Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
He’ll die of idealism, of being right when the world is wrong. He’ll die without knowing what she’s powerless to tell him—that he has helped her. That his heart is as good and as worthy as wood.
Richard Powers • The Overstory: Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations?
... See moreHenry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
"Ha, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot of the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to ye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!"
Herman Melville • Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French, though he spoke
... See moreHenry David Thoreau • Walden (AmazonClassics Edition)
Poetry
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic ... See more
Funeral Blues, by W.H. Auden
Henry Scott Holland’s “Facts of Faith”: “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I’ve only slipped away into the next room… Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere, very near, just around the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt. Nothing is lost. One brief moment, and all will be a
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