#pros

The supposedly eyewitness authority of the Pseudo-Turpin finds a parallel in another genre in which vernacular prose was pioneered: that of the historical memoir. There were twelfth-century verse histories narrated by authors who had personally participated in the events they describe, such as the Third Crusade. But the Fourth Crusade of 1202-4 saw a switch to prose. This shameful fiasco, in which the crusaders were induced to turn aside from the Holy Land and attack instead the Christian city of Constantinople, inspired two contrasting accounts. Robert de Clari--ignorant of higher-level strategy, but all agog at the splendours of Constantinople--gives a worm's eye view. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, by contrast, has a top diplomat's suave authority and a leader's eye for the aesthetics of war--the splendid sight of a fleet, or the noble heroism of a ruler. For both authors the medium of prose seems to convey the purported authenticity and transparency of lived experience. ↗

— Sarah Cay Terence Cave Malcolm Bowie

#prose-versus-verse #experience

نصف فائدة السجود تتمثل في الطلب بحدّ ذاته ، في النية السليمة الواضحة . ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#novel #prostration #faith

A prosperous state makes a secure Christian, but adversity makes him Consider. ↗

— Anne Bradstreet

#christian #consider #him #makes #prosperous

The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#heresy #leprosy #poverty #faith

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus. ↗

— Gerald Durrell

#eucalyptus #gloom #prose #family

Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash. ↗

— Cecil Beaton

#airline #belief #cash #comforting #control

She had hit rock-bottom. She had given a blow job to a man who for all intents and purposes, was a bum. He had smelled so bad, she forced him to spray on some of the perfume she always carried in her purse. Her favorite perfume. After tonight, she was quitting. Yeah, she’d have to go back home with her two kids, grovel to her mama and work a dead-end job, but anything was better than getting down on your knees to give a guy as disgusting as Lenny a one-off. ↗

— A.T. Hicks

#humor #irony #prostitute #strip-club #home

Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#create #inspiration #poetry #prose #write

I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#atop-an-underwood #beat #inspirational #jack-kerouac #locomotive

...it really struck me that, just as people might look at me and never imagine I'd worked as a prostitute, they must look at some of those girls and see only the alienation and disaffection that hides their on fears and hurt. ↗

— Sophie Hayes

#disaffection #prostitution #stereotyping #stigma #teenagers