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Archive for July, 2009

a wrinkling of sputum scorpions

Those creatures all had sold their souls to a devil from Hell’s lower classes, greedy for sordidness and laxity. They lived the intoxication of vanity and idleness, and they died blandly amid cushions of words in a wrinkling of sputum scorpions. – Bernando Soares (Fernando Pessoa), The Book of Disquiet

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– E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy. – E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

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“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined [...]

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This is the moment when you see again the red berries of the mountain ash and in the dark sky the birds’ night migrations. It grieves me to think the dead won’t see them– these things we depend on, they disappear. What will the soul do for solace then? I tell myself maybe it won’t [...]

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thinking hurts

Throughout the world, at any given moment, the justifiable aims of legitimate geo-nations are being threatened by reckless individuals who insist on indulging their private, inscrutable agendas. The prospect of a world plagued by these fluid-nations — a world in which one’s identification with, and loyalty to, one’s parent geo-nation is constantly being undermined — [...]

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Philosophy in the Morgue

Philosophy in the Morgue. “My nephew was obviously a failure. If he had succeeded in making something of himself he would have had a different ending than . . . this.” “You know, Madame,” I replied to the monumental matron who had addressed me, “whether one succeeds or not comes down to the same thing.” [...]

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Ulysses :: Alfred Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel; I will drink Life to the lees. All times I [...]

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She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love: A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye! –Fair as a star, when only one Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When [...]

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The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning [...]

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In one medieval exorcism, all the parts of the body, even the smallest, are listed from which the demon is ordered to depart: a kind of lunatic anatomy treatise, fascinating for its hypertrophy of precision, its profusion of unexpected details. A scrupulous incantation. Leave the nails! Fanatic but not without poetic effect. For authentic poetry [...]

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Lovers’ Spat on Mars

The existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon. – Dr. Manhattan There’s no scientific consensus that life is important. – Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth Laurie is crying. On Mars. DR. MANHATTAN: Will you smile . . . if I admit I was wrong? LAURIE: . . . About what? DR. MANHATTAN: . . . [...]

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Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day; Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood; [...]

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Robert Herrick’s Julia Poems

Upon Julia’s Breasts Display thy breasts, my Julia—there let me Behold that circummortal purity, Between whose glories there my lips I’ll lay, Ravish’d in that fair via lactea. Upon Julia’s Clothes Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows That liquefaction of her clothes. Next, when I cast mine eyes and [...]

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To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame ; While I confess thy writings to be such, As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much. ‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise ; For [...]

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