Anthem

[..] Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs / the signs were sent: / the birth betrayed / the marriage spent / Yeah the widowhood / of every government -- / signs for all to see.

I can't run no more / with that lawless crowd / while the killers in high places / say their prayers out loud. / But they've summoned, they've summoned up / a thundercloud / and they're going to hear from me. [...]

The Boy with the Arab Strap

"Color my life with the Chaos of Trouble"

It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it.

– Visual and other pleasures

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.

"The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable dates back to antiquity, and it still prevails. To this day, most courses in the philosophy of knowledge teach that knowledge is some form of justified, true belief, where ‘justified’ means designated as true (or at least ‘probable’) by reference to some authoritative source or touchstone of knowledge. Thus ‘how do we know. . . ?’ is transformed into ‘by what authority do we claim . . . ?’ The latter question is a chimera that may well have wasted more philosophers’ time and effort than any other idea. It converts the quest for truth into a quest for certainty (a feeling) or for endorsement (a social status). This misconception is called justificationism. The opposing position – namely the recognition that there are no authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying idea...

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."

Breathes there the man

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land! / Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d, / As home his footsteps he hath turn’d, / From wandering on a foreign strand! / If such there breathe, go, mark him well; / For him no Minstrel raptures swell; / High though his titles, proud his name, / Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; / Despite those titles, power, and pelf, / The wretch, concentred all in self, / Living, shall forfeit fair renown, / And, doubly dying, shall go down / To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, / Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

Auguries of Innocence

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour / A Robin Red breast in a Cage / Puts all Heaven in a Rage / A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons / Shudders Hell thr' all its regions / A dog starvd at his Masters Gate / Predicts the ruin of the State / A Horse misusd upon the Road / Calls to Heaven for Human blood / Each outcry of the hunted Hare / A fibre from the Brain does tear / A Skylark wounded in the wing / A Cherubim does cease to sing / The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight / Does the Rising Sun affright / Every Wolfs & Lions howl / Raises from Hell a Human Soul / The wild deer, wandring here & there / Keeps the Human Soul from Care / The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife / And yet forgives the Butchers knife / The Bat that flits at close of Eve / Has lef...

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night, / Old age should burn and rave at close of day; / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, / Because their words had forked no lightning they / Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, / And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, / Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight / Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad hei...

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods / And over the walls I have wended; / I have climbed the hills of view / And looked at the world, and descended; / I have come by the highway home, / And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground, / Save those that the oak is keeping / To ravel them one by one / And let them go scraping and creeping / Out over the crusted snow, / When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still, / No longer blown hither and thither; / The last lone aster is gone; / The flowers of the witch hazel wither; / The heart is still aching to seek, / But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man / Was it ever less than a treason / To go with the drift of things, / To yield with a grace to reason, / And bow and accept the end / O...

I. Solitude

II. Humility

III. Gratitude

IV. Pride

V. Cooperation

VI. Friendship

VII. Forgiveness

VIII. Honesty

IX. Courage

X. Grace

XI. Patience

XII. Justice

XIII. Generosity

XIV. Discipline

XV. Dedication

XVI. Speech

XVII. Faith

XVIII. Equality

XIX. Love

XX. Death

True love is a sacred flame that burns eternally, / And none can dim its special glow or change its destiny, / True love speaks in tender tones and hears with gentle ear. / True love gives with open heart and true love conquers fear. / True love makes no harsh demands. It neither rules nor binds. / And true love holds with gentle hands the hearts that it entwines.

Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici

("By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe")

Man is in love and loves what vanishes, / What more is there to say?

– 'Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen', W. B. Yeats, 1921

INFJ-T

• I can only connect deeply or not at all. (Anais Nïn)
• Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being. (Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe)
• The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. (Henry David Thoreau)
• It’s better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain, than to say, ’I don’t want to try because I may not succeed completely'. (Jimmy Carter)
• In the end, it’s your actions, how you respond to circumstance, that reveals your character. (Cate Blanchett)

• Get busy living or get busy dying
• Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane

Life is a desire, not a meaning.

– Calvero

A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake; to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept mystery.

– John Keats

Well, maybe it’s like Casy says. A fellow ain’t got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then… Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too.

– Tom Joad

(John Steinbeck, Nunnally Johnson)

A blank, my lord: she never told her love, / But let concealment like a worm i' th' bud / Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought, / And with a green and yellow melancholy / She sat like Patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? / We man may say more, swear more, but indeed / Our shows are more than will: for still we prove / Much in our vows, but little in our love.

"Love is the death of duty." (Jon Snow)

"There's nothing more powerful in the world than a good story." (Tyron Lannister)

"Art is love made public"