February 2011
78 posts
January 2011
74 posts
I purposely made it impossible to contact you. And now I’m sad we haven’t talked.
”.. the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured—disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime—in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige even of relief.”
(via henry miller)
“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.”
— John Keating, Dead Poet’s Society
“The cruelest trick God knows is letting poor people live.”
“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful… . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”
—
Ann Druyan, on her late husband Carl Sagan.
(via fuckyeahexistentialism)
“I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.”
—James Joyce, “An Encounter” (via antevorta)
Brian Eno on Nothing →
“What would be really interesting for people to see is how beautiful things grow out of shit… Nobody ever believes [that it happens that way]. Everybody thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his head, that it somehow appeared there and formed in his head, and all he had to do was write them down… What would really be a lesson that everybody should learn is that… things come out of nothing. Things evolve out of nothing. The tiniest seed in the right situation turns into the most beautiful forest, and then, the most promising seed in the wrong situation turns into nothing…
I think this would be important for people to understand because it gives people confidence in their own lives to know that that’s how things work. If you walk around with the idea that there are some people who are gifted, that they have these wonderful things in their head, but you’re not one of them, you’re just sort of… a “normal” person. [But with this insight], you could have another kind of life. You could say, “Well, I know that things come from nothing very much and start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising beginning — I could start something.”
— Brian Eno
“
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”
—Janet Fitch
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
—(via mark twain)
OK Cupid is dumb and so are you. →
foryourtroubles.tumblr.com
Look, here’s the thing: If you’re on an online dating website, you’re asking for bad dates. That’s just science and I will put on a lab coat and safety goggles if that will make it more convincing. I’m talking to women here, by the way. Only half of this will apply to men.
aaand I just deleted my OKcupid profile.
