ellauri046.html on line 359: This abridgement reduces the original quarter of a million words down to about 12,000 (around 5%), based on three different translations, one by Alastair Hannay, another by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, and a third by an unnamed translator, possibly Lee M. Hollander. As with many of these condensed versions, having picked out the glowing passages may give an impression of a coherence which is absent in the rambling, repetitive and frequently incomprehensible original. The staccato style, though, is what it is like.
ellauri069.html on line 463: Incidentally, the book is great. If the reader finds it incomprehensible, it is more likely due to a failure on the part of the reader than of the book.
ellauri083.html on line 104: LYDEN: That's really almost incomprehensible. I'm sure she wrote every single day.
ellauri109.html on line 332: In the spring of 1799, the 21-year-old Kleist wrote a letter to his half-sister Ulrike [de] in which he found it "incomprehensible how a human being can live without a life plan" (Lebensplan). In effect, Kleist sought and discovered an overwhelming sense of security by looking to the future with a definitive plan for his life. It brought him happiness and assured him of confidence, especially knowing life without a plan only saw despair and discomfort. The irony of his suicide is the fodder of his critics.
ellauri164.html on line 379: I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. I actually found it incredibly difficult to understand. Some of it, I think, was that it was poorly translated. I read a 1962 edition that doesn't even cite a translator -- so many of the sentences were so convoluted as to be utterly obtuse. Poor translation or witless reader? I never could figure out why Mlle Chantal was such an angry bitch and why she insisted on tormenting the priest. What was her secret? Was the priest an alcoholic or just terminally sick? Gay? Why did M le Comte come to hate the priest? These are just some of the basic narrative issues I couldn't figure out. Forget the whole spiritual aspect--much of what the priest mused on and felt was incomprehensible to me as he described it. I can't help wondering if I'd have understood it if I had read it in French. Or maybe I'm just so spiritually challenged (in a God believing, Catholic way) that I can't comprehend it when it's described. All of that said, there were profoundly moving passages here and there, but over all I don't begin to know what I read. It's rather embarrassing actually--I feel so simple! (less)
ellauri171.html on line 1034: It is not incomprehensible that, whereas Ahab devoted himself to military and foreign affairs, Jezebel acted as his deputy for internal affairs: the Naboth report comes back to her, as if the king’s seal was hers; she has her own “table,” that is her own economic establishment and budget; she has her own “prophets,” probably a religious establishment that she controls. All these point toward an official or semiofficial position that Jezebel held by virtue of her character, her royal origin and connections, her husband’s and later her children’s esteem, and her religious affiliation to the Baal (possibly also Asherah) cult.
ellauri333.html on line 63: The reasons behind the kala pani proscription include the inability to carry out the daily rituals of traditional Hindu life and the sin of contact with the characterless, uncivilized mleccha creatures of the foreign lands. Mleccha (from Vedic Sanskrit: म्लेच्छ, romanized: mlecchá) is a Sanskrit term, referring to those of an incomprehensible speech, foreign or barbarous invaders as contra-distinguished from Aryan Vedic tribes. Arjalaiset ovat hyviä, tuumasivat kielettömät sakemannitkin.
ellauri476.html on line 78: Do I enjoy a decent bath because I know that John Smith cannot afford one—or because I delight in being clean? Do I admire Beethoven's Fifth Symphony because it is incomprehensible to Congressmen and Methodists—or because I genuinely love music? Do I prefer terrapin à la Maryland to fried liver because plowhands must put up with the liver—or because the terrapin is intrinsically a more charming dose? Do I prefer kissing a pretty girl to kissing an ugly smelly charwoman, because even a janitor may kiss a charwoman—or because the pretty girl looks better, smells better, and kisses better?
ellauri478.html on line 95:

What does the Bible teach about the Trinity? NOT A THING The word Trinity is not found anywhere in Scripture. But we have the voice from heaven, Jesus, and the dove, that's 3 in all. And in the Old Testament, “LORD” is distinguished from “Lord” and we learn that the Lord has a Son (actually, a bunch of them). Jesus speaks to the Father about sending the Helper, the Holy Spirit (John 14:16–17). So, Jesus did not consider Himself to be either the Father or the Holy Spirit. Was He talking to Himself? No way. He may have been a tad unhinged, but not THAT crazy. The dad commands the son and they together send off the spirit like their dog. But they are equal, believe it or not. It just never comes to a vote. The Father does all these things through the Son, who functions as His agent. But they are not just roles, but actually persons, whatever that may mean. We don't know, so you just have to trust us and repeat our words. The most difficult thing about the Christian concept of the Trinity is that there is no way to completely understand it or explain it. It is plain gobbledygook. Ultimately, how a single Being can exist in three distinct Persons is as incomprehensible to us as it is to Jews and Muslims.
xxx/ellauri013.html on line 1017: In an August 1901 letter to the editor of The New York Times Saturday Book Review, Conrad wrote: "Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism."
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 132: Dostoyevsky, Nabokov told anyone who would listen, was “a third-rate writer and his fame is incomprehensible.” He called Henry James “that pale porpoise.” Philip Roth? “Farcical.” Norman Mailer? “I detest everything that he stands for.” T. S. Eliot and Thomas Mann were “fakes.” When his friend Wilson suggested that he include Jane Austen in his Cornell survey course on European literature, Nabokov responded, “I dislike Jane [Austen] and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers.” Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Gogol: da. Everybody else: nyet.
xxx/ellauri225.html on line 360: But Bloom’s insights don’t resonate deeply. He is too obsessed with comparing and contrasting, rather than allowing his responses to touch us deeply. He repeats his theory that poets always wrestle with the work of the poets that have come before them, either unconsciously or consciously, and then struggle to find their own voice in reaction to what has come before. There is something anti-transformative about his assertions, often tangled up with incomprehensible jargon.
xxx/ellauri306.html on line 68: Why is Rand a bad writer? Her writing is simply illogical, incomprehensible and blabbering. Her heroes and heroines are but pastiches, cliché-like cardboard figurines. Her world is black and white; either the character is a hero or a crook, but never anything in-between. Moreover, they fail the reality check; Howard Roark of The Fountainhead would not be the heroic creative mind he is represented; the reality check would be a similar megalomaniac sociopath as Le Corbusier.
xxx/ellauri400.html on line 315: This story is surprising for its social implications. It seems incomprehensible that entire years pass without anyone noticing the death of a person. However, these types of stories happen frequently. Chances are you'll have a story similar to Joyce Vincent's. And they are all the same.
xxx/ellauri436.html on line 397: His chief reason for choosing Episcopalian was Caroline. Adler had been "attracted" to Catholicism for many years because it was "incomprehensible". He "wanted to be a Roman Catholic", but issues like abortion and the resistance of his Jewish family and friends kept him away. Many thought he was baptized as an Episcopalian rather than a Catholic solely because of his "ardently Episcopal" wife Caroline. Hudson suggests it is no coincidence that it was only after her untimely death in 1998 at 63 that he took the final step. In December 1999, in San Mateo, where he had moved to spend his last 2 years, Adler was formally received into the Catholic Church by a long-armed friend, Bishop Pierre DuMaine.
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