FASTREADER

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.”
—James Arlington Wright

—(via journalofanobody)

All those lives maintained in the rarefied air of the absurd could not persevere without some profound and constant thought to infuse its strength into them.

—Albert Camus, “Absurd Creation”  (via sisyphean-revolt)

Give your daughters difficult names. Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.

—Warsan Shire (via wordsthat-speak)

(via pauci)

The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the hidden side of things. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language—the word ‘enthusiasm’—en theos—a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.

—Louis Pasteur  (via ratak-monodosico)

(Source: quotesforintellectuals, via journalofanobody)

Most people…are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.”
—Hermann Hesse

—(via journalofanobody)

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, “I love to go and see all the things I am happy without.

—― Jack Kornfield (via redwooodss)

(via nightbears)

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

—Charles Bukowski (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

(via the-overcast)

coracias:

Years From Now When You Are Weary

and worn out, wondering how you’ll pay
a bill or make the rent or meet a deadline

set by some thoughtless boss—and kid,
such days will come—remember yourself

at five: hair light from the sun or just from
being young, new lunchbox pasted

with…

I had the opportunity to study with Julia Kasdorf, and owe her immensely for her mentorship during college.

Great poetry does not teach us anything – it changes us. Man is like a musical instrument of many strings, of which only a few are sounded by the narrow interests of his daily life; and the others, for want of use, are continually becoming tuneless and forgotten. Heroic poetry is a phantom finger swept over all the strings, arousing from man’s whole nature a song of answering harmony. It is the poetry of action, for such alone can arouse the whole nature of man. It touches all the strings – those of wonder and pity, of fear and joy. It ignores morals, for its business is not in any way to make us rules for life, but to make character. It is not, as a great English writer has said, ‘a criticism of life’, but rather a fire in the spirit, burning away what is mean and deepening what is shallow.

—W. B. Yeats, from “Irish Poets and Irish Poetry” in The Irish Fireside, October 9, 1886 (via litverve)