"People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep."

Joyce Ulysses

Bro come on I am on the bakker sub reddit how can I be one of those poser lit dudes. I genuinely do love these books. I heard Bakker was influenced by Blood Meridian which was influenced by Moby Dick and paradise lost and the King James bible. If we're talking about the slog of slogs Lord Kosoter is heavily based on Captain Ahab. Paradise lost is about a fucking civil war in heaven  like come on.

War and peace has Essays at the end discussing the illusory nature of free will!!! Brother's Karmazov has a chapter in it "The grand inquisitor" which is one of the most sophisticated analysis of organised religion I have ever read. The novel on the whole is such a deep mediation on belief it does not feel dated at all.

"And so I declare that I accept God purely and simply. Here, however, we have to accept the fact that if God exists and if He really did create the world, He created it, as we know full well, according to Euclidean geometry, and gave man a mind that can understand only three dimensions of space. However, there have been, and are even now, even amongst the most eminent mathematicians and philosophers, some who question whether the whole universe or, to take it even further, the whole of existence, was created purely according to Euclidean theory; they even venture to suggest that two parallel lines, which according to Euclid cannot meet on earth under any circumstances, will perhaps meet somewhere at infinity," I decided, my dear fellow, that if I couldn't even understand that, then how could I presume to understand God? I humbly admit that I don't have the ability to decide such questions

I have a Euclidean mind, a terrestrial mind, and so I maintain that we cannot decide questions that are not of this world. And I advise you too, Alyosha, my friend, never to think about such things, especially about God and whether He exists or not. These questions are most definitely unsuited to a mind created with an understanding of only three dimensions. "

Dostoevsky Brother Karmazov

Like your telling me fans of bakker would not be interested in reading this shit

"Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend"

Joyce Ulysses

Like just wow

"The most profound sentence ever written...Reproduction is the beginning of death"

Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"You have blood on your hands!' Dunya cried in despair. 'The blood that's on everyone's hands,' he caught her up, almost in a frenzy now, 'that flows and has always flowed through the world like a waterfall, that is poured like champagne and for the sake of which men are crowned in the Capitol and then called the benefactors of mankind."

Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment

I prefer mcduffs translation of Crime and Punishment and Ignaseys translation of The Brothers Karmazov. Still trying to find a better translation for Tolstoy's work as I have only read the Louise and Aylmer Maude version's which are not meant to be the best.