#article

Jane Austen’s world is a unique wedge of history, immortalized by her wonderful books. It is ironic that I am fascinated by the Regency world in all its details, when Jane Austen seldom mentions any of those facts. She never mentions the war raging in Europe, her characters are apparently unaware of the industrialization shortly to overtake them. The revolution of steam travel does not touch her people–they travel by coach, horse, and foot.” and “There is no doubt that Austen herself was aware of the world around her and its imminent change. But her characters live in the world of the family, the village and the heart–and are loved because of it. The trappings of the greater world do not impinge on Jane Austen’s books. ↗

— Lesley-Anne McLeod

#jane-austen #regency-world #change

Rites–of–passage stories…were cherished in pre–literate societies not only for their entertainment value, but also as mythic tools to prepare young men and women for life’s ordeals. A wealth of such stories can be found marking each major transition in the human life cycle: puberty, marriage, childbirth, menopause, death. Other rites–of–passage, less predictable but equally transformative, include times of sudden change and calamity such as illness and injury, the loss of one’s home, the death of a loved one, etc. These are the times when we wake, like Dante, to find ourselves in a deep, dark wood — an image that in Jungian psychology represents an inward journey. Rites–of–passage tales point to the hidden roads that lead out of the dark again — and remind us that at the end of the journey we’re not the same person as when we started. Ascending from the Netherworld (that grey landscape of illness, grief, depression, or despair), we are ‘twice–born’ in our return to life, carrying seeds — new wisdom, ideas, creativity and fecundity of spirit. ↗

— Terri Windling

#myth #online-article #online-essay #path #writing

My interest in matters more directly concerned with the handling of particles was growing, in the meantime, stimulated by many contacts with people understanding accelerators. ↗

— Simon van der Meer

#contacts #directly #growing #handling #interest

The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws and what is learned of one will be known of the other. ↗

— James Smithson

#laws #learned #other #particle #planet

A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one. ↗

— Laurence Sterne

#articles #brings #dwarf #him #his

It is good a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity. ↗

— Ariel Durant

#himself #infinity #now #now and then #particle

It's indeed surprising that replacing the elementary particle with a string leads to such a big change in things. I'm tempted to say that it has to do with the fuzziness it introduces. ↗

— Edward Witten

#big change #change #elementary #fuzziness #i

You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles. ↗

— Edward Witten

#because #discovered #experimental #get #lot

Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'. ↗

— Russell Brand

#faith #pain #russell-brand #wasps #faith

Ember, you're the only piece of me I have left. Everything else-my family, my home, my soul- they're all gone. I don't know who the hell I am anymore. If it weren't for you... I don't know. ↗

— Kristen Simmons

#family