#po

Please come with me to my car, Belle,” he offered gently, limping towards me. “I mean, only if you want to.” “Uh-uh. Not with that attitude.” “Pretty please?” I shook my head disappointedly. “What’s the magic verb form?” “Belle,” he groaned. “We don’t have time for this. Plus I hate when you make me do this.” “Imperative, Edwart. The magic verb form is imperative. You don’t have to hide your natural inclination to boss me around. I want you to feel comfortable with me, Edwart. To the point of domination.” “Okay, okay.” He took a deep breath and pointed at me. “You,” he said stiffly, the words flowing straight from some primordial, bossy wordbank. “Come to the place where you want to go, which, hopefully, is my car, where I will be, God willing.” “All right.” He relaxed. “You’re not angry at me for being domineering? That wasn’t a trick?” “No, Edwart,” I said, leading him to his car. “Get in. ↗

— Harvard Lampoon

#nightlight #parody #twilight #attitude

Nuclear weapons and TV have simply intensified the consequences of our tendencies. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#human-nature #responsibility #television #world #nature

The machines are too dull when we are lion-poems that move & breathe. ↗

— Michael McClure

#lion #machines #nature #poems #poetry

Who, I ask, ever found salvation through the conquests of Alexander? What city was ever more wisely governed because of them, what individual improved? Many indeed you might find whom those conquests enriched, but not one whom they made wiser or more temperate than he was by nature, if indeed they have not made him more insolent and arrogant. Whereas all who now find their salvation in philosophy owe it to Socrates. ↗

— Flavius Claudius Julianus

#politics #nature

In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#god #nature

The right art," cried the Master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen. ↗

— Eugen Herrigel

#art #life #porup #writing #zen

Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so. ↗

— John Donne

#art

...most events are inexpressible, and take place in a sphere that no word has ever entered. Most inexpressible of all are works of art, existences full of secrets whose life continues alongside ours, while ours is transitory. ↗

— Rainier Marie Rilke

#letters-to-a-young-poet #poetry #writing #art

...dark furrow lines grid the snow, punctuated by orange abacus beads of pumpkins - now the crows own the field... ↗

— John Geddes

#field #furrow-lines #grid #nature #orange-abacus

...at dawn, the grains of sleep turn to floating black spots, then out of focus the world tilts, and the cat scratches at the door... ↗

— John Geddes

#dawn #nature #poetry #sleep #the-world