It's a wild ride and I think a book people should read.
My fav quote,
"When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.”
I have a number of quotations jotted down from it, but since this a tech site I'll restrict myself to sharing this one that I sometimes think of when dealing with a recalcitrant machine or mysterious bug:
"That contraption--listen, Brother, they claim it thinks. I didn't
believe it at first. Thought, implying rational principle, implying
soul. Can the principle of a 'thinking machine'--man-made--be a rational
soul? Blah! It seemed a thoroughly pagan notion at first. But do you know
what?"
"Father?"
"Nothing could be that perverse without premeditation! It must think!
It knows good and evil I tell you, and it chose the later."It's a lovely quote too. I remember reading the novel and thinking, 'Holy shit, he's hit the nail on the head!'
I'd happily run a class on it. Whenever anyone asks for a reading list, it's often on there.
I take the novel as a mystic work, much like Meister Eckhart's works. It's a pendulum swing between the secular and the sacred.
That is such an arbitrary phrase to have such a visceral reaction to.
I get where the OP is coming from. If you’re coming from the modern world of well-rounded fantasy sci-fi storytellers of Sanderson and Rothfuss, then reading stories of the past can be very frustrating.