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Quote by John Gray

Work

Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

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Author

John Gray
John Gray

John Gray, born on December 28, 1951, is a renowned author. His works primarily revolve around interpersonal relationships and gender differences, with his most famous book being 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus'. His books have gained widespread popularity worldwide, offering profound insights into gender communication and relationship understanding. more

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“Un limite ancor più sostanziale della filosofia epicurea risiede nell'aridità spirituale della vita che raccomanda. Si tratta di una visione nevrastenica della felicità. Come in un sanatorio, non sono consentiti rumori; tutto ciò che rimane è una riposante immobilità. Così la vita è zittita, e gran parte della sua gioia svanisce.”

“And speaking of this wonderful machine: [840] I’m puzzled by the difference between Two methods of composing: A, the kind Which goes on solely in the poet’s mind, A testing of performing words, while he Is soaping a third time one leg, and B, The other kind, much more decorous, when He’s in his study writing with a pen. In method B the hand supports the thought, The abstract battle is concretely fought. The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar [850] A canceled sunset or restore a star, And thus it physically guides the phrase Toward faint daylight through the inky maze. But method A is agony! The brain Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain. A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which no effort of the will Can interrupt, while the automaton Is taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store [860] To buy the paper he has read before.”

“There was a dreadful logic here - so obvious he had overlooked it. The real need was for a different kind of book altogether, a book for the times. Very well then, he would explore that infernal map, transcribe its morbid cartography; record the tale of a realm that was at once a city and Hell and himself. In this way Owen Maddock turned his back on the light and sought out the oracles that lurk in darkness. A feverish energy possessed him. He laboured as never before upon his given work. Now he would strive to be obscure, to lead his readers by crooked paths, baffle them with indecipherable mysteries. There would no delicacy of style, only 'thunder at midnight'. Little by little there rose up before his inner eye a new vision to replace that of the White Road that had led him nowhere: a Kingdom of Darkness, a crepuscular domain of monstrous cults that chanted, to the tolling of iron bells and the beating of brazen gongs, unpronounceable demonic litanies. He must familiarise himself with every aspect of this world, its endless roll-calls of Hell, the spells by which the doors of the pit might be opened. He must cast in awful detail the laws by which tortures were administered. He would write for days in a frenzy, his mind ranging on raven's wings through skies black as pitch. "The White Road”

“He was afraid of the conversation he was about to have, yet he badly wanted to have it. It was like this each time. His hands trembled ever so slightly as he reached into the drawer. He removed a plain-looking pinewood box. Placing it on the desk in front of him, he opened its hinged top. Inside was a metallic cone inserted into a wooden base, set next to an electromagnet and two dry cells. He switched it on. Then came the low-pitched hum, and the faint blue aura.”

“We depend on this give-and-take when living abroad. You can’t exile yourself from your homeland and not always feel that tidal pull of return. Those minor details, the commercial jingles and pop songs, the chain restaurants and decade-defining shades of our blue jeans, are details you don’t even think about until you are face-to-face with a society that has very little to do with your own. Suddenly those one-hit wonders become a secret language, the very vestige of American culture.”