Will looked at this strange little group, his gang for the day, and tried to make some sense of it. All these ripples and connections! He couldn’t get his head round them. He was not a man given to mystical moments, even under the influence of narcotics, but he was very worried that he was…
If People Couldn’t Live Together
… if people couldn’t live together, he reckoned, they should at least have the decency to loathe each other. But actually, as the day wore on and he had a little more to drink, Will could dimly see that to strive for pleasantness and harmony once a year wasn’t an entirely contemptible ambition. (Nick Hornby, About…
The Product of a 1960s’ Second Marriage
As the product of a 1960s’ second marriage he was labouring under the misapprehension that when families broke up some of the constituent parts stopped speaking to each other, but the setup here was different: Fiona and her ex seemed to look back on their relationship as the thing that had brought them together in…
The How-to-Christmas Message
It struck him that how you spent Christmas was a message to the world about where you were in life, some indication of how deep a hole you had managed to burrow for yourself, and therefore spending three days bombed out of your head on your own said things about you that you might not…
Being Loved for Being Someone Else
… he was loved for not being Simon more than he had ever been loved simply for being himself. (Nick Hornby, About a Boy, 1997, p. 24)
Floating Away from Everyone and Everything
… reading books … didn’t do him any good at school. It was funny, because most people would probably think the opposite—that reading books at home was bound to help, but it didn’t: it made him different, and because he was different he felt uncomfortable, and because he felt uncomfortable he could feel himself floating…
Die Welt will betrogen sein
„Der Pendant betrügt sich selbst, der Charlatan die anderen.“
Glückwünsche
… ein Muster von Liebe und Unaufrichtigkeit. (Jane Austen, Stolz und Vorurteil, 1985, S. 396)
Selektiv erinnern!
Du mußt etwas von meiner Philosophie annehmen! Denke nur an die Vergangenheit, wenn die Erinnerungen dir Freude bereiten. (Jane Austen, Stolz und Vorurteil, 1985, S. 381)
Spes saepe fallit
Zuviel Erwartung wird immer enttäuscht. (Jane Austen, Stolz und Vorurteil, 1985, S. 252)
Der Pfarrer verdient mehr als der Jurist?
Er hatte die Rechtswissenschaften als wenig einträgliches Brot erkannt und war jetzt entschlossen, Geistlicher zu werden… (Jane Austen, Stolz und Vorurteil, 1985, S. 215)
Der Vorteil, ein dummer Mann zu sein
Dumme Männer sind die einzigen, deren Bekanntschaft sich lohnt. (Jane Austen, Stolz und Vorurteil, 1985, S. 167)
Kunst und Wissenschaft 