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Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
Farther in the distance, I could even see mighty Brazil nut trees towering over the forest. I looked at it all in a new way. Is nature beautiful if your family dies in it without help? I determined that the beauty in nature is really the beauty of our perception of it. No, it wouldn’t be beautiful without humans to declare it so. But, my God, it
... See moreDaniel L. Everett • Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures)
From Moby Dick
To merge his life in the common tide of other lives was harder for him than any fasting or prayer, and it was his constant failure to do this to his own satisfaction which caused in his soul at last a sensation of spiritual dryness together with a growth of doubts and scruples.
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things, I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice; now, he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever,
Mary Oliver • Dream Work
Pirahãs take naps (fifteen minutes to two hours at the extremes) during the day and night. There is loud talking in the village all night long. Consequently, it is often very difficult for outsiders to sleep well among the Pirahãs. I believe that the Pirahãs’ advice not to sleep because there are snakes is advice that they literally follow—sleeping
... See moreDaniel L. Everett • Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures)
—Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.—
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning.—