europe

Through their discomforts Dom and Phil were missing everything of interest: the sudden strip marshes, the faces in the rock formations, the perfect lakes, the awesome måskoskårså valley grooved into the earth during the Ice Age, the golden eagle circling above it, and the views of a landscape it was impossible to believe existed in Europe.

The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form. But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas. Thus we euro-americans are supposed to have only one obligation: endlessly atoning for what we have inflicted on other parts of humanity. How can we fail to see that this leads us to live off self-denunciation while taking a strange pride in being the worst? Self-denigration is all too clearly a form of indirect self-glorification. Evil can come only from us; other people are motivated by sympathy, good will, candor. This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history.

Do you know how fast you are walking? ... To get a close estimate, count the number of steps you take in a minute and divide by 30... :)

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonourable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality, and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the cause of the one, and the lies of the Testament of the other.

An unknown force is calling mePerhaps the voice of that star perched on the last heightPerhaps the desire to see the spaces that conceal Europe

The commendable efforts of preachers to Europe is that people began to understand that wealth and success is not a matter of luck.

[As a very young man, I thought] of Europe as a place that could not exist except in the imagination, in glorious dreams, and through the careful lies of the silver screen.

I wore only black socks, because I had heard that white ones were the classic sign of the American tourist. Black ones though,- those'll fool 'em. I supposed I hoped the European locals' conversation would go something like this:PIERRE: Ha! Look at that tourist with his camera and guidebook!JACQUES: Wait, but observe his socks! They are...black!PIERRE: Zut alors! You are correct! He is one of us! What a fool I am! Let us go speak to him in English and invite him to lunch!

Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn__ a country; it__ a near-death experience.

I'll pretty much try any cheese, but I have found that I prefer young goats and old cows. I don't like gray areas.

I__ love to be a tabletop in Paris, where food is art and life combined in one, where people gather and talk for hours. I want lovers to meet over me. I__ want to be covered in drops of candle wax and breadcrumbs and rings from the bottom of wineglasses. I would never be lonely, and I would always serve a good purpose.

Rome is a broken mirror, the falling straps of a dress, a puzzle of astonishing complexity. It is an iceberg floating below our terrace, all its ballasts hidden beneath the surface.

It is such a privilege to learn from children as they discover new worlds of possibility and give themselves full over to their dreams, inspiring a few adults along the way.

We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalize over Italy and ecstacise over Spain- but England we love.

In America everything goes and nothing matters, while in Europe nothing goes and everything matters.

I wanted to climb to the summit of challenges, attack my way through hardships as solid as granite, tempt all sorts of peril, and break through mysteries with science. I longed to inhale all sorts of experience and then explore the labyrinthine ins and outs of life that in the end cannot be guessed. I yearned for possibilities that react with each other, like the collision of uranium molecules: binding, multiplying, bursting, and dispersing in unexpected directions. I wanted to go to faraway places and meet with endless varieties of foreign languages and peoples. I wished to rove, finding my direction through reading the stars of constellations. I wanted to cross fields and deserts, to be burned by the sun until I blistered, to be shook by the assaulting wind, and shrink from being gripped by cold. I wanted a life that was thrilling, filled with conquest. I wanted to live! To feel the essence of being!

On any basic figure of the Africans landed alive in the Americas, one would have to make several extensions- starting with a calculation to cover mortality in transshipment. The Atlantic crossing, or __iddle Passage,_ as it was called by European slavers, was notorious for the number of deaths incurred, averaging in the vicinity of 15-20 per cent. There were also numerous deaths in Africa between time of capture and time of embarkation, especially in cases where captives had to travel hundreds of miles to the coast. Most important of all (given that warfare was the principal means of obtaining captives) it is necessary to make some estimate of the number of people killed and injured so as to extract the millions who were taken alive and sound. The resultant figure would be many times the millions landed alive outside of Africa, and it is that figure which represents the number of Africans directly removed from the population and labor force of Africa because of the establishment of slave production by Europeans. Pg. 96

The English seem to relish unsystematic learning of this kind, in the same manner that they embarked upon "Grand Tours" of Europe in pursuit of a peripatetic scholarship.