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1 " [A]ll who are smitten with the love of books think cheaply of the world and wealth; as Jerome says to Vigilantius: The same man cannot love both gold and books... The hideousness of vice is greatly reprobated in books, so that he who loves to commune with books is lead to detest all manner of vice. The demon, who derives his name from knowledge, is most effectually defeated by the knowledge of books, and through books his multitudinous deceits and the endless labyrinths of his guile are laid bare to those who read... "
― Richard de Bury
2 " forest paths – flat labyrinths – and gentle plains invite the walker’s body to softness, to languor. And memories arise like eddying mists. The air is more bracing with Nietzsche, and above all sharp, transparent. The thought is trenchant, the body wide awake, trembling. "
3 " To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, mêlées of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life! "
― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables
4 " The Light shone shone from her skin,casting about the room in dancing beams that warmed all those that gazed upon her. A magnificent creature,so powerful,so distant,so wonderous and strange and out of reach. It almost seemed she did not belong to this world,she should walk instead through palaces in the heavens,or labyrinths of deep seas. Forests where trees stretched out of sight,with canopies that spread for miles;or mountains that glittered white and violet. "
5 " And then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her.Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it. "
― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)
6 " In the city, human beings celebrated and enjoyed material conditions and comforts, but were caught in the labyrinths and knots of spiritual shallowness and psychological confusion. In the city human beings wrestled with the demands of survival and profit but fled from life’s imperatives of honesty and moderation. In the city man was afraid to confront his own face. "
― Isa Kamari , Menara
7 " Housing projects can seem like labyrinths to outsiders, as complicated and intimidating as a Moroccan bazaar. But we knew our way around. "
― Jay-Z , Decoded
8 " You mentioned . . . one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What . . . is the other?" " The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space? "
9 " I mean, public libraries like this one were always short of money, so building even the tiniest of labyrinths had to be beyond their means. "
― Haruki Murakami
10 " This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. "
― Neal Stephenson , Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, #1)
