Rideau de la scène

'Et ils garnissent les murs comme des mouches, jusqu'au plus fond. Et je vois ces centaines de visages blancs. L'homme s'ennuie, et l'ignorance lui est attachée depuis sa naissance. Et ne sachant de rien comment cela commence ou finit, c'est pour cela qu'il va au théâtre. Et il se regarde lui-même, les mains posées sur les genoux. Et il pleure et il rit, et il n'a point envie de s'en aller.'

quantum indeterminacies

'The compatibilists' main adversaries are incompatibilists, who deny the compatibility of free will and determinism. Some incompatibilists remain agnostic as to whether persons have free will. But most take a further stand regarding the reality or unreality of free will. Some of these incompatibilists, libertarians, hold that at least some persons have free will and that, therefore, determinism is false. Other incompatibilists, hard determinists, have a less optimistic view, holding that determinism is true and that no persons have free will. In recent times, hard determinism has fallen out of fashion, largely because our best sciences suggest that determinism is false. But the spirit of the hard determinist position is sustained by hard incompatibilists, who hold that there is no free will if determinism is true, but also, that there is no free will if determinism is false.'

harmful for young or old to read

...'Perhaps reading Dickens’s novels quietly alone doesn’t have this immediate effect, but great writing initiates a real relationship that urges us to think and feel as the author does. It is in this sense that it can indeed do harm.'

puzzling question

 
'Once more she found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass table. `Now, I'll manage better this time,' she said to herself, and began by taking the little golden key, and unlocking the door that led into the garden. Then she went to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocked) till she was about a foot high: then she walked down the little passage: and THEN-she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the coolfountains.'

There is no friend as loyal as a book.