THE UNQUIET GRAVE - A WORD CYCLE - PALINURUS

• '"The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence."
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• "There is no pain in life equal to that which two lovers can inflict on each other".
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• "When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest actions, but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized."
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• "A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he starts forth, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts, and to second-rate friends."
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• "Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form."
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• "'Dry again?' said the Crab to the Rock-Pool. 'So would you be,' replied the Rock-Pool, 'if you had to satisfy, twice a day, the insatiable sea."
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• "Morning tears return; spirits at their lowest ebb. Approaching forty, sense of total failure; not a writer but a ham actor whose performance is clotted with egotism; dust and ashes; 'brilliant'. - that is not worth doing. Never will I make that extra effort to live according to reality which alone makes good writing possible: hence the manic-depressiveness of my style,—which is either bright, cruel and superficial; or pessimistic; moth-eaten with self-pity."
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• "Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk."
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• "No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning."
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• "Everything is a dangerous drug to me except reality, which is unendurable."
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• "Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out."
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• "The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream."
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• "The dread of loneliness is keener than the threat of bondage; and so we marry, again and again."

 

THOUGHTS AND QUOTATIONS FROM G MADAN'S JOURNAL

Geoffrey Madan (1895-1947) led a life overtly charmed yet subtly blighted. The son of Falconer Madan, Bodley's Librarian and a fellow of Brasenose, ...

 

GEOFFREY MADAN'S JOURNAL - Excerpts

Who loves, will not be adored.

The sleep of friendship is its death.

                         Richard Duppa (1829)

Women never dine alone. When they dine alone they don’t dine.

                         Henry James, The Given Case

Roman Catholics claim to be infallible; Anglicans to be always right.

                        Steele

Love is respectful and timorous.

                        Dr. Johnson