Things I read recently

'There are eras in which you can only move forward by going in the opposite direction.'
Mircea Eliade 

'Post-historical man is an insatiable tourist - history is his entertainment and the world is his museum.'
Shaida Drury

'Silence is the element in which great thing fashion themselves.' 

Thomas Carlyle

'Embedding the idea of original sin in a nation, is the best possible way to breed self-doubt — it suggests you can do little by way of good, because you were rotten from the start.' Douglas Murray

'I find that note-taking gets in the way. I have great faith in memory, and its natural sorting process. The fact is that when you’ve finished a trip, you’re completely swimming in recollections, so much so that I find it hard to think. It’s all so much and all so vivid, but then in no time at all, a few days, a few weeks, most of the detail starts to fall away.

'It seems to me that anything you remember after a fortnight or a month is pretty-much the stuff you need. If you’ve forgotten a whole village then there’s a reason for that. Your mind is telling you that you don’t need to take notes about this village because you’re going to forget that you’ve ever been there. I limit my note-taking to details that I think will be significant.'
Bill Bryson