#om

Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them. ↗

— Bill Watterson

#commercial-viability-of-art #tigers #van-gogh #art

Here in the last minutes, the very end of the world, someone's tightening a screw thinner than an eyelash, someone with slim wrists is straightening flowers... ↗

— James Richardson

#karen-thompson-walker #the-age-of-miracles #age

I have often perplexed myself over what I saw in Nelle Snyder's aged face at that moment. It was no look of paranoia. It was a look of waiting. Perpetual waiting. That look was to come back to me sixteen years later when I heard Rose's narration at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, with its line about survivors "waiting for an absolution that never came." Yet the waiting I saw in Nelle Snyder's face seemed larger even than a waiting for absolution. It seemed vaster even than Titanic herself. Call it the waiting of the Mother of all Perished Vessels. Or of a Ship of Honeymoon Dreams perchance, with a passenger list spanning all humanity, that once proudly sailed but was lost, aeons ago, and sank to a dark, unreachable abode where nothing whatsoever can be grasped about her except her perplexing power still to haunt us. ↗

— James Glaeg

#age

In the early Middle Ages the dominant form of political organization in Western Europe was the Germanic kingdom, and the German kingdom was in some ways the complete antithesis of the modern state. (p. 13) ↗

— Joseph Reese Strayer

#germanic-kindgom #modern-state #age

I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals. ↗

— Patrick White

#false-teeth #farting #myths #old-age #senility

...The [Renaissance] interest in education was also influenced by a changing economy. For different reasons in different countries, agriculture was becoming less lucrative, and many farmers decided to move to the cities to take up new occupations. However, to succeed in a trade they needed to know how to read and perform bookkeeping tasks ... Those who remained on the farm found life much the same as in the Middle Ages. In fact, in some agricultural regions the Renaissance economy devastated farmers. For example, as the wool industry grew in importance, more landowners in England decided to raise sheep instead of growing crops. They therefore needed fewer farmworkers, and many peasants lost their livelihoods. ↗

— Patricia D. Netzley

#age

Well, I haven't really anything to eat at home, I began, but then stopped, as I realised that a dreary revelation of the state of one's larder was hardly the way to respond to an invitation to dinner. ↗

— Barbara Pym

#home

Real life is messy and hard and never turns out like I’ve imagined. Usually it’s better. So, I try not to dream but rather to pray. If there is one thing I know, it’s that I have no clue what I want. I’m fickle. I’m picky. And I’m scared of a lot of things. Especially commitment. ↗

— Katie Kiesler

#dreams #messy #prayer #real-life #age

Entire years had passed when he was rich enough in time to disregard the loose change of a minute, but now he obsessed over each one, this minute, the next minute, the one following, all of which were different terms for the same illusion. ↗

— Anthony Marra

#time #time-passing #wisdom #youth-is-wasted-on-the-young #age

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#educational-inequity #educational-system #infallibility #miseducation #age