a thread for mundane ironists

[iambiguous]

Italo Calvino from Invisible Cities

Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations are wrong and their figures are unable to describe the heavens, or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters.

Pick one:
1] astronomers today
2] astronomers 100 years from now
3] astronomers 1,000 years from now

And when my spirit wants no stimulus or nourishment save music, I know it is to be sought in cemeteries: the musicians hide in the tombs; from grave to grave flute trills, harp chords answer one another.

Of course: save music.

The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past.

Then, in the West, going all the way back to the pre-Socratics.
Or, sure, the caves.

An invisible landscape conditions the visible one.

Then, in the West, going all the way back to the pre-Socratics.
Or, sure, the caves.

There are three hypotheses about the inhabitants of Baucis: that they hate the earth; that they respect it so much they avoid all contact; that they love it as it was before they existed and with spyglasses and telescopes aimed downward they never tire of examining it, leaf by leaf, stone by stone, ant by ant, contemplating with fascination their own absence.

Next up: the inhabitants here.

From my words you will have reached the conclusion that the real Berenice is a temporal succession of different cities, alternately just and unjust. But what I wanted to warn you about is something else: all the future Berenices are already present in this instant, wrapped one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable.

And from your words?

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Geologists Uncover Slab Of Amber Containing Perfectly Preserved Adam And Eve

Wow. I guess I was wrong.

Man In Splashy Floral Print Wastes Everyone’s Time By Not Having Any Drugs On Him

Right, like that could actually happen.

Increasingly Anxious Man Worried Order Confirmation Email Never Going To Come

Think about this: what if it never comes?

Dry Humping An Adequate Sex Alternative For Teens, Says Weird, Unsolicited Report From Department Of Interior

Except in Florida, of course.

Senate Freaking Out After Dianne Feinstein Gets Her Hands On Gun

Yo, henry! Imagine this: Senate Freaking Out After Dianne Feinstein Gets Her Hands On Bazooka

Couple Choosing Not To Have Kids Can’t Fathom Bringing Child Into World With So Many Marvel Movies

Good for them!

[iambiguous]

Elena Ferrante from My Brilliant Friend

Children don’t know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is day, this is night.

This is philosophy.

They were more severely infected than the men, because while men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.

And, of course, absolutely no exceptions.

Nowhere is it written that you can’t do it.

Still, you can't do it. Then what?

I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: it was full of violence. Every sort of thing happened, at home and outside, every day, but I don't recall having ever thought that the life we had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's all, we grew up with the duty to make it difficult for others before they made it difficult for us.

Your childhood might have been different. Then what?

The beauty of mind that Cerullo had from childhood didn’t find an outlet, Greco, and it has all ended up in her face, in her breasts, in her thighs, in her ass, places where it soon fades and it will be as if she had never had it.

You do grasp how specious this is, don't you? It can take years...decades...to fade.

Nino has something that's eating him inside, like Lila, and it's a gift and a suffering; they aren't content, they never give in, they fear what is happening around them.

Either I comprehend this more or less than you do. No one ever grasps it the same.

[iambiguous]

Chuck Palahniuk from Fight Club

We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens.

Let's file this one under, "it's so deep it's meaningless".

On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

I know, I know: What if that was actually true?!

If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?

So, which one would you like me to be?

We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

This coming from Brad Pitt!
Well, in the movie, anyway.

Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!

My guess: not even close.

Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave.

Tell that to Marla Singer.

[iambiguous]

William Gaddis from The Recognitions

We shall live for no reason. Then die and be done with it. What a recognition!

No fucking way, right?

What shall save us? Only the knowledge that we have lived without illusion, not excluding the illusion that something will save us.

No fucking way, right?

That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.

And then the time you don't bounce back.

He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?

Try it and see what happens.

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa...Leonardo had eye trouble...Art couldn't explain it...But now we're safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf...

You know, in a free will world.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

Just not here, right?

[iambiguous]

Andy Warhol

I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.

Next up: how that is applicable here.

I don't want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.

Well, if you're smart enough to know what he means.

The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around, you can't be on your own, wich is always so much better.

No, really.

You know it's ART, when the check clears.

Pick one:
1] too cynical
2] not cynical enough

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes

I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is "In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.”

Reality TV we call it.
Well, not counting me.

[iambiguous]

J.D. Salinger from The Catcher in the Rye

People never notice anything.

In other words, what we do.

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.

No liars here thank God.

People always clap for the wrong reasons.

Next up: People always post for the wrong reasons.

Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.

Pick one:
1] Donald Trump
2] Joe Biden
3] all of the above

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody's be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.

And then [of course] my rendition of that.

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

Cool. The word that makes me puke.

[iambiguous]

Graham Greene from The Quiet American

Innocence is a kind of insanity.

If it even exists at all.
For those beyond, say, puberty.

Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding.

What is this if not his own rendition of dasein.

Sooner or later...one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

Not true at all. If you know what I mean.

That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself.

Actually, that now occurs to me more and more and more.

Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?

Let alone post here.

From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.

You know, being philosophical.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Scientists Link Dwindling Insect Populations To Pale Weird Kid

Actually a pale weird kid linked the dwindling insect populations to scientists.

Every Short Film At Festival About Widowed Father Learning To Braid Daughter’s Hair

No Oscar nominations yet.

Chair Of Tim Scott Exploratory Committee Finds GOP Voters Have One Big Reservation But Doesn’t Want To Say It

Let's run this one by Alexis Jacobi.

Man Worried He Might Have Mentioned Sorcery Too Many Times During Job Interview

That and waving his magic wand.

New Evidence Shows Martin Luther King Never Called Malcolm X A Butterface

Just bugfuck crazy.

Goofy Beats Ron DeSantis To Death With Crowbar

Trump link now confirmed.

[iambiguous]

Oyinkan Braithwaite from My Sister, the Serial Killer

He looked like a man who could survive a couple of flesh wounds, but then so had Achilles and Caesar.

One word: gangrene

Maybe she is reaching out because she has sent another man to his grave prematurely. Or maybe she wants to know if I can buy eggs on the way home. Either way, I’m not picking up.

Fucking phones!

Two packets of pocket tissue, one 30-centiliter bottle of water, one first aid kit, one packet of wipes, one wallet, one tube of hand cream, one lip balm, one phone, one tampon, one rape whistle. Basically, the essentials for every woman.

Next up: the transgender equivalent.

Ayoola summons me with these words—Korede, I killed him.

Yep, another one.

Ayoola, on the other hand - well, it’ll be interesting to see whether she can do anything more strenuous than putting bread in the toaster.

Like buttering it.

It’s as futile as using air freshener when you leave the toilet—it just inevitably ends up smelling like perfumed shit.

Not unlike the perfumed shit emanating now from...ILP?

[iambiguous]

Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

Back then.
Today? You tell me, ladies.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Back then.
Today? You tell me, gentlemen.

There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it...

Now you're talking!

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.

Don't even pretend to understand this, Mr. Pinhead.

What are men to rocks and mountains?

Let's run this this by, oh, I don't know...gib?

I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve.

No, really.

[iambiguous]

Bret Easton Ellis from American Psycho

He’s the boy next door, aren’t you honey?
No I’m not.
I whisper to myself. I’m a fucking evil psychopath.

Really, you can never know for sure, can you?
Just ask, among others, Keith Morrison.

...suddenly I’m seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many fucking movies to choose from.

And so many videos to return.

I'm on a diet.
What, you're kidding, right? You look great...so fit...and thin.
Patrick Bateman: Well, you can always be thinner...look better.

Next up: Trevor Reznik: https://youtu.be/TIP4wcmgvvY

Did I ever tell you that I want to wear a big yellow smiley-face mask and then put on the CD version of Bobby McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ and then take a girl and a dog—a collie, a chow, a sharpei, it doesn’t really matter—and then hook up this transfusion pump, this IV set, and switch their blood, you know, pump the dog’s blood into the hardbody and vice versa, did I ever tell you this?

Next up: Phil Collins and all that he evokes.

Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. Ensure a strong national defense, prevent the spread of communism in Central America, work for a Middle East peace settlement, prevent U.S. military involvement overseas. We have to ensure that America is a respected world power. Now that’s not to belittle our domestic problems, which are equally important, if not more. Better and more affordable long-term care for the elderly, control and find a cure for the AIDS epidemic, clean up environmental damage from toxic waste and pollution, improve the quality of primary and secondary education, strengthen laws to crack down on crime and illegal drugs. We also have to ensure that college education is affordable for the middle class and protect Social Security for senior citizens plus conserve natural resources and wilderness areas and reduce the influence of political action committees.

Let's just sat that he's in there somewhere.

At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he’d been a mime, odds are he’d already be dead.

Mimes in movies!
Ouch!!
https://youtu.be/j2o0mcPhKSU

[iambiguous]

David Benatar from Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence

It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one (and only) guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.

Yeah, Mom, what about that?!

Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a baby. They just make one. In other words, procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to bring people into existence. Those who do indeed decide to have a child might do so for any number of reasons, but among these reasons cannot be the interests of the potential child. One can never have a child for that child’s sake.

Let's call this philosophy.

A charmed life is so rare that for every one such life there are millions of wretched lives. Some know that their baby will be among the unfortunate. Nobody knows, however, that their baby will be one of the allegedly lucky few. Great suffering could await any person that is brought into existence. Even the most privileged people could give birth to a child that will suffer unbearably, be raped, assaulted, or be murdered brutally. The optimist surely bears the burden of justifying this procreational Russian roulette. Given that there are no real advantages over never existing for those who are brought into existence, it is hard to see how the significant risk of serious harm could be justified. If we count not only the unusually severe harms that anybody could endure, but also the quite routine ones of ordinary human life, then we find that matters are still worse for cheery procreators. It shows that they play Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun—aimed, of course, not at their own heads, but at those of their future offspring.

Just what the world needs, another optimist.

As we have seen, nobody is lucky enough not to be born, everybody is unlucky enough to have been born – and particularly bad luck it is.

On the other hand, why is he still around to remind us?

It is not only the ratio of pleasure to pain that determines the quality of a life, but also the sheer quantity of pain. Once a certain threshold of pain is passed, no amount of pleasure can compensate for it.

Thank God for Heaven, right?

It is unlikely that many people will take to heart the conclusion that coming into existence is always a harm. It is even less likely that many people will stop having children. By contrast, it is quite likely that my views either will be ignored or will be dismissed.

I'm rather fractured and fragmented myself.

[iambiguous]

Stephen Hawking from A Brief History of Time

I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex.

Theoretically?

...the most important point: that the universe is governed by a set of rational laws that we can discover and understand.

Tell that to the Grim Reaper.

But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

Pick one:
if...
if...
if...
if...
if...

...the entropy of an isolated system always increases, and that when two systems are joined together, the entropy of the combined system is greater than the sum of the entropies of the individual systems.

Take, for example, Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

...general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. They are the great intellectual achievements of the first half of this century.

And in philosophy?

But in 1929, Edwin Hubble made the landmark observation that wherever you look, distant galaxies are moving rapidly away from us. In other words, the universe is expanding.

Into what?

[iambiguous]

Candice Carty-Williams from Queenie

I wished that well-meaning white liberals would think before they said things that they thought were perfectly innocent.

Next up: the flat out racists.

You know, those men: bike riding, knitted sweater? Pretends Facebook isn’t important to him, but it really is” I was met with a blank stare, so carried on. Craft beer, start-ups, sense of entitlement? Reads books by Alain de Botton, needs a girlfriend who doesn’t threaten his mediocrity?

Next up: your blank stare.

Being brave isn't the same as being okay, my mum said quietly.

For example, when it's the complete opposite.

It's not putting black lives on a pedestal, I don't even know what that means, I said, my heart beating fast. It's saying that black lives, at this point, and historically, do not, and have not mattered, and that they should!
I looked first at Gina, then around the room to see if anyone was going to back me up. Instead, I was met with what I'd been trying to pretend hadn't always been a room full of white not-quite-liberals whose opinions, like their money, had been inherited.

So, who will back her up here?

Before I got off the bus, I made an internal list of people who could touch my hair:
1. Me
2. A hairdresser
3. That's it, that's the whole list

Of course, that's still a thing.

My eyes must spend at least fifty per cent of any given day rolled to the back of my head.

Or, here:

[iambiguous]

Chuck Palahniuk from Fight Club

Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.

Right, and then millions of them will vote for Donald Trump.
The fucking masses!!!

Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.

Well, not counting the material stuff that we possess.

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells “stop!”, goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

Next up: the equivalent of that here.

Marla's philosophy of life, she told me, is that she can die at any moment. The tragedy of her life is that she doesn't.

Next up: a fight club for women.

How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?

Or, how much can you know about yourself if you've never committed murder?

If Marilyn Monroe was alive right now, what would she be doing?
Clawing at the roof of her coffin.

Unless, of course, she really did commit suicide.

[iambiguous]

William Gaddis from The Recognitions

We've had the goddam Ages of Faith, we've had the goddam Age of Reason. This is the Age of Publicity.

He means the goddamn Age of Publicity.
Well, whatever that means.

...what is it you have, or don't have, that you sit there completely self-contained, that you can sit and know . . . and know exactly where your feet are? Yes, that's what makes cats incredible, because you know they're aware every instant of where their feet are, and they know how much they have to share with other cats, they don't try to . . . pretend.

Your cat?
Pick one:
1] this goes too far
2] this doesn't go far enough

Esther liked books out where everyone could see them, a sort of graphic index to the intricate labyrinth of her mind arrayed to impress the most casual guest, a system of immediate introduction which she had found to obtain in a number of grimy intellectual households in Greenwich Village.

And, of course, the equivalent of that here.

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured.

Wow, that is a lot of vowels.

He stood there unsteady in the cold, mumbling syllables which almost resolved into her name, as though he could recall, and summon back, a time before death entered the world, before accident, before magic, and before magic despaired, to become religion.

The Big Bang some call it.

In this world, God must serve the Devil.

Yes, that is one possible explanation.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

World Agrees To Just Take Down Internet For A While Until They Can Find A Good Use For It

Nope, not yet.

Bill Gates Calls Epstein’s Number Just To Hear His Voicemail Again

Another one! If only Jeff hadn't "committed suicide", right?

Conservatives Claim Hitler’s Nazi Allegiance Greatly Exaggerated

Yo, Alexis! Run this by Satyr, okay?

Entirety Of Objectionable Human Behavior Explained To Toddler As Person Acting Silly

Starting with the silliest person of them all: Donald Trump.

Man Wastes Another Gorgeous Day Being Dead

Of course, that's only natural, right?

Asshole Moves To Part Of City Where All The Assholes Live

Next up: asshole posts where all the assholes post: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/

[iambiguous]

Andy Warhol

When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.

Hmm, the psychological equivalent of 1 + 1 = 2?

Buying is much more American than thinking.

Uh, no shit?

Business art is the step that comes after art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business. They’d say “money is bad” and “working is bad”. But making money is art, and working is art - and good business is the best art.

Tell that to Valerie Solanas.

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

If only ironically.

History books are being re-written all the time.

And not just in Florida.
Though in particular there.

I never read. I just look at pictures.

Pop culture is born.

[iambiguous]

J.D. Salinger from The Catcher in the Rye

I can be quite sarcastic when I'm in the mood.

Yeah, me too.
Right, Mr. Pinhead?

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible.

Let alone the 70 to 80 years most of us will have.

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

Not having any, to cite just one example.

I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about all those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they're really stupid or not.

He wondered if that also included philosophy.

Sleep tight, ya morons!

Or, instead: Drop dead, ya morons!

It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.

Okay, okay, that includes dasein.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Fans Speculate Who Taylor Swift Might Be Talking About In New Song ‘My Weird Little Racist Guy’

Of course it's a real thing.

Scientists Ambivalent About Breakthrough After Bringing Hitler Back To Life

And they damn well should be, right?

The Rich And Famous Address Their Ties To Jeffery Epstein

First up: Donald Trump.

Florida Bans Men From Becoming Nurses

And [of course] women from becoming doctors.

Woman Still Holding Onto Hope That Toxic Friendship Could Blossom Into A Toxic Relationship

Let's root for her.

Ron DeSantis Relaunches Presidential Campaign From Inside Burning Tesla

Sieg Heil?

[iambiguous]

Graham Greene from The Quiet American

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

And how tricky is that, right?

I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the possibility of love dying.

And how tricky is that, right?

I can’t say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman’s voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you’re looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that’s the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there’s a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again.

And nothing ever was for me. And still isn't.

He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.

Yo, henry!
Among others.

God save us always, I said from the innocent and the good.

And from the pinheads. But that's understood.

Ordinary life goes on---that has saved many a man's reason.

No, really, think about it.

[Ichthus77]

Then there is the current situation.

All the same…

Thank you.

[iambiguous]

Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice

I have not the pleasure of understanding you.

Next up: the pleasure of misunderstanding me.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

Indeed. And I certainly take full advantage of that here.

You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

Or, sure, in remembrance of all the pain you gave to others.

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.

Conflicting goods as it were. Back then.

Till this moment I never knew myself.

Me? Till this moment I thought I knew myself.

My good opinion once lost is lost forever.

And double that [at least] here.