#essay

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails…and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.” — Anonymous Curse on Book Theives from the Monaster of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain ↗

— Anatole Broyard

#essays #literature #quotes-to-live-by #change

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this. ↗

— Maureen Johnson

#humor #monkeys #family

Our family was nearly torn apart on several occasions by arguments started when the refrigerator door was open for what my father deemed as ‘too long. ↗

— Weston Locher

#comedy #essay #funny #humor #family

the world produces more than enough food for all of us to thrive. ↗

— Francis Lappe

#food

Why do we write? "To make suffering endurable To make evil intelligible To make justice desirable and . . . to make love possible ↗

— Roger Rosenblatt

#inspiration-for-writers #writing-instruction #art

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#inspirational #lecture #nonfiction #philosophy #self-reliance

In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood,' writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the dark of the woods is a motif common to fairy tales: young heroes set off through the perilous forest in order to reach their destiny, or they find themselves abandoned there, cast off and left for dead. The road is long and treacherous, prowled by wolves, ghosts, and wizards — but helpers also appear along the way, good fairies and animal guides, often cloaked in unlikely disguises. The hero's task is to tell friend from foe, and to keep walking steadily onward. ↗

— Terri Windling

#inspirational #myth #online-article #online-essay #path

Que les poètes morts laissent la place aux autres. Et nous pourrions tout de même voir que c'est notre vénération devant ce qui a été déjà fait, si beau et si valable que ce soit, qui nous pétrifie, qui nous stabilise et nous empêche de prendre contact avec la force qui est dessous, que l'on appelle l'énergie pensante, la force vitale, le déterminisme des échanges, les menstrues de la lune ou tout ce qu'on voudra. ↗

— Antonin Artaud

#essay #french #inspiration #inspirational #poetry

[It] began to seem amazing how often it was assumed that having a vagina automatically meant I was less intelligent, talented, capable, and interesting than the world's least interesting human being who happened to have a penis. ↗

— Francine Prose

#essay #feminisim #intelligence

As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish, what more civilized way for people to alleviate the same than by giving themselves to one another as brothers and sisters in deed as well as in word? A society of people hoping to become politically superior needed first to become spiritually valid. ↗

— Aberjhani

#essays #global-community #philosophy #spirituality #w-e-b-du-bois