Quote of the day: 2/28/13

“No doubt the orphanages were just like a library. When a book first comes out, there is a waiting list for it. Two years later, people will deny they’d ever read the thing in the first place”.

–From Fuckness by Andersen Prunty

This is relevant.

Quote of the day: 2/26/13

“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys – to woo women – and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays”.

-N.H. Kleinbaum, Dead Poets Society

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I THE AWFUL shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,	5
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
Like memory of music fled,—	10
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
II Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone?	15
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,	20
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,—why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
III No voice from some sublimer world hath ever	25
To sage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,	30
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone—like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,	35
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.
IV Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,	40
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes—
Thou—that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!	45
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not—lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
V While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,	50
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard—I saw them not—
When musing deeply on the lot	55
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!	60
VI I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers	65
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night—
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,	70
That thou—O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.
VII The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past—there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,	75
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply	80
Its calm—to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

It is nice
You desire me in fever
And in health

quote of the day: 2/13/13

“People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves”.

-From Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

A Haiku dedicated to my cat:

Nico my dearest

such a magnificent cat

she bites at my toes

(If I’m being honest I kinda just wanted a reason to post a picture of my beautiful cat.)

Quote of the day: 2/7/13

127. They that love beyond the World, cannot be separated by it.

128. Death cannot kill, what never dies.

129. Nor can Spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle; the Root and Record of their Friendship.

130. If Absence be not Death, neither is theirs.

131. Death is but Crossing the World, as Friends do the Seas; They live in one another still.

132. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is Omnipresent.

133. In this Divine Glass, they see Face to Face; and their Converse is Free, as well as Pure.

134. This is the Comfort of Friends, that though they may be said to Die, yet their Friendship and Society are, in the best Sense, ever present, because Immortal.

-From More Fruits of Solitude by William Penn

Quote of the day: 2/6/13

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place”.

-Kurt Vonnegut

 

Quote of the day (lyric edition): 2/5/13

“Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah”

From “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen