Read

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all. . . . Certainly we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.

Henry D. Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 1849

Religious Beliefs

All religious beliefs prompt rejection. Souls are reincarnated? Ridiculous. The Bible is divinely inspired? Dangerous nonsense. Muhammad is the prophet of God? Poppycock. Jesus rose from the dead? Absurd. It is the common fate of doctrines to be dismissed; you’d almost think that’s what they were made for.

Alan Jacobs, Original Sin: A Cultural History, p. ix.

All men are bores

"All men are bores. The word itself suggests the possibility of a subdivision. It may just as well indicate a man who bores others as one who bores himself. Those who bore others are the mob, the crowd, the infinite multitude of men in general. Those who bore themselves are the elect, the aristocracy; and it is curious that those who do not bore themselves usually bore others, while those who bore themselves entertain others."

~Source: Either/Or (1843)
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

Bookshelves

“Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be.”

Ezra Klein

"I Will Follow You Into the Dark"

Love of mine some day you will die
But I'll be close behind
I'll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
To illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
To illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
It's nothing to cry about
Cause we'll hold each other soon
The blackest of rooms

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
To illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs
If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark
Then I'll follow you into the dark

Death Cab for Cutie

( from the album Plans on Atlantic Records )

The Bibliophile

It is all so sad, a library of unread books.

The Garden of Love

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys & desires.

William Blake - “The Garden of Love”

Thought-of-the-Day

"Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore."
Cecil Beaton

Tears

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811-189

Meaning of life?

A timely reminder to all of us who like collecting books!

Meaning of life?
Collecting books? No, read them!
Reading them? No, think about!
Thinking about? No, do something for God and for your neighbour!
—Karl Barth, Basle, 2.11.1954

Useless to resist

"A dying man needs to die as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist."
Stewart Alsop

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)

ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"

DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries

Deep in my heart

Deep in my heart I bear grief, outwardly I must be serene. I conceal my dear deep grief within, well out of sight of the world, and it is felt by the soul alone, for the body does not deserve it. As the spark, free and bright, hides itself within flint, so I bear deep grief within.

Eric Sams, The Songs of Hugo Wolf

Faith

“All faith is autopsy”

Søren Kierkegaard—Journals, 1844

Atheist's Bible

"All thinking men are atheists," Ernest Hemingway famously wrote. True? Here are quips, quotes, and questions from a distinguished assortment of geniuses and jokers, giving readers a chance to decide for themselves....

When I think of all the harm [the bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
Oscar Wilde

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Ambrose Bierce

There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.
Gertrude Stein

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are skeptical.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz

God is love, but get it in writing.
Gypsy Rose Lee

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw

Published June, 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers, Hardcover, 208 Pages, ISBN: 9780061349157, ISBN-10: 0061349151, List Price $16.95. by Konner, Joan

Loneliness

Now it is Loneliness who comes at night
Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.
Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,
I watch her softly blowing out the light.
Motionless sitting, neither left or right
She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.
She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.
So, with the laurel she is garlanded.

Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide
Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.
A strange wind flows... then silence. I am fain
To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,
Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land
Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain

(Katherine Mansfield)

Everything falls back to coldness

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of sombre pages.

It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, "Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden."


The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

(Wallace Stevens)

Grief

One day of grief is an hundred years, as Cardan observes: 'Tis carnificina hominum, angor animi, as well saith Aretaeus, a plague of the soul, the cramp and convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell; and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part. I, Sect. 4, Memb. I (Prognosticks of Melancholy)

On the Shortness of Life

Look back in memory and consider when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life, how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing, how much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire, in the allurements of society, how little of yourself was left to you; you will perceive that you are dying before your season!

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 3.3 (tr. John W. Basore)

The Course of Life

What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth? -
Most men eddy about
Here and there - eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and, then they die -
Perish; - and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd,
Foam'd for a moment, and gone.

The Course of Life - Matthew Arnold, Rugby Chapel, lines 58-72