April 2013
1 post
4 tags
February 2013
2 posts
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is...”
– Haim Ginott (via mattie)
3 tags
Jude, “In Between”
Well I know a...
December 2012
14 posts
6 tags
“[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (via austinkleon)
9 tags
7 tags
“As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by...”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
8 tags
“RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from...”
– Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
3 tags
Abandoned Farmhouse
BY TED KOOSER
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says...
6 tags
“And as she lookt about, she did behold,
How ouer that same dore was likewise...”
– Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 3, Canto XI
6 tags
“People are really trying their best. Just like being happy and sad, you will...”
– David Rakoff, Half Empty
4 tags
The Walrus and the Carpenter
By Lewis Carroll
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done —
“It’s very rude of him,” she...
4 tags
Scarlet
By Sherman Alexie
The barista’s acne is torrential— A perfect storm. Whatever potential
She has for beauty has been obscured By the open wounds that resemble burns.
And yet, as I look closer, I can see This young woman is quite pretty
Behind her mask. Her eyes are turquoise, Not some common blue, and her alto voice
Belongs onstage or in the studio. She makes my coffee and I want to know
...
8 tags
In the Museum of Lost Objects
By Rebecca Lindenberg What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee;
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.
Ezra Pound
You’ll find labels describing what is gone:
an empress’s bones, a stolen painting
of a man in a feathered helmet
holding a flag-draped spear.
A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long ago
forgotten, would have sat on that pedestal;
...
“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can...”
– “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy (via kari-shma)
“How many hours, among the happiest of my life, have I spent in the dusty, damp...”
– Theodore Dalrymple, “Why Second-Hand Bookshops Are Just My Type” (via msbirt)
“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing...”
– Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi (via whenwolvesruntogether)
“When we take our thoughts too seriously, life becomes heavy. When we identify...”
– Andy Puddicombe: We Are Not What We Do (via azspot)
I want to go to there. (via rartastic)
November 2012
1 post
5 tags
“Would you win the hearts of others, you must not seem to vie with them, but to...”
– Benjamin Franklin
September 2012
4 posts
3 tags
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease...”
– Emily Dickinson
7 tags
“If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it’s...”
– Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver Lake
3 tags
“And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own....”
– Robert Frost, “The Lesson For Today”
6 tags
“It is incredible to me that any woman should consider the fight for full...”
– Alice Paul, NWP National Chairman, 1920
May 2012
40 posts
5 tags
“With public sentiment nothing can fail; without public sentiment nothing can...”
– Abraham Lincoln, first debate with Douglas
9 tags
“Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too...”
– Toni Morrison, Beloved
6 tags
“When I was five, I am told, and asked what my favorite things in the world were,...”
– Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten
7 tags
“The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told...”
– George Orwell, 1984
7 tags
“I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade...”
– Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
7 tags
“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead...”
– J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
8 tags
“It is against my nature to do what people so often do, talk inhumanly about the...”
– Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
9 tags
“Oh the words that he spoke
Seemed the wisest of philosophies
There’s...”
– The Pogues, “Streams of Whiskey,” Red Roses for Me
7 tags
“An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted...”
– Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
7 tags
“I’d like to answer this question, if I may, in two ways: Firstly in my...”
– Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 14
7 tags
“It is never pleasant to have our old shrines desecrated, even when we have...”
– Lucy Maude Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
6 tags
“While people who commemorate the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address surely...”
– Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot
8 tags
“I felt that my presence at those moments annoyed and even oppressed him. He...”
– Lara Vapnyar, Memoirs of a Muse
7 tags
“For myself I feel there is a home for me in the land of my adoption. Already I...”
– Enoch Bradley, in a letter to The Examiner, 1844
8 tags
“In years to come anytime one of you suffers a breakup, the other will say,...”
– Mary Karr, Cherry
7 tags
“It’s surprising she should talk about my grandmother like this after the...”
– Frank McCourt, ‘Tis
5 tags
“She patted him on the arm. ‘You’re fucked up, Mister. But...”
– Neil Gaiman, American Gods
8 tags
“I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the...”
– John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
8 tags
“Somewhere in a burst of glory
Sound becomes a song
I’m bound to tell a...”
– Paul Simon, “That’s Where I Belong,” You’re the One
6 tags
“Life — and I don’t suppose I’m the first to make this comparison —...”
– Neil Gaiman, The Sandman
6 tags
“But there is nothing I’d rather do
Than spend all day in the sack with...”
– Mirah, “100 Knives,” You Think It’s Like This But It’s Really Like This
7 tags
“They say that God makes problems
just to see what you can stand
before you do...”
– Elliott Smith, “Pitseleh,” XO
7 tags
“He wanted to believe, afterward, that this moment was freighted with spiritual...”
– David Guterson, Our Lady of the Forest
6 tags
“There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me....”
– Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
7 tags
“There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn...”
– Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
12 tags
“Truly now,
double thanks, triple thanks
that we’ve been formed,...”
– The Mayan Book of Life (Translated by Dennis Tedlock), Popol Vuh
8 tags
“Baba wet his hair and combed it back. I helped him into a clean white shirt and...”
– Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
5 tags
“I bet it was pretty hard to pick up girls if you had the Black Death.”
– Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts 