#position

Something is conscious of us. It listens as it plays upon the instruments that we are. It takes delight in the cacophony, an orchestration so grand it is far beyond our contemplation. It is masterful, elegant, swift, and awesome. It is the Song of the Universe—and more. It is our Composer, and one who loves beyond conditions, beyond the beyond. If the law of ‘as above, so below’ holds true, then we too are composers. We too sing songs that breathe shape into reality. But are we listening? Are we paying attention to the compositions we create? ↗

— Dielle Ciesco

#composition #song-of-the-universe #the-unknown-mother #love

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#history #interesting #itself #men #more

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science. ↗

— Santoka Taneda

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

If Poe had stuck only to these principles, he would have written Love Story. Luckily he knew that if plot is the dominant element in every story, it must however be tempered with other elements...Hence his calculation of the number of lines, his analysis of the musicality of the word "Nevermore," and the deliberate visual contrast between Pallas's white breast and the blackness of the raven, and everything that makes "The Raven" a poetic composition and not a horror film. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#the-raven #love

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

Mr. Cat and Mr. Dog were neighbors who fought like, well, cats and dogs. That is until Mr. Rat moved in. It's fascinating how easily two enemies ally at the introduction of a third. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#ally #enemies #fighting #human-nature #opposition

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;—it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. ↗

— Jane Austen

#intimacy #marianne-dashwood #openness #opportunity #self-disclosure

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#contrarianism #dissent #dissidents #free-thought #harold-rosenberg

When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy. ↗

— Matsuo Bashō

#creating #haiku #japanese #poetry #zen

We are all put in different positions for different reasons. ↗

— Kim Alexis

#different reasons #positions #put #reasons