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comment by thundara
thundara  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Book has the Most Page-for-Page Wisdom?

If you're at all interested in either morality or religion, I would recommend this one. At a bit over 800 pages, it may not be the densest of the wisdom books. Here's it on jealousy:

    It is hard to imagine what some jealous men can make up their mind to and overlook, and what they can forgive! The jealous are the readiest of all to forgive, and all women know it. The jealous man can forgive extraordinarily quickly (though, of course, after a violent scene), and he is able to forgive infidelity almost conclusively proved, the very kisses and embraces he has seen, if only he can somehow be convinced that it has all been "for the last time," and that his rival will vanish from that day forward, will depart to the ends of the earth, or that he himself will carry her away somewhere, where that dreaded rival will not get near her. Of course the reconciliation is only for an hour. For, even if the rival did disappear next day, he would invent another one and would be jealous of him. And one might wonder what there was in a love that had to be so watched over, what a love could be worth that needed such strenuous guarding. But that the jealous will never understand. And yet among them are men of noble hearts. It is remarkable, too, that those very men of noble hearts, standing hidden in some cupboard, listening and spying, never feel the stings of conscience at that moment, anyway, though they understand clearly enough with their "noble hearts" the shameful depths to which they have voluntarily sunk.




veen  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I've always had a problem with books written in a style like that. Maybe it's because English is my second language, but it takes me twice as long to get through archaic sentences like that. Getting through an 800-er is difficult enough as it is...

thundara  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Really? It sounds like it might if it were to flow off the tongue: maybe with many qualifications, but always directing towards some insight. It sounds quite fluid and poetic when read aloud!

I was going to recommend you the grand inquisitor passage, but its best sections are wrapped up in walls of text. Unfortunately the free audio recordings of the chapter I found all sucked, but maybe this might be a decent distraction when you have some time?

veen  ·  3479 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I think it's mainly in the unusual verb placement, combined with really long sentences. Not that it isn't interesting, it's just far more mental effort to both keep track of what is going on in a sentence and retain all the information that it tries to convey - in another language.