from Look at the Harlequins, by Nabokov

"When a girl starts to speak like a novelette, all you need is a little patience."

Serial Anabases

"Anabasis" showed up as the Word of the Day while, in his Selected Letters, Flaubert was busy reading a book called Anabasis. As defined by Dictionary.com, the word, "anabasis" means: a march from the coast into the interior, as that of Cyrus the Younger against Artaxerxes II, described by Xenophon in his historical work Anabasis (379–371 b.c.). In broader terms, an anabasis can be any military advance or retreat. The occurrences of this word were remarkably synchronistic, I thought, especially because the book cited at Dictionary.com is the exact same book that Flaubert was reading. He was gathering material for his Salammbo, which was a book about Carthage. In closing, I want to add that I first came across this word when I read about Svejk's Budejovice anabasis in The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War, which is one of my all-time favorite books on account of its being fucking hilarious.

Benedictus de Spinoza, on freedom

A thrown stone, "while it continue[s] to move....is conscious only of its striving, and not at all indifferent, it will believe itself to be free, and to persevere in motion for no other cause than because it wills to. And this is that famous human freedom which everyone brags of having, and which consists only in this: that men are conscious of their appetite and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined."