world. None remain on Easter Island itself and even in the period when they were collected no native Easter Islanders were able to read them.”

“The Sanskrit texts make it clear that a cataclysm on this scale, though a relatively rare event, is expected to wash away all traces of the former world and that the slate will be wiped clean again for the new age of the earth to begin. In order to ensure that the Vedas can be repromulgated for future mankind after each pralaya the gods have therefore designed an institution to preserve them -- the institution of the Seven Sages, a brotherhood of adepts possessed of unerring memories and supernatural powers, practitioners of yoga, performers of the ancient rituals and sacrifices, ascetics, spiritual visionaries, vigilant in the battle against evil, great teachers, knowledgeable beyond all imagining, who reincarnate from age to age as the guides of civilization and the guardians of cosmic justice.”

“Another extraordinary similarity concerns the presence of Seven Sages in both the Sumerian and Vedic traditions. Most ancient societies, I concede, had their sages or seers or wise men -- in India they were, and still are, called rishis. But it seems to me to be stretching coincidence too far to find a group specifically named the 'Seven Sages' prominently associated with two separate ancient cultures and to imagine that this did not come about through some sort of connection. In the case of Sumer the Seven Sages were depicted as amphibian, 'fish-garbed' beings who emerged from the sea in antediluvian times to teach wisdom to mankind. In the case of the Vedas the focus is not on the antediluvian period but on the flood itself and those antediluvians who are claimed to have survived it, namely Manu and the Seven Sages.”