Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
In ancient Greek, the word for the highest degree of human happiness is eudaimonia, which basically means “well-daemoned”—that is, nicely taken care of by some external divine creative spirit guide.
Elizabeth Gilbert • Big Magic: How to Live a Creative Life, and Let Go of Your Fear
She was really not aware of the falseness of this conduct; being an adept in that species of sophistry with which people persuade themselves that what they wish to do is right.
Elizabeth Gaskell • Ruth
I discovered her. Charmante, a perfect Gretchen,4 and we’ve already become acquainted. The prettiest little thing, really!’
Leo Tolstoy • Anna Karenina (Penguin Classics)
Think no unfair evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide.
Rosemary Ashton • Middlemarch
opprobrium.
Charlotte Brontë • Jane Eyre: (Annotated Edition)
the spring of her heroine’s errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility.
G. K. Chesterton • The G. K. Chesterton Collection [50 Books]
‘Rob, I am afraid you will suppose by my wandering writings that a midsummer moon hath taken large possession of my brains this month,’ she wrote.