Sharing thousands of sparkling, moving, entrancing quotations amassed over decades of slow-savoured reading, to refresh the mind and spirit and invigorate flagging thought and flaccid prose. Dive in!

A quotation is not an excerpt. A quotation is a cicada. It is part of its nature never to quiet down. Once having got hold of the air, it does not release it.

Source: Osip Mandelstam, ‘Conversation about Dante’ (London: Notting Hill Editions, 2011), p. 108

I have discovered that, with the passing of the years, my ignorance in countless areas… has become increasingly perfected while, at the same time, a lifelong practice of haphazard readings has left me with a sort of commonplace book in whose pages I find my own thoughts put into the words of others.

Source: Alberto Manguel, The City of Words, CBC Massey Lecture Series (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2007), p. 3

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Uncle, who are you?

A delightful exchange between the boy György Faludy, and a friend, or at least acquaintance, of his grandfather's. I loved the man's playfully evasive response when Faludy asked him who he was, and his further retorts when the boy played back to him his own...

Summer’s end

Just as you sense a sadness at the departing summer, the arrival of Goldmund brings a great waft of warm light and colour. One of the most beautiful depictions of friendship I have come across is between Goldmund and Narziss, diametrically opposed in character, but...

A bulwark against brain-washing

Listening time: under 9 minutes. Sadly, some things in the state of the world are driving me to spend more time thinking about how simple citizens can remain resistent to brain-washing by whatever brand of ideology. My main gripe is against the ideological mindset,...

Beware the sunset (especially if it’s beautiful)

A striking example of the tendency of totalitarian ideologies to corrupt the mind: no-one means what they say, nothing is as it seems, distrust every word, everyone. Everything is political. A passing comment on the beauty of the sunset? Surely a trap or a lure! This...