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If the real world were a book, it would never find a publisher. Overlong, detailed to the point of distraction—and ultimately, without a major resolution.
The soul that feeds on books alone —
I count that soul exceeding small
That lives alone by book and creed,—
A soul that has not learned to read.
Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.
Knowledge of the Bible never comes by intuition. It can only be got by hard, regular, daily, attentive, wakeful reading.
J. C. Ryle Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Matthew (1856)
The destination of the soul: this is what I, led on by Nils Holgersson, came to seek in the literature of Western Europe.
In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist.
George Woodcock Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)
I'd always prided myself on how unlike my books were from each other in settings and subject matter.
I have often tried to isolate that quality of "Zen" which attracted me so powerfully to its literature and later to the practice of zazen.
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