“We're well past the end of the century when time, for the first time, curved, bent, slipped, flash forwarded, and flashed back yet still kept rolling along. We know it all now, with our thoughts traveling at the speed of a tweet, our 140 characters in search of a paragraph. We're post-history. We're post-mystery.” KnowsFirstsWellsStillsEndsCharacterPastMysteryCenturyFirst TimeSpeedPostsFlashRollingOur ThoughtsBentTweetParagraphKnow It All140 CharacterRolling Along Author:Ali Smith
“I read an awful lot in college - a lot of Dickens, a lot of 19th century American stuff, a lot of old mysteries. Maybe it's helped me attain a certain fluidity with my style.” CertainStuffMysteryCenturyStyleCollegeAwful19th CenturyDickensFluidity Author:Josh Lieb
“Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone.” TryingFirstsBelieveChildrenHas BeensMadeBookAgeSchoolMysteryMiddleCenturyPeriodsStonesImportanceAgreeTiredAtheistInventionInstanceBurningCustomsCommunistScholarCharmingMonkRivalsSecrecyMiddle AgesLibrarianFascistsAntiquityManuscriptsCloaksShroudsBook Burning Author:Richard Armour
“At one level Great Britain at the beginning of the 18th century was like the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, both three and one, and altogether something of a mystery.” ChristianThreeLevelsMysteryCenturyDoctrineBritainTrinityGreat BritainBritish History18th CenturyChristian Doctrine Author:Linda Colley
“For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.” SimplePoorCitiesMysteryCenturyPopeQuarrelsFringeEmperorLiving OnCountrysideIllustrationOutcastWondrousExcludedHumiliatedParablesLeperLeprosy Book:Name of the Rose Source: Name of the Rose
“Nothing, indeed, could be more unlike the tone of the [Patristic] Fathers, than the cold, passionless, and prudential theology of the eighteenth century; a theology which regarded Christianity as an admirable auxiliary to the police force, and a principle of decorum and of cohesion in society, but which carefully banished from it all enthusiasm, veiled or attenuated all its mysteries, and virtually reduced it to an authoritative system of moral philosophy.” PhilosophyFatherForceMoralChristianityPrinciplesMysteryAtheismCenturyColdPolicePositive AtheismTheologyEnthusiasmToneAdmirableCohesionMoral PhilosophyDecorumPolice Force Author:William Edward Hartpole Lecky
“Action and adventure on land and sea-you can't ask for more. But Robert Kurson raises the ante in Pirate Hunters with an array of mystery and a fleet of colorful characters spanning four centuries. This is a great summer read!” CharacterActionAsksFourMysterySeaLandCenturyAdventureSummerRaisesHuntersPirateColorfulLand And SeaGreat Summer Author:Michael Connelly
“Dickens is a much misunderstood and mis-approached writer, in that he tends to be read, particularly in the twentieth century, as a social commentator - like the great Victorians, a realist in his way. But he isn't at all like that. His genre is actually more like a fairy tale - weird transformations, long voyages from which people come back altered, parental mysteries, semi-magical twists.” PeopleWayLongSocialMysteryCenturyTransformationTalesGenreFairyFairy TaleTwistsMisunderstoodTwentieth CenturyVoyagesAlteredCommentatorsRealistParentalDickensGenre Is Author:Martin Amis
“The Logos is a voice heard, in the head. And the Logos was the hand on the rudder of human civilization for centuries, up until, in fact, the collapse of the ancient mystery religions and the ascendancy of Christianity to the status of a world religion.” WorldHumansFactsHandsVoiceChristianityHeardMysteryCenturyCivilizationAncientCollapseLogosHuman CivilizationRuddersWorld ReligionsAscendancy Author:Terence McKenna
“It's the centuries, Scarlett darling. All the life lived there, all the joy and all the sorrow, all the feasts and battles, they're in the air around and the land beneath you. It's time, years beyond our counting weighing without weight on the earth. You cannot see it or smell it or hear it or touch it, but you feel it brushing your skin and speaking without sound. Time. And mystery.” FeelsYearsEarthJoySoundAirMysteryLandCenturySorrowBattleSkinsWeightSmellDarlingCountingWeighingBrushing Book:Scarlett: the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind Source: Scarlett: the sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind
“Do you realize it’s been only a century that we’ve been able to go from house to car to office to car to wherever, with the heater on, and the defroster on, protected from the rain and the cold? It hasn’t been much longer than that we’ve had lighting for streets. Think of all that darkness, all that world out there, all that mystery that we’ve turned into well-lighted concrete bunkers, safe and warm and dull.” ThinkingWorldWellsAbleHouseRealizingDarknessMysteryStreetsCenturyCarColdSafeOfficeRainWarmDullConcreteProtectedLightingBunkers Author:Sheri S. Tepper
“Mirabelle replaces the absent friends with books and television mysteries of the PBS kind. The books are mostly nineteenth-century novels in which women are poisoned or are doing the poisoning. She does not read these books as a romantic lonely hearts turning pages in the isolation of her room, not at all. She is instead an educated spirit with a sense of irony. She loves the gloom of these period novels, especially as kitsch, but beneath it all she finds that a part of her indentifies with all that darkness.” HeartKindDoeBookSpiritRoomsDarknessNovelMysteryCenturyTelevisionPeriodsPagesLonelyEducatedIronyIsolationAbsentGloomNineteenth CenturyPoisoningKitschPbsLonely HeartAbsent Friends Author:Steve Martin
“Her death would leave me scattered, talking to chairs and pillows. Don't let us die, I want to cry out to that fifth-century sky ablaze with mystery and spiral light. Let us both live forever, in sickness and health, feebleminded, doddering, toothless, liver-spotted, dim-sighted, hallucinating. Who decides these things? What is out there? Who are you?” WantLightDiesTalkingForeverMysterySkyCenturyCrySicknessChairsLeaving MeFifthPillowLive ForeverLiverSpiralsToothless Book:White Noise Source: White Noise