Quotes 50623
I tell you smugly, I am a regular in Nome,
In Paducah, in both Portlands and all Springfields.
While you are eating McMuffins I am savoring a bruised
But extremely sophisticated pear that has seen five
Airports and four cities and grown old in wisdom.
- Marge Piercy
-------------------------------------------------------
You dont have to
be fucking brilliant to see
Im not as smart as I seem to be
- Dandy Warholds
------------------------------------
To have one's individuality completely ignored is like being pushed quite out of life--like being blown out as one blows out a light.
-Evelyn Scott
------------------------------------------------
I knew it. I knew it. Well, not in the sense of having the slightest idea, but I knew there was something I didn't know.
- Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
--------------------------------------------------
Madam, if I were Herod in the middle of the massacre of the innocents, Id pause just to consider the confusion of your imagery.
- Christopher Fry
-------------------------------------------------------
Novelty excites by nudging us off balance and weakening our stranglehold on habit Complete novelty can seem absurd, something to ignore. But partial novelty makes sense up to a point and yet requires a bright response, so it must be taken seriously. Our lidless curiosity, as well as our passion for mystery, exploration, and adventure, springs from this basic reflex. Once an animal becomes curious it grows alert, and that arousal doesnt quit until it explores the sensory puzzle and can assure itself that all is well, nothing much has changed, no fresh action is required. That repeated pattern of arousal, tension, fear, and suspense, followed by a feeling of safety and calm, provides a special kind of pleasure shared by animals the world over.
- Diane Ackerman
-------------------------------------------------------
Newspapers should stop seeing themselves as things, rather a point on the map where wonderful people cluster together to do wonderful things.
- Hugh MacLeod
-----------------------------------------
You use that song to straighten the mind, like a prayer to live, like doctoring your mind.
- Joyce Wike
----------------------------------------
I dont like animals. Its a strange thing, I dont like men and I dont like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.
- Samuel Beckett
--------------------------------------------------
The terrifying state of the lost soul calling out to God in fear and trembling is a precondition for becoming whole again. She realizes as we all realize at one time or another: I absolutely do not know who I am It is the sunken feeling of wanting with all your heart not to exist at all. Having descended into the darkest depths of the shadow, the soul returns, not so much to experience the mercy of God as to find out who she now isJung would say: to find the lost fragments of spirit, to know them for what they are, to liberate them and thereby to regain a state of wholeness with them. To do this the soul reaches out to her brother, the Logos. If the Logos, which appears in masculine form, represents an expression for the word or the light, then Sophia, the soul in its feminine form, represents that which receives the word or the light.
- June Singer
-------------------------------------------------------
Oscar Wilds great letter Dr Profundis, which Ive already cited for its soulful theology, spells out the basics of a romantic belief. Among them he lists a special appreciation for the individual, for pleasure and sensuality, and for pain, suffering, and struggle. Many religious people choose exactly opposite qualities as ideals--collective values, mental conviction, and a healthy, virtuous life. In this sense a romantic approach to religion goes against the grain, and yet I fear that by ignoring the romantic depths we make religion too clean and abstract, and therefore ignore its soul.
People often say that suffering is valuable because we learn from it, but often this is yet another example of spiritual productivity, the idea that anything is acceptable as long as it can be turned into a positive step in the steady progress toward a self. The romantic view is different. There suffering is of value because it brings us into our humanity. By giving ourselves to life generously we ensure that we suffer the ordinary pangs of involvement. We live intimately and generously. We love and lose, bind and separate. We become attached and are forced to move on
In romantic spirituality we both enjoy and endure our individual quirks and destiny. Emily Dickinson indulges her unusual need for privacy and her pagan slant on Christianity, while Emerson leaves the comfort of his church and invents the life an independent, itinerant preacher. Oscar Wilde pursues every pleasure, legal and illegal, and then counts his imprisonment and disolution as part of his adventure. Romantic spirituality is eccentric and is far from the dowdy moralism that often makes religion look ordered and conventional There is something bloodless in the contemporary vision of spirituality as part of a general fitness scheme, that sees it only as a means for attaining a life of perfection and health. The romantic element would bring it down to earth and connect it once again with the ordinary emotions and struggles. The romantic spirit doesnt aim to resolve those conflicts but to embrace them and imagine human existance with a depth of vision not thinned out by the need to improve or save. The romantic wants life to be rich and complex.
A romantic life is deeply interior and almost static compared to the frenetic activity around us today. It is thick with images--dreams, painting, words--and stuffed with conversation and reflection. John Keats wrote: I have an idea that Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner--let him on certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it--until it become stale--but when will it do so? Never---"
- Thomas Moore
---------------------------------------------
In rational discourse the individual uses language; in poetic discourse language uses the individual, who is said to be inspired
- Schuyler Brown
-----------------------------------
If you are unhappy, you are too high up in your mind.
- Carl Jung
-----------------------------
She is perfect in that fucked up way
That all the magazines seem to want to glorify these days.
- Everclear
I tell you smugly, I am a regular in Nome,
In Paducah, in both Portlands and all Springfields.
While you are eating McMuffins I am savoring a bruised
But extremely sophisticated pear that has seen five
Airports and four cities and grown old in wisdom.
- Marge Piercy
-------------------------------------------------------
You dont have to
be fucking brilliant to see
Im not as smart as I seem to be
- Dandy Warholds
------------------------------------
To have one's individuality completely ignored is like being pushed quite out of life--like being blown out as one blows out a light.
-Evelyn Scott
------------------------------------------------
I knew it. I knew it. Well, not in the sense of having the slightest idea, but I knew there was something I didn't know.
- Willow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
--------------------------------------------------
Madam, if I were Herod in the middle of the massacre of the innocents, Id pause just to consider the confusion of your imagery.
- Christopher Fry
-------------------------------------------------------
Novelty excites by nudging us off balance and weakening our stranglehold on habit Complete novelty can seem absurd, something to ignore. But partial novelty makes sense up to a point and yet requires a bright response, so it must be taken seriously. Our lidless curiosity, as well as our passion for mystery, exploration, and adventure, springs from this basic reflex. Once an animal becomes curious it grows alert, and that arousal doesnt quit until it explores the sensory puzzle and can assure itself that all is well, nothing much has changed, no fresh action is required. That repeated pattern of arousal, tension, fear, and suspense, followed by a feeling of safety and calm, provides a special kind of pleasure shared by animals the world over.
- Diane Ackerman
-------------------------------------------------------
Newspapers should stop seeing themselves as things, rather a point on the map where wonderful people cluster together to do wonderful things.
- Hugh MacLeod
-----------------------------------------
You use that song to straighten the mind, like a prayer to live, like doctoring your mind.
- Joyce Wike
----------------------------------------
I dont like animals. Its a strange thing, I dont like men and I dont like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.
- Samuel Beckett
--------------------------------------------------
The terrifying state of the lost soul calling out to God in fear and trembling is a precondition for becoming whole again. She realizes as we all realize at one time or another: I absolutely do not know who I am It is the sunken feeling of wanting with all your heart not to exist at all. Having descended into the darkest depths of the shadow, the soul returns, not so much to experience the mercy of God as to find out who she now isJung would say: to find the lost fragments of spirit, to know them for what they are, to liberate them and thereby to regain a state of wholeness with them. To do this the soul reaches out to her brother, the Logos. If the Logos, which appears in masculine form, represents an expression for the word or the light, then Sophia, the soul in its feminine form, represents that which receives the word or the light.
- June Singer
-------------------------------------------------------
Oscar Wilds great letter Dr Profundis, which Ive already cited for its soulful theology, spells out the basics of a romantic belief. Among them he lists a special appreciation for the individual, for pleasure and sensuality, and for pain, suffering, and struggle. Many religious people choose exactly opposite qualities as ideals--collective values, mental conviction, and a healthy, virtuous life. In this sense a romantic approach to religion goes against the grain, and yet I fear that by ignoring the romantic depths we make religion too clean and abstract, and therefore ignore its soul.
People often say that suffering is valuable because we learn from it, but often this is yet another example of spiritual productivity, the idea that anything is acceptable as long as it can be turned into a positive step in the steady progress toward a self. The romantic view is different. There suffering is of value because it brings us into our humanity. By giving ourselves to life generously we ensure that we suffer the ordinary pangs of involvement. We live intimately and generously. We love and lose, bind and separate. We become attached and are forced to move on
In romantic spirituality we both enjoy and endure our individual quirks and destiny. Emily Dickinson indulges her unusual need for privacy and her pagan slant on Christianity, while Emerson leaves the comfort of his church and invents the life an independent, itinerant preacher. Oscar Wilde pursues every pleasure, legal and illegal, and then counts his imprisonment and disolution as part of his adventure. Romantic spirituality is eccentric and is far from the dowdy moralism that often makes religion look ordered and conventional There is something bloodless in the contemporary vision of spirituality as part of a general fitness scheme, that sees it only as a means for attaining a life of perfection and health. The romantic element would bring it down to earth and connect it once again with the ordinary emotions and struggles. The romantic spirit doesnt aim to resolve those conflicts but to embrace them and imagine human existance with a depth of vision not thinned out by the need to improve or save. The romantic wants life to be rich and complex.
A romantic life is deeply interior and almost static compared to the frenetic activity around us today. It is thick with images--dreams, painting, words--and stuffed with conversation and reflection. John Keats wrote: I have an idea that Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner--let him on certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it--until it become stale--but when will it do so? Never---"
- Thomas Moore
---------------------------------------------
In rational discourse the individual uses language; in poetic discourse language uses the individual, who is said to be inspired
- Schuyler Brown
-----------------------------------
If you are unhappy, you are too high up in your mind.
- Carl Jung
-----------------------------
She is perfect in that fucked up way
That all the magazines seem to want to glorify these days.
- Everclear