Quote Digest

[Thought]

"Plums deify!" - Steven King

[tushantin]

How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.

[Lord J Esq]

[tushantin]

(Yeats translation)

The child, who is decked with prince's robes and who has jeweled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step.

In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move.

Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthiest dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life.

Tagore... Such an brilliant and vivid artistic mind he has, much like William Blake himself. Alas, his works lose such depth, music and meaning when translated from Bengali to English.

One of these days I'll take it upon myself to re-translate a few of his works, either in all its aesthetic glory or in William Blake style.

(Yeats translation)

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off the holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in the toil and in sweat of they brow.

[tushantin]

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.

The friends that have it I do wrong
Whenever I remake a song
Should know what issue is at stake,
It is myself that I remake.

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

[Kodokami]

But some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty of something that was so simple you had taken it for granted. That I think is job of the poet.

[Lord J Esq]

Yeah, that was a good line. I'm not sure I inherently agree, but it caught my attention when he said it and it made me think. If not unequivocally true, it has a lot of truth in it.

[Kodokami]

Can't say I entirely agree with it either, but that phrase, or perhaps the way in which he said it, really made me pause in thought. Passionate.

Neil Tyson is one of those physicists who have caught my attention, so it was great to listen to that interview.

[Lord J Esq]

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Er, sorry. To get back on topic:

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

~ Lord J Esq

[tushantin]

I actually agree with that quote by Tyson. Taking for granted is human nature, no matter how open-minded or skeptical one may become, and while skepticism itself is a practical approach to confirm truth it also has shades of ignorance within that denies the skeptic of certain visions (take it or leave it; that's just my thoughts). Psychologically, common folks would take what's given to them based on methods or who is giving it to them. When a annoying neighbor says a "fact", the audience may simply dismiss it as bullshit. But when a poet paints the same thing in ways that the audience understands, it's taken for granted.

I've always said it and I'll say it again:

True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself a nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!.

[tushantin]

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Scientists are not without moral code. (etc.)
Steven Colbert: Scientists use the Terminator, or create a Super Bug that wipes out the world, or they enrage the monster at the bottom of the sea.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson: When you part the curtains and, at the bottom of all of that, there's a Politician funding that research.

[tushantin]

We judge books by the cover and minds by their appearance. We are a superficial species

[Sajainta]

Women who are fat are said to have 'let themselves go.' The very phrase connotes a loosening of restraints. Women in our society are bound. In generations past, the constriction was accomplished by corsets and girdles…. Women today are bound by fears, by oppression, and by stereotypes that depict large women as ungainly, unfeminine, and unworthy of appreciation…. Above all, women must control themselves, must be careful, for to relax might lead to the worst possible consequence: being fat.

[tushantin]

Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius.

Something tells me there's a lot more depth and meaning in this statement than most imagine it to be.

“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”

“People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.”

[tushantin]

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Picasso was the TRUE Springtime of Youth!

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?