/lit/ - Literature

>>2164842
nice

oh reuben...

>>2162745
>>2162745
*CONQUER

>>2162727
I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH THAT SENTIMENT MY GOOD FRIEND. FOR I HAVE FOUND WHEN ATTEMPTING TO READ NUMEROUS SHORT STORIES AT ONCE, ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE WELL CONSTRUCTED, I GET NOTHING SHORT OF /OVERWHELMED/. NOW I DO NOT MEAN THIS IN A FATIGUE SORT OF WAY OR EVEN A LACK OF INTEREST SORT OF WAY, BUT RATHER A FULL FEELING AKIN TO EATING A HEFTY MEDIUM RARE SLAB WITH GARLIC FRIES WHILE DRINKING THE FINEST OF DRINKS. THE POINT IS REACHED AND THE BAR CAN'T BE HIGHER, LEFT ALONE AND FORCED TO CONCUR NEW TERRITORY.

>>2162716
SHIT MAN, IT'S ALL ABOUT PRIORITIES. JUST HOW IMPORTANT IS READING TO YOU IN THE SCOPE OF THINGS? THAT'S THE REAL QUESTION WE AS READERS MUST PONDER EXTENSIVELY. JUST REMEMBER CAPS, EVERYTHING IS SECOND TO READING.

YEAH BUT FOR REALS, I HEAR YOU MAN. KIND OF. I'LL REMEMBER SOON ENOUGH

OH SHIT NIGGA IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN

LAST:
THE SOCIETY OF SPECTACLE
SCHOPENHAUER ESSAYS
ISIS UNVEILED
A FEW GNOSTIC GOSPELS
THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRITCH

CURRENT
BEELZEBUBS TALES TO HIS GRANDSON
IM OK YOU'RE OK

NEXT
MORE SCI FI
SOME ADORNO
SOME BARTHES

Hesse, dfw, catch 22, dumas, dune, tom wolfe, I mean the list goes on

but my child, you are never alone

I dunno, so is like annie based off virginia woolf or what is going on here

>>2160421
thnak god for the blurred out cooch

soo five spice street is the only one available on the irc

>>2160375
well bob monroe's books might facilitate that specific skill better

>>2160350
>>2160349
>>2160339
john grace = superior * ten^4

probability????

Just picked up three stigmata palmer eldritch and the crack in space. hope they're more valis and less ubik

How bout you cut the shit

>andre gide
race mixing faggot pedo

>>2158749
LOL

i would prefer not to

There will be no need of shutting your eyes to this world, when this world has vanished from you, and you have nothing before you but the throne of God, and the slow but continual movements about it in preparation of the judgment. In that interval, when you are in that vast receptacle of disembodied souls, what will be your thoughts about the world which you have left! how poor will then seem to you its highest aims, how faint its keenest pleasures, compared with the eternal aims, the infinite pleasures, of which you will at length feel your souls to be capable! O, my brethren, let this thought be upon you day by day, especially when you are tempted to sin. Avoid sin as a serpent; it looks and promises well; it bites afterwards. It is dreadful in memory, dreadful even on earth; but in that awful period, when the fever of life is over, and you are waiting in silence for the judgment, with nothing to distract your thoughts, who can say how dreadful may be the memory of sins done in the body? Then the very apprehension of their {93} punishment, when Christ shall suddenly visit, will doubtless outweigh a thousand-fold the gratification, such as it was, which you felt in committing them; and if so, what will be the proportion between it and that punishment, if after all it be actually inflicted? Let us lay to heart our Saviour's own most merciful words, "Be not afraid," He says, "of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you, whom ye shall fear. Fear Him, which, after He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yes, I say unto you, Fear Him."

How blessed would it be, if we really understood this! What a change it would produce in our thoughts, unless we were utterly reprobate, to understand what and where we are,—accountable beings on their trial, with God for their friend and the devil for their enemy, and advanced a certain way on their road either to heaven or to hell. No truths indeed, ever so awful, ever so fully brought home to the mind, will change it, if the love of God and of holiness be not there; but none among us, as we may humbly trust, is in this reprobate state. One wishes to think that no one has so done despite to the Spirit of grace, and so sinned against the Blood of the Covenant, as to have nothing of his regenerate nature left to him; no one among us, but, if he shut his eyes to the external world, and opened them {92} to the world within him, contemplated his real state and prospects, and called to mind his past life, would be brought to repentance and amendment. Endeavour then, my brethren, to realize that you have souls, and pray God to enable you to do so. Endeavour to disengage your thoughts and opinions from the things that are seen; look at things as God looks at them, and judge of them as He judges. Pass a very few years, and you will actually experience what as yet you are called on to believe. There will be no need of the effort of mind to which I invite you, when you have passed into the unseen state.

Now, why is it they speak and think in this manner? Apparently because they cannot conceive it possible that he or that they should be lost. Even the worst men have qualities which endear them to those who come near them. They have human affections in some shape or other. Even the witch of Endor showed a sympathy and kindness towards her guest, which move us. Human feelings cannot exist in hell, and we cannot bring ourselves to think that they are subjects of hell who have them. And for this reason men cannot admit the bare possibility of another being lost; they reject the idea, and therefore, when a man dies, they conclude, as the only alternative, that he must be in Abraham's bosom; and they boldly say so, and they catch at some half sentence which he said during his illness, when he was calmer or {91} weaker, or at the ease with which he died, in confirmation of their belief.

And if it is difficult to believe that there are any persons among us at this moment in a state of spiritual death, how shall we understand, what perchance is the case, that there are many such, perhaps multitudes? how shall we persuade ourselves of the great truth that, in spite of outward appearances, human society, as we find it, is but a part of an invisible world, and is really divided into but two companies, the sons of God, and the children of the wicked one; that some souls are ministered unto by Angels, others led captive by devils; that some are "fellow-citizens of the saints," and of the invisible "household of God," and others companions of those His enemies in time past, who now are waiting in prison for the judgment.

But we are in error if we mean, as is often the case, to deny thereby that irreligious men, as such, whether man can ascertain them or not, are at this very time, not only in danger, but actually under the power of God's wrath. Healthy men in a sickly country may be said to be in danger of sickness; soldiers in a battle are in danger of wounds; but irreligious men not only hazard, but do lie under God's eternal curse; and when we see an irreligious man, we see one who is under it, only we speak guardedly, both as hoping that he may repent, and as feeling that we may be mistaken. But whether or not men may be what they seem, or whether or not they are {90} to change, certain it is that every one who dies, passes at once into one or other of two states; and if he dies unsanctified and unreconciled to God, into a state of eternal misery.

How little the world at large realizes this, is shewn by the conduct of surviving friends after a loss. Let a person who is taken away have been ever so notorious a sinner, ever so confirmed a drunkard, ever so neglectful of Christian ordinances, and though they have no reason for supposing any thing hopeful was going on in his mind, yet they will generally be found to believe that he has gone to heaven; they will confidently talk of his being at peace, of his pains being at an end, of his happy release, and the like. They enlarge on these subjects; whereas their duty lies in keeping silence, waiting in trembling hope, and being resigned.

If then it is difficult, as I have said it is, to realize that all who ever lived still live, it is as difficult at least to believe that they are in a state either of eternal rest or eternal woe; that all whom we have known and who are gone, are, and that we who still live, were we now to die, should then at once be, either in the one state or the other. Nay, I will say more: when we think seriously on the subject, it is almost impossible to comprehend, I do not say that a great number, but that any person whom we see before us, however unsatisfactory appearances may be, is really under God's displeasure, and in a state of reprobation. So hard is it to live by faith! People feel it to be a difficulty to have to admit certain {89} other doctrines of the Church, which are more or less contrary to sight. For instance, they say as an argument against regeneration in Baptism, "Is it possible that all who have been baptized can have been born again, considering what lives they lead?" They make the evidence of sight tell against a doctrine which demands their faith. Yet, after all, is there any thing more startling, more difficult to believe, than that any one person, whom we see, however sinful his life, is at present under God's eternal wrath, and would incur it if he were to die at once, and will incur it unless he repents? This is what we cannot bring ourselves to believe. All we commonly allow is, that certain persons are what we call "in danger of hell." Now, if by using this cautious phrase we mean merely to express, that irreligious men may repent before death, or that men may seem to be irreligious to us, who are not so, and therefore that it is safer to speak of men being in danger of God's wrath than actually under it; so far is well.