#ow

Yet the Narrator’s quest is not only for his own identity and vocation. He seeks an understanding of art, sexuality and worldly and political affairs: he is a snoop and a voyeur; he comments and classifies; his taxonomic impulse makes the novel appear to be a vast compendium, replete with burrowing wasps and bedsteads, military strategies, stereoscopes, asparagus and aeroplanes. ↗

— Adam A. Watt

#gnothi-seauton #know-thyself #knowledge #proust #art

But they also awarded a quite respectable 55th place to Enoch Powell, thereby demonstrating that, for certain sections of the population, being an unpleasant racist constitutes no bar to greatness. ↗

— Marc Morris

#enoch-powell #greatness #racism #respect

A civilization, when the moment has come for crowds to acquire a high hand over it, is at the mercy of too many chances to endure for long. Could anything postpone for a while the hour of its ruin, it would be precisely the extreme instability of the opinions of crowds and their growing indifference and lack of respect for all general beliefs. ↗

— Gustave Le Bon

#crowds #decline #indifference #the-masses #respect

His own parents, the estimable Gilchrists, a couple who had taken the 'till death' part of their own wedding vows so seriously he wouldn't be surprised if they one day throttled one another, had naturally wangled the next best seat in the house: row two, on the aisle. ↗

— Ally Blake

#vows #death

Ain't no decent woman ever had that many husbands to die from natural causes. ↗

— K. Martin Beckner

#humor #natural-causes #widow #death

Walking with Murphy through the bone-freezing chill toward the bus stop, I start shivering. And somehow, when he slips his arm around me to warm me up, it feels right. Righter than anything ever has. ↗

— Sonya Sones

#what-my-mother-doesn-t-know #romantic

To a Vase "How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright. I break thee out of pure and simple spite The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise. I break thee if a bug upon thee sits. I break thee if I'm in a playful mood, And then I wrestle with the shiny bits. I break thee if I do not like my food. And if someone they shards together fits, I'll break thee once again when thou art glued. ↗

— Henry N. Beard

#elizabeth-barrett-browning #humor #art

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing. ↗

— Henry Hazlitt

#power-of-words #vocabulary #words #science

Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life’s journey and with Elemental’s Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before. ↗

— Luther E. Vann

#art #creativity #gift-books #jepson-center-for-the-arts #national-poetry-month

Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure. ↗

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

#knowledge #reason #science #science