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Valiseb

Valiseb

Joined June 2021

Byzantium, Roman Empire, Victorian England, Dickens, All things Bulgarian
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Gold from Gemini by Jonathan Gash
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The Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill
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Morality Play by Barry Unsworth
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Starship Troopers by Robert Anson Heinlein
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Dark Run by Mike Brooks
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Brushfire by Craig Alanson
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The Misfit Soldier by Michael Mammay
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Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
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Le salaire de la peur by Georges Arnaud
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Old Filth by Jane Gardam
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The Western Star by Craig Johnson
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The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
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The Wolves of Savernake by Edward Marston
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Foundation by Isaac Asimov
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Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
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Sharpe's Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell
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Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
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Metro 2033 by Dmitrii Glukhovskii
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On Human Nature by Roger Scruton
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Firefly: The Ghost Machine by James Lovegrove
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The Iron Candlestick by Dimitar Talev
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Chamkoria by Milen Ruskov
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The Black Box by Alek Popov, Daniella Gill de Mayol de Lupe, Charles Gill de Mayol de Lupe
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????????: ????? by Milen Ruskov
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Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester
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Ulysses by James Joyce
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Good Omens by Gaiman, Neal
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The Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
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Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
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One Second After by William R. Forstchen
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The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
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When Christmas Comes by Andrew Klavan
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The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell
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Solaris by Stanis?aw Lem
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Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
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La peste by Albert Camus
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The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail
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Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
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The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale by Oliver Goldsmith
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Under the Dome by King, Stephen
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Histories by Tacitus
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Beasts in my Belfry by Gerald Durrell
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Whispering Land by Gerald Malcolm Durrell
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Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
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Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome
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Outcast by Rosemary Sutcliff
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The Bear of Byzantium by S.J.A. Turney
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Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin
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King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
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The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, Rmy Rougeau
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Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
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Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
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Black Box by Alek Popov
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Serile n c?tunul de lng? Dikanka by Nikolaj Vasil'evic Gogol'
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Gateway by Frederik Pohl
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Despre minciun? by Augustinus (Sfntul)
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The Lost World of Byzantium by Jonathan Harris
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The Wise Woman and Other Stories by George MacDonald, Craig Yoe
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Dark by Jeremy Robinson
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Ние, врабчетата by Yordan Radichkov
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Lysistrata by Aristophanes
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The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature by J. C. McKeown, Peter E. Knox
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The Man who Would be King by Rudyard Kipling
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The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
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By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Moral Letters to Lucilius by Lucius Annaeus Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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Count Belisarius by Robert Graves
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The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
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100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson
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The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
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The First Man by Albert Camus
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Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
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Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss
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Beasts in My Belfry by Gerald Malcolm Durrell
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Planets by Andrew Cohen, Professor Brian Cox
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The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov
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Footprints in Time by Petru Popescu
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The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
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Valiseb
Smoke and Ashes | Abir Mukherjee
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I'd never been one to give up on lost causes, maybe because I was one myself.

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Valiseb
The Story Smuggler | Georgi Gospodinov
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We are all emigrants from the homeland of our childhoods.

Valiseb The Bulgarian soul with its frailties and nostalgia heavy as its history. 5mo
Deblovestoread What a great line! 5mo
3 likes2 comments
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Valiseb
The Western Star | Craig Johnson
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Valiseb
The Same Night Awaits Us All | Hristo Karastoyanov
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Another necessary jump into the Bulgarian literature rabbit hole, this time with Karastoyanov's novel set in Bulgaria in the 1920s, but bringing to mind Dostoevsky's Demons with its anarchists and assassins, lighthouses, zeppelins, and synthesis of modernist narrative techniques and Balkan storytelling.

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Valiseb
Time Shelter | Georgi Gospodinov
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And as the monsters come out from the past they settle in the man. Gaustin ( The yellow notebook)

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Valiseb
Time Shelter | Georgi Gospodinov
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Happiness is not only impossible, but also unbearable. What will you do with its volatile matter? This ghostly light, soapy bubble that will burst in front of your nose, leaving a bit of hot foam in your eyes. Happiness? Happiness is impermanent - like milk in the sun, like a fly in winter and a crocus in early spring. His back as fragile as a dragonfly... Happiness is not in the history books.

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Valiseb
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If people are not whole, even the most perfect plans go to the movies

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Valiseb
Wolf Hunt | Ivailo Petrov
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If man had no memory, he would live like an angel in this world

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Valiseb
A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens
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There was an earthly savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat. 💝

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Valiseb
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Pickpick

Reading for the second time in two years this absolute of a gem of modern Bulgarian literature. I'm diving again into Terziyski's beautiful world full of nostalgia hoping I'll never have to come back for air again.

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Valiseb
Mission Turan | Alek Popov
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Another crazy Bulgarian post-socialist adventure from the most original writer in the Balkans for the last two decades, this time going to Asia in search of the ...old Bulgarians. This is one for the ages. I needed this humour in my life right now.

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Valiseb
Parade's End | Ford Madox Ford
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Men, at any rate, never fulfilled expectations. They might, upon acquaintance, turn out more entertaining than they appeared; but almost always taking up with a man was like reading a book you had read when you had forgotten that you had read it. You had not been for ten minutes in any sort of intimacy with any man before you had said: “But I‘ve read all this before…”

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Valiseb
Time Shelter | Georgi Gospodinov
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We are the apocalypse of the world.

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Valiseb
Vo?nata na taralezhite | Brati?a? Mormarevi
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Today I decided to be a kid...for a day...during the 80's Bulgaria, filled with heavy nostalgia of an age that promised everything and gave nothing. I was a kid myself during those years...just in another country, across the northern border, but outside the language everything is so relatable. Let's shoot some hoops with the yesterday's kids turned into today's joyless adults.

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Valiseb
The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen
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While it is better to be loved than hated, it is also far better to be hated than ignored.

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Valiseb
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My dear, dear soul of Bulgaria!

It‘s night again. It could be yesterday‘s, or tomorrow‘s. A night four years back. They‘re all the same.

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Valiseb
The Diary of a Country Priest | Georges Bernanos, Rmy Rougeau
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I have no ambition to change my nature, I merely intend to conquer my dislikes.

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Valiseb
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Pickpick

I'm getting back again into the brutal universe of detective Bank Romero.

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Valiseb
Mission London | Alek Popov, Daniella Gill de Mayol de Lupe, Charles Gill de Mayol de Lupe
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Valiseb
Dodger | Terry Pratchett
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The spirit of the moment 🌲

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Valiseb
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To light a candle is to cast a shadow...

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Valiseb
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People all know the usefulness of what is useful, but they do not know the usefulness of the useless. Zhuang Zi

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Valiseb
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Truth, by its very nature, is ugly, savage and cruel; it disturbs, it frightens, it hurts and it kills. If, in some extreme situations, it is to be used at all, it must be taken only in small doses, in strict isolation, and with the most rigorous prophylactic precautions.

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Valiseb
Berezina | Sylvain Tesson
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A great wintery book of travel that will take me away from this unbearable world we live in.

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Valiseb
Nyuh | Emil Minchev
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This book is a breath of fresh air in fantasy as the whole new fantasy wave in the Bulgarian literature. Too bad we'll see none of it in Romanian.

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Valiseb
The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature | J. C. McKeown, Peter E. Knox
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Such a surprising book! Great comfort reading!

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Valiseb
The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco
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Bacon was right in saying that the conquest of learning is achieved through the conquest of languages.

TiredLibrarian One of my all time favorites. 3y
PhyllisH This one is on my TBR list. 3y
7 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Valiseb
The Essential Spike Milligan | Spike Milligan, Alexander Games
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Valiseb
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Stupidity is not my strong point. I have seen many people; I have visited a few countries; I have taken part in various undertakings without liking them; Today I can still recall a good hundred faces, two or three great shows, and perhaps the gist of some twenty books. What I remember is neither the best nor the worst of these things: simply what has managed to remain, remains. This arithmetic relieves me of any surprise that I am growing old.

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Valiseb
The Go-Between | L.P. Hartley
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The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there

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Valiseb
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Man‘s estrangement from the mythical realm and the subsequent shrinking of his existence to the mere factual—that is the major cause of mental illness.

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Valiseb
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AS YOU may perhaps remember, some time ago the English actor Hugh Grant was arrested by the police in Los Angeles: he was performing a rather private activity in a public place with a lady of the night. In this distressing circumstance, he was interviewed by an American journalist, who asked him a very American question: “Are you receiving any therapy or counselling?” Grant replied, “No. In England, we read novels.”

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Valiseb
Smoke and Ashes | Abir Mukherjee
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I'd never been one to give up on lost causes, maybe because I was one myself.

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Valiseb
A Canticle for Leibowitz | Walter M. Miller, Jr.
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To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.

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Valiseb
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Modern man, who moves with the times and seeks power without grace, is finally a much greater menace to human integrity than tattooed cannibals.

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Valiseb
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Hell is not “truth seen too late” (as Hobbes said); on the contrary, it is truth seen too soon, and knowingly rejected.

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Valiseb
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The most beautiful sadness in the world, the Bulgarian kind...and everything became moon.

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Valiseb
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Nostalgia filled summer holiday with Alex, Ana, Yana & co

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Valiseb
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Valiseb

Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive.

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Valiseb

Half of the misery in this world is caused by people whose only talent is to worm their way into positions for which they otherwise have no competence.

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Valiseb

life is a prison, and only imagination can open its windows.

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Valiseb

The primary source of scientific thought is not reasoning, but the precise verification of an association originally supplied by the imagination.

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Valiseb

What we should remember, however, is this (if I may thus paraphrase Bernard Shaw): The successful man adapts himself to the world. The loser persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the loser.