literacki

What is most thought-provoking in our thought-provoking time is that we are not yet thinking.

— Martin Heidegger - Was Heißt Denken

quoth the madman

The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.

— Ayn Rand

quoth the madman

you must refuse to join them.
you must remain yourself.
you must open the curtains
or the blinds
or the windows
to the gentle light.
to joy.

— Charles Bukowski - a vote for the gentle light.

literacki

Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.
Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grim Grotto

quoth the madman

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

~Dorothea Lange

quoth the madman

Years of love have been forgot. In the hatred of a minute.

~Edgar Allan Poe

quoth the man with the big dick

According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man’s prerogative - and woman’s - to create their own particular and private hell.

~Rod Serling

quoth the madman

Is it really that bad if someone sees who you are? Why is it humans have a problem with letting someone else see that they are human?

~Joseph Gogler

literacki

 

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

~From “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” - Wallace Stevens

literacki

Some things can’t be solved just by going wild every now and then.

~1Q84, Haruki Murakami

quoth the madman

Don’t get attached to moments. Good or bad, they all pass.
~Yasmin Mogahed

quoth the madman

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known- no wonder, then, that I return the love.

— Soren Kierkegaard

literacki

"But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely — or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands."

— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

quoth the madman

"The human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything in its simplicity—an unending wealth of many representation, images, of which none belongs to him—or which are not present."

~ Georg Hegel

literacki

"‘You shall love.’ Marvelous words of comfort, marvelous compassion — because humanly speaking it is very odd, almost a mockery, to say to the despairing one that he ought to do that which is his only desire, but whose impossibility brings him to despair."

~ Soren Kierkegaard Works Of Love

ars poetica

"It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body."

— Tomas Tranströmer, from “After a Death,” translated by Robert Bly

literacki

A thousand moments that I had just taken for granted ― mostly because I had assumed that there would be a thousand more.

Morgan Matson, Second Chance Summer

literacki

By the time you swear you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying—
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Dorothy Parker, “Unfortunate Coincidence”

literacki

I’m not sure what I’ll do, but— well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Ice Palace

quoth the madman

"‘You shall love.’ Marvelous words of comfort, marvelous compassion — because humanly speaking it is very odd, almost a mockery, to say to the despairing one that he ought to do that which is his only desire, but whose impossibility brings him to despair."

— Soren Kierkegaard Works Of Love

ars poetica

"Between melting and freezing
The soul’s sap quivers."

~  T. S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding” in The Four Quartets

ars poetica

 

"For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—
drags him down all his life."

~  C. P. Cavafy, “Che Fece … Il Gran Refiuto,”

ars poetica

"Each of my dreams and each desire
Belongs to whoever had it, not me."

— Fernando Pessoa, Selected Poems, trans. Richard Zenith

ars poetica

"...tell them
you are the offspring of slaves
and your mother was
a princess
in darkness."

~ From- For Each of You ~Audre Lorde

ars poetica

"...and grief is the price
we pay for love,

and the death of love
the fee of all desire."

~ From Lesson ~ Robin Robertson

literacki

"Prenez un cercle, caressez-le, il deviendra vicieux!"

— Eugène Ionesco, La cantatrice chauve

literacki

"And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm."

— Dylan Thomas, from “[The force that through the green fuse drives the flower]”

ars poetica

"Judgment maybe it’s when being
fragile I
hallucinate you best"— Alice Notley, excerpts from “Woman in Front of Poster of Herself”

literacki

“All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles, love and hate its motive energies. ”
— Anne Carson - Eros the Bittersweet

literacki

“I don’t want to reduce everything that exists to a paralyzed slavery but to the wild impossibility that can’t avoid limits but can’t stay inside them either. ”
—Bataille - Guilty (excerpt)

quoth the madman

“Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn’t matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.”
—Henry Miller

literacki

 “I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing. ”
—T.S. Eliot - Preludes

literacki

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky - White Nights

literacki

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit. ”
~Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

literacki

“It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation. ”
—Octavio Paz, “The Labyrinth of Solitude” - s for silence

belles lettres

You can chase the shadows if you want to. But all you'll do, is make them longer.