Misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.
--
"The Castaway" (1799).William Cowper
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He began to think about semblance, as Ansky had discussed it in his notebook, and he began to think about himself. He felt free, as he never had in his life, and although malnourished and weak, he also felt the strength to prolong as far as possible this impulse toward freedom, toward sovereignty. And yet the possibility that it was all nothing but semblance troubled him. Semblance was an occupying force of reality, he said to himself, even the most extreme, borderline reality. It lived in people's souls and their actions, in willpower and in pain, in the way memories and priorities were ordered. Semblance proliferated in the salons of the industrialists and in the underworld. It set the rules, it rebelled against its own rules...it set new rules.
Roberto Bolano
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
Joseph Addison
That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?
Samuel Johnson
I am certain that there are two things in life which are dependable -- the delights of the flesh and the delights of literature. I have had the good fortune to bring them together and enjoy them together in full quantity.
Peter Greenaway
The sort of misery that brings no moral reward, misery that is of no value to the mind and soul, that is the true misery, it is hopeless, bestial and nothing else.
Max Frisch
Cowper, William
Cowper, William
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