Josh Friedlander
https://twitter.com/oshkoshbgoshjos
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![Loading... Loading...](https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/loading_big-5baaead7062b26142a19d19a9bccf5c2.gif)
“what is the difference between being an independent person
and being a person who is accepting of loneliness”
― I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together
and being a person who is accepting of loneliness”
― I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together
![Giacomo Leopardi](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1652216228i/177775._UX200_CR0,35,200,200_.jpg)
“Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.”
―
―
![Jürgen Habermas](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1257210329i/31386._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg)
“[Jürgen Habermas' obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty]
One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”
―
One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”
―
![Will Durant](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1247961372i/16184._UX200_CR0,29,200,200_.jpg)
“...[A] poor priest, Chandi Das, was shocking Bengal by composing Dantean songs to a peasant Beatrice, idealizing her with romantic passion, exalting her as a symbol of divinity, and making his love an allegory of his desire for absorption in God; at the same time he inaugurated the use of Bengali as a literary language. "I have taken refuge at your feet, my beloved. When I do not see you my mind has no rest .... I cannot forget your grace and your charm,—and yet there is no desire in my heart." Excommunicated by his fellow Brahmans on the ground that he was scandalizing the public, he agreed to renounce his love, Rami, in a public ceremony of recantation; but when, in the course of this ritual, he saw Rami in the crowd, he withdrew his recantation, and going up to her, bowed before her with hands joined in adora-
tion.”
― Our Oriental Heritage
tion.”
― Our Oriental Heritage
![W.G. Sebald](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1684398227i/6580622._UY200_CR37,0,200,200_.jpg)
“When I get up early in the morning, I find them [the moths] clinging to the wall, motionless. I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draft of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner.”
―
―
![97302](https://images.gr-assets.com/groups/1362936756p1/97302.jpg)
TODAY BOOKS ARE NOT BURNED. THEY ARE BURIED. WE SHALL UNEARTH THEM.
![58827](https://images.gr-assets.com/groups/1322253335p1/58827.jpg)
NOTE: This group is intermittently active, but you are welcome to revive past discussions if you're currently reading any of those books. We read ch ...more
![573012](https://images.gr-assets.com/groups/1524330335p1/573012.jpg)
If you live in Israel, join our group! Buy, sell and trade books in Hebrew and English with other Goodreads members living in Israel. Sales can be mad ...more
![6252](https://images.gr-assets.com/groups/1215305980p1/6252.jpg)
a cubist fuckall of... well, to paraphrase sam fuller from Pierrot Le Fou, "a battle ground... love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emoti ...more
![153801](https://images.gr-assets.com/groups/1420394890p1/153801.jpg)
A group for all things related to the life and work of this criminally neglected Modernist genius who died alone, forgotten and poverty-stricken, in 1 ...more
Josh’s 2023 Year in Books
Take a look at Josh’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
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