#la

Tell me of what plant-birthday a man takes notice, and I shall tell you a good deal about his vocation, his hobbies, his hay fever, and the general level of his ecological education. ↗

— Aldo Leopold

#plants #education

I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your life Was a liner I voyaged in. Costly education had fitted you out. Financiers and committees and consultants Effaced themselves in the gleam of your finish. You trembled with the new life of those engines. That first morning, Before your first class at College, you sat there Sipping coffee. Now I know, as I did not, What eyes waited at the back of the class To check your first professional performance Against their expectations. What assessors Waited to see you justify the cost And redeem their gamble. What a furnace Of eyes waited to prove your metal. I watched The strange dummy stiffness, the misery, Of your blue flannel suit, its straitjacket, ugly Half-approximation to your idea Of the properties you hoped to ease into, And your horror in it. And the tanned Almost green undertinge of your face Shrunk to its wick, your scar lumpish, your plaited Head pathetically tiny. You waited, Knowing yourself helpless in the tweezers Of the life that judges you, and I saw The flayed nerve, the unhealable face-wound Which was all you had for courage. I saw that what you gripped, as you sipped, Were terrors that killed you once already. Now I see, I saw, sitting, the lonely Girl who was going to die. That blue suit. A mad, execution uniform, Survived your sentence. But then I sat, stilled, Unable to fathom what stilled you As I looked at you, as I am stilled Permanently now, permanently Bending so briefly at your open coffin. ↗

— Ted Hughes

#poetry-quotes #the-blue-flannel-suit #courage

She spoke with the usual cadences of the young: sentences curling upward at the end, all statements fading into a smoky, implied question mark, as though nothing could be said with any reasonable certainty. ↗

— Laura Kalpakian

#maturity #education

You cannot live a nonviolent life as long as you are consuming violence. Please consider going vegan. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#abolitionist #ahimsa #animals #education #exploitation

The bullet that has hit us Muslims today left the gun centuries ago when we let the clergy decide that knowledge and education were not important. ↗

— Nadeem Aslam

#islamism #literature #education

It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation. ↗

— Russell Kirk

#college #contemplation #education #university #work

The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt. ↗

— Henry Adams

#travel #education

Hey! Guy with scary eyes?" Madison called out. "You know what a moose does when someone insults her family?" Ivan raised his eyebrows. "She does this." Madison crouched down and charged Ivan. Her head hit him in the stomach. ↗

— Rick Riordan

#madison-holt #moose #the #family

Pam. Listen.' 'The phone is pressed to my ear. Speak.' 'Appius Livius Ocella just dropped in.' 'Fuck a zombie!' - Sookie & Pam, Dead in the Family, Charlaine Harris ↗

— Charlaine Harris

#fantasy #paranormal #sookie-stackhouse #vampires #family

I'll have to remember that for the future. When in a life-or-death battle, be sure to club unconscious everyone on your side as early on in the fight as possible," Laura said, laughing. ↗

— Mark Walden

#fight #laura #otto #unconscious #death