WORDS
- susurration: whispering, murmuring, or rustling.
- chary: cautiously or suspiciously reluctant to do something.
- termagant: a harsh-tempered or overbearing woman.
- Banyan Day
- peroration: the concluding part of a speech, typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience.
- Scandalise a sail: To reduce sail in gaff-rigged craft by hauling up the tack and lowering the peak of a sail.
Conclave (Robert Harris)
- ‘My brothers and sisters, in the course of a long life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?” He cried out in His agony at the ninth hour on the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.
The Cicero Trilogy (Robert Harris)
- immersing oneself in the law is a little like bathing in freezing water – bracing in moderation, shrivelling in excess
- A human being can only train for death by leading a life that is morally good; that is – to desire nothing too much; to be content with what one has; to be entirely self-sufficient within oneself, so that whatever one loses, one will still be able to carry on regardless; to do none harm; to realise that it is better to suffer an injury than to inflict one; to accept that life is a loan given by Nature without a due date and that repayment may be demanded at any time; that the most tragic character in the world is a tyrant who has broken all these precepts.
- ‘Clemency in my view means a pardon, and a pardon implies a crime. The murder of the Dictator was many things but it was not a crime. I would prefer a different term. Do you remember the story of Thrasybulus, who more than three centuries ago overthrew the Thirty Despots of Athens? Afterwards he instituted what was called an amnesty for his opponents – a concept taken from their Greek word amnesia, meaning “forgetfulness”.
War (Margaret Macmillan)
- War is perhaps the most organized of all human activities and in turn it has stimulated further organization of society. Even in peacetime, preparing for war—finding the necessary money and resources—demands that governments assume greater control over society.
- Spying is also highly addictive. The drug of secret power, once tasted, is hard to renounce.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things (The Kingkiller Chronicle) (Rothfuss, Patrick)
- widdershins.; counter-clockwise (Scottish)
The Evening and the Morning (Ken Follett)
- They set off early. Brindle leaped onto the raft as they boarded. In dog philosophy it was always better to go somewhere than to be left behind. Edgar asked himself whether that was his philosophy, too, and was not sure of the answer.
The Abstainer (Ian McGuire)
- Time becomes memory, and memory becomes the ditch in which we drown.
The Ministry for the Future (Kim Stanley Robinson)
- Jevons Paradox proposes that increases in efficiency in the use of a resource lead to an overall increase in the use of that resource, not a decrease. William Stanley Jevons, writing in 1865, was referring to the history of the use of coal; once the Watt engine was introduced, which greatly increased the efficiency of coal burning as energy creation, the use of coal grew far beyond the initial reduction in the amount needed for the activity that existed before the time of the improvement. The rebound effect of this paradox can be mitigated only by adding other factors to the uptake of the more efficient method, such as requirements for reinvestment, taxes, and regulations. So they say in economics texts. The paradox is visible in the history of technological improvements of all kinds. Better car miles per gallon, more miles driven. Faster computer times, more time spent on computers. And so on ad infinitum. At this point it is naïve to expect that technological improvements alone will slow the impacts of growth and reduce the burden on the biosphere. And yet many still exhibit this naiveté. Associated with this lacuna in current thought, perhaps a generalization of its particular focus, is the assumption that efficiency is always good.
The Gray Man (Mark Greaney)
- “Department of Malicious Measures”