“But I refuse to be the dupe of a kind of magic which is still more feeble than their own, and which brandishes before an eager public albums of coloured photographs, instead of the now vanished masks. Perhaps the public imagines that the charms of the savages can be appropriated through the medium of these photographs. Not content with eliminating savage life, and unaware of having done so, it feels the need feverishly to appease the nostalgic cannibalism of history with the shadows of those that history has already destroyed”

- Claude Lévi-Strauss, A World on the Wane (p.41)

Quotes on Proverbs

"The genius, wit and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs." - Francis Bacon.

"Proverbs embody the current and practical philosophy of an age or nation." - William Fleming.

"Proverbs teach the real people's speech, and open up the hitherto sealed book of the native mind" - John Beames.

found it in preface of 'A Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings' by James Hinton Knowles (1885).

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever

‘...the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the
archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the
future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event.’
- Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever p.17

To make a start more swift than weighty, Hail Muse.

- The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth

Youth is a country.

- The Brainfever Bird, I. Allan Sealy

 I was on the whole very pleased with my day – not many conflicts and worries, above all not too much self-criticism.

- The English Teacher, R.K. Narayan

some Great first few lines

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

May I, Monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?

- The Fall, Albert Camus

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

- The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley

The best thing would be to write down everything that happens from day to day.

- Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.

- The Plot Against America, Philip Roth

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

- Herzog, Saul Bellow

I am a sick man… I am an angry man.

- Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane

- Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

- A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul

Every account of the origins of the state starts from the premise that “we” – not we the readers but some generic we so wide as to exclude no one – participate in its coming into being.

- Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

- The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

- 1984, George Orwell

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

- Murphy, Samuel Beckett

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

- The Trial, Franz Kafka

This is a true story, but I can’t believe it’s really happening.

- London Fields, Martin Amis

I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.

- Nothing to be Frightened of, Julian Barnes

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!

- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Enough.

- last line of Rabbit at Rest, John Updike

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You can find 100 such lines here