It was the hour of four in the afternoon, and already in hillside homesteads the day was nearly done. There was everywhere an air of that sweet, old-fashioned leisure which the world has nearly lost. It lingered in the slant sunlight that threw shadows across the winding road… — Florence Bone (1875–1971), The Morning of To‑Day, 1907
Spent yesterday and today doing loads of writing. One was a project for a friend. The other, was another project for me :) So even though, it isn’t here. I’m done :) A thought only really lives until it has reached the boundary line of words; it then becomes petrified and dies immediately; yet it is as everlasting as the fossilised animals and plants of former ages. Its existence, which is really momentary, may be compared to a crystal the instant it becomes crystallised....
The Bridge of Angels (Ponte Sant’Angelo), leading to the Castel Sant’Angelo (Hadrian’s Castle) It took me a half an hour to slowly traverse it :) It was that beautiful.
Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation’s nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread … — Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais, 49....
Before I became old I tried to live well; now that I am old, I shall try to die well; but dying well means dying gladly. — Seneca, Letter 61: On Meeting Death Cheerfully
“Trust that what brought you here Will take you there. The Infinite has no preferences. It kisses both the darkness and The light equally.” — The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin
“Every parent is at some point the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.” John Ciardi
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. — Confucius.
“It takes courage to do what you want. Other people have a lot of plans for you. Nobody wants you to do what you want to do. They want you to go on their trip, but you can do what you want. I did. I went into the woods and read for five years.” — Joseph Campbell Exactly why I went and spent a whole month in Europe. It’s not quite the “done thing” for folks like me....
William Styron, via Austin Kleon: Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self—to the mediating intellect—as to verge close to being beyond description … it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dimensions of their torment, and perhaps elicit a comprehension that has been generally lacking; such incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience....