A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald book review

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A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald

I think I’ll put down the fantasy for awhile. This book, a nice tale about innocent child (Clare), and wicked world that God has preordained on all of us.

These wicked people. They see you, recognize you immediately, and they pray to their god. I see them pray.

They say, “Oh god, what is this illuminated person? Why does he not take the path that I am on. Can he not see that it’s full of great things and marvelous treasure of all sorts?”

And their god replies, “Make the light in this child’s eye extinguish. It is not right the child remains ignorant of the FACTS OF LIFE.”

And the antagonist proceeds to make life an absolute LIVING HELL.

George MacDonald’s A Rough Shaking

Some of my highlights:

A Rough Shaking by George MacDonald

Book last read: 2022-02-26 19:30:13
Percentage read: 100%

Chapter 0: Chapter I. How I Came to know Clare Skymer.
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Chapter progress: 3.43%
Highlight: Excuse me for speaking so confidently; but if we were half as far on for men, as Memnon is for a horse, the kingdom of heaven would be a good deal nearer!

Chapter 0: Chapter I. How I Came to know Clare Skymer.
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Chapter progress: 4.05%
Highlight: When he lied, would he not be a devil?
Notes: Anthony Fauci

Chapter 0: Chapter I. How I Came to know Clare Skymer.
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Chapter progress: 4.67%
Highlight: ;—I mean those foolish women who, for their own pleasure, so spoil their dogs that they make other people hate them, doing their best to keep them from rising in the scale of God’s creation.

Chapter 0: Chapter I. How I Came to know Clare Skymer.
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Chapter progress: 5.61%
Highlight: Because they have in them the blood of men who loved cruelty, and never repented of it.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 3: Chapter IV. The new family.
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Chapter progress: 11.53%
Highlight: . We do not know what is in us until the temptation comes. Then there is the devil to fight.

Chapter 4: Chapter V. His new home.
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Chapter progress: 13.08%
Highlight: pollards
Notes: Tree management

Chapter 5: Chapter VI. What did draw out his first smile.
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Chapter progress: 14.02%
Highlight: . He was very good to his people, and not foolishly kind.

Chapter 5: Chapter VI. What did draw out his first smile.
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Chapter progress: 14.33%
Highlight: To know that you do not know, is to be a small prophet.

Chapter 5: Chapter VI. What did draw out his first smile.
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Chapter progress: 14.95%
Highlight: Even now he knew what so many seem never to learn, that a man is the defender of the weak; that, if a man is his brother’s keeper, still more is he his sister’s.

Chapter 6: Chapter VII. Clare and his brothers.
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Chapter progress: 16.82%
Highlight: Low nurses and small-hearted mothers dwarf and pervert their children, doing their worst to keep them from having big hearts like God.

Chapter 6: Chapter VII. Clare and his brothers.
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Chapter progress: 17.45%
Highlight: But to die of terror was horrible.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 7: Chapter VIII. Clare and his human brothers
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Chapter progress: 18.07%
Highlight: “Nothing almost sees miracles but misery,” says Kent in King Lear.

Chapter 7: Chapter VIII. Clare and his human brothers
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Chapter progress: 19.0%
Highlight: The boy was tyrant and sneak together—a combination to be seen sometimes in a working man set over his fellows, and in a rich man grown poor, and bent upon making money again.
Notes: Anthony Fauci

Chapter 7: Chapter VIII. Clare and his human brothers
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Chapter progress: 19.0%
Highlight: They did not see that to Clare another boy was another of himself; that he was carrying out the design of the Father of men, that his creatures should come together into one, not push each other away.
Notes: Loving your neighbor.

Chapter 8: Chapter IX. Clare the defender.
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Chapter progress: 19.94%
Highlight: One good thing of the affair was, that the bully was crippled for life, and could do the less harm.

Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 8: Chapter IX. Clare the defender.
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Chapter progress: 20.56%
Highlight: He did not yet know that one must not only love but mean to love, must not only bask in the warmth of love, but know it as love, and where it comes from—love again the fountain whence it flows.

Notes: Gratitude.

Chapter 8: Chapter IX. Clare the defender.
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Chapter progress: 20.56%
Highlight: His still regard repelled them.

Chapter 9: Chapter X. The black aunt.
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Chapter progress: 20.87%
Highlight: The children of course had to share in the general gloom, but it did not trouble them much.
Notes: Children in face mask forever. CDC protocol.

Chapter 11: Chapter XII. Clare becomes a guardian of the poor.
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Chapter progress: 23.99%
Highlight: After that he was too wide awake to be caught.

Notes: Awake

Chapter 11: Chapter XII. Clare becomes a guardian of the poor.
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Chapter progress: 24.61%
Highlight: Nothing touched her like the loss of money—the love of which is as dread a passion as the love of drink, and more ruinous to the finer elements of the nature.

Chapter 13: Chapter XIV. Their first helper
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Chapter progress: 26.48%
Highlight: Clare noted that where were most flowers in the garden, the windows were brightest, and the children cleanest.

Chapter 14: Chapter XV. Their first host.
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Chapter progress: 27.73%
Highlight: Perhaps the sparrows knew more about God than he did then.
Notes: The birds know.

Chapter 15: Chapter XVI. On the tramp.
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Chapter progress: 28.66%
Highlight: He was a dreamer with open eyes and ready hands, not clearly distinguishing thought and action, fancy and fact.
Notes: Dreaming awake

Chapter 15: Chapter XVI. On the tramp.
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Chapter progress: 28.97%
Highlight: Now we are put into bodies, and sent into the world, to wake us up.
Notes: Awake now

Chapter 15: Chapter XVI. On the tramp.
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Chapter progress: 29.28%
Highlight: that many a man who passes for respectable in this disreputable world, is counted far meaner than a thief in the next, and is going there to be put in prison.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 16: Chapter XVII. The baker’s cart.
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Chapter progress: 30.84%
Highlight: Men who strive to make money are unconsciously pulling instead of pushing at the heavy gate of the kingdom.

Chapter 22: Chapter XXIII. Treasure trove.
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Chapter progress: 37.69%
Highlight: How many things and persons there are whose other sides are altogether friendly! These are their true selves, and we must be true to get at them.

 

Chapter 22: Chapter XXIII. Treasure trove.
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Chapter progress: 38.01%
Highlight: But where there is only one way, that way must be taken,

Chapter 22: Chapter XXIII. Treasure trove.
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Chapter progress: 38.32%
Highlight: Had any one caught sight of him, what a commotion would not the tale have roused—of the spectre of a boy with a baby in his arms, gliding noiseless in the moon and the middle night, along the top of the high brick wall of a deserted house, where no one had lived within the memory of man!

Notes: Phantasy

Chapter 22: Chapter XXIII. Treasure trove.
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Chapter progress: 38.94%
Highlight: There are thousands for whom a blow is a better thing than expostulation, persuasion, or any sort of kindness.
Notes: On violent justice.

Chapter 22: Chapter XXIII. Treasure trove.
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Chapter progress: 38.94%
Highlight: That is why hardships, troubles, disappointments, and all kinds of pain and suffering, are sent to so many of us. We are so full of ourselves, and feel so grand, that we should never come to know what poor creatures we are, never begin to do better, but for the knock-down blows that the loving God gives us. We do not like them, but he does not spare us for that.

Notes: Stiffnecked prideful people.

Chapter 23: Chapter XXIV. Justifiable burglary.
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Chapter progress: 40.19%
Highlight: The room and its contents were to him as the water and the fire which even pagans counted every man bound to hand to his neighbour.
Notes: The elementals are ever present.

Chapter 24: Chapter XXV. A new quest.
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Chapter progress: 40.81%
Highlight: With multitudes, nothing but undiluted fear or pain or shame can open the door for love to enter.

Notes: Covid religion.

Chapter 26: Chapter XXVII. The baby has her breakfast.
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Chapter progress: 43.3%
Highlight: Clare comforted himself that washing was a thing non-essential to existence, however desirable for well-being.

Notes: Insidious hypochondria people abound.

Chapter 26: Chapter XXVII. The baby has her breakfast.
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Chapter progress: 43.93%
Highlight: There are not many who can at the same time both love and be hungry.
Notes: Prepare for food system collapse.

Chapter 27: Chapter XXVIII. Treachery.
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Chapter progress: 44.86%
Highlight: His first sense of relation to any creature too weak to protect itself, was the consciousness of power to torment that creature.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 28: Chapter XXIX. The baker.
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Chapter progress: 45.48%
Highlight: Every fool prides himself on not being such a fool as believe what would make a man of him.

Chapter 32: Chapter XXXIII. A bad penny.
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Chapter progress: 50.78%
Highlight: Clare thought for a moment whether it would not be right to kill such a traitor.
Notes: Bill Gates

Chapter 32: Chapter XXXIII. A bad penny.
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Chapter progress: 51.71%
Highlight: Paradise Lost,

Chapter 33: Chapter XXXIV. How things went for a time.
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Chapter progress: 52.02%
Highlight: The girl wondered: was he an idiot, or what they called a poet?

Chapter 41: Chapter XLII. Nimrod.
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Chapter progress: 64.17%
Highlight: It is the economy of hell.

Notes: Warren Buffet

Chapter 42: Chapter XLIII. Across country.
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Chapter progress: 64.49%
Highlight: Then he felt how worthless place is, when those who made it dear are gone.

Chapter 43: Chapter XLIV. A third mother.
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Chapter progress: 66.36%
Highlight: She sat at the receipt of money, where too many men and women cease to be ladies and gentlemen.

Chapter 45: Chapter XLVI. The angel of the wild beasts.
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Chapter progress: 68.85%
Highlight: And surely if there be a blessing to be had, it is for them that obey.

Notes: Dogs and children.

Chapter 45: Chapter XLVI. The angel of the wild beasts.
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Chapter progress: 69.47%
Highlight: That’s like the worst of the beasts: they love none but their little ones—and that only till they’re tired of the trouble of them!”
Notes: On child rearing.

Chapter 45: Chapter XLVI. The angel of the wild beasts.
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Chapter progress: 69.78%
Highlight: He did not make trouble of what ought to be none, by saying, with the spirit of a slave, “It’s not my place.” He did many things which he might have disputed, for he never thought of disputing them.
Notes: On how this book is a labor manual.

Chapter 46: Chapter XLVII. Glum Gunn.
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Chapter progress: 70.09%
Highlight: It was natural that such a man should also be cruel.
Notes: Bill Gates.

Chapter 47: Chapter XLVIII. The puma.
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Chapter progress: 71.34%
Highlight: for he has often been called the American lion—was the puma,

Chapter 47: Chapter XLVIII. The puma.
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Chapter progress: 72.59%
Highlight: Slay my other creatures, but do my anointed no harm,”

Chapter 49: Chapter L. Clare seeks help.
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Chapter progress: 74.77%
Highlight: He must not gather cowardice instead of courage from a season of prosperity!

Chapter 50: Chapter LI. Clare a true master.
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Chapter progress: 76.64%
Highlight: ennui.

Chapter 50: Chapter LI. Clare a true master.
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Chapter progress: 76.64%
Highlight: Thus Clare went wandering long, seeking work, and finding next to none—all the time upheld by the feeling that something was waiting for him somewhere, that he was every day drawing nearer to it. Not once yet had he lost heart.
Notes: Basic summary of story.

Chapter 54: Chapter LV. The wheel rests for a time.
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Chapter progress: 83.49%
Highlight: She knew that it is difficult, in the human tree, to distinguish between blossom and fruit. Deeds of lovely impulse are the blossom; unvarying, determined Tightness is the fruit.

Notes: You will know them by their fruits.

Chapter 55: Chapter LVI. Strategy.
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Chapter progress: 85.05%
Highlight: It was selfishness to indulge one’s own pity to the danger of others!
Notes: CDC covid cult

Chapter 56: Chapter LVII. Ann Shotover.
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Chapter progress: 85.98%
Highlight: his face was not half a face; it was more a mask than a face.
Notes: Face mask people.

Chapter 56: Chapter LVII. Ann Shotover.
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Chapter progress: 86.29%
Highlight: Her argument was in truth nonsense; for a man owes himself nothing, owes God everything, and owes his neighbour whatever his own conscience goes on to require of him for his neighbour.
Notes: Love thy neighbor as yourself.

Chapter 56: Chapter LVII. Ann Shotover.
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Chapter progress: 86.92%
Highlight: The child had imagination—next to conscience the strongest ally of common sense.

Chapter 57: Chapter LVIII. Child-talk.
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Chapter progress: 88.47%
Highlight: That which at once made him a man and kept him a child, was, that he had no regard for anything but what was real, that is, true.

Chapter 58: Chapter LIX. Lovers’ walks.
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Chapter progress: 90.03%
Highlight: chilblains.

Chapter 61: Chapter LXII. The cage of the puma.
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Chapter progress: 93.77%
Highlight: Go on; sorrow is but a cloud. Do the work given you to do, and the clouds will keep moving; stop your work and the clouds will settle down hard.

 

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