If Forest Gump was a hyper rational centurion from Sweden with bomb-building skills... it was entertaining and slightly disturbing.

I taught children skills that were theoretically useful for a way of life that no one here actually lived. He created real jobs with real paychecks... which one of us was making a difference for Africa?

Awesome journey, complete with interesting characters, early politics, the foundations of architecture, and the everlasting sources of conflict (namely, narcissism, instantaneous gratification, and ignorance), Great narrator on Audible, too.

We self-sabotage.

For most of them there really was no alternative but theft. But his role in life was to counsel virtuous living, not to make excuses for sin. There was no more he could do for this wretched man.

All pleasure is a vice because seeking pleasure is what everyone does in life, and the worst vice of all is to do what everyone else does.

Got this as a Christmas present and it‘s off to an awesome start...

Stupid and stubborn, the hardest type to quarrel with

It‘s a different kind of strength, the one that comes from having to work.

Sketching of Wilkie Collins‘ hat

Epic story of revolutionary Russia told through POV of upper class teenage girl still open to alternative ideas on how the world should work. It‘s not perfect. Every meaningful male character seems to lust after her in sometimes unbelievable ways. But the day-to-day approach to a volatile time in Russian history is compelling. Audible narrator for this is great, too.

Excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of god through excessive humility.

Fast-paced story, but I thought the plot was a bit too sinister for my taste. It was a story of human suffering, but with a particularly dark angle given the involvement of someone with Down‘s Syndrome.

History is bunk.

“And has a nature so malign and ruthless,
That never doth she glut her greedy will,
And after food is hungrier than before.”

A detailed and entertaining lesson in how, no matter your name or social position, you‘ll run out of wealth if expenses exceed income. It‘s also a fun history of American transportation and the Gilded Age.

“The Vanderbilt case is an impressive lesson in the folly of attempting to ‘found a family‘ upon no better basis than the possession of money.”

God save us from the people who believe in things. You‘re the ones who will get us all killed.

“I was not too young to have had a past,” I thought to myself with a certain pride. That‘s how young I was.

Parenting advice from Dumbledore