For all Dickens’ lovers around..
The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.
“
| — | Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (via foronlyever) |
This was my first tattoo. The quote comes from James Allen.
“The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.”
At the time I got it, I was out of high school but not in college, and didn’t know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. People had been rushing me all my life, telling me where I should go and what I should do, because “time was wasting.” But 10 years later I can tell you, in life, as in plants, or in cooking, or many of the other pleasurable pursuits, it’s not about how fast you accomplish something, but that you do it well. No one realizes how a dream you held at 18 will reappear, fully-limbed and strong, 10 or 20 years later. The tiniest things can be capable of producing the biggest surprises.
And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.
“
| — | Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (via foronlyever) |
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
by E. E. Cummings
by E. E. Cummings
It’s just. It’s a very deep meaning to me. You could believe as Romeo shouts this into the sky (just after learning from Juliets death) he is going to defy his own fate by committing suicide. The most tragic part of this this is that we know that Romeo is mistaken and that the events that befall him were going to happen anyway and that he was destined to fall for Juliet and for it to come to a tragic end. Maybe that’s what I love about it so much. Living your life with the thought that your actions can determine your destiny - although in the end anything is predetermined. Being aware of what you are doing, not regretting any result.
Sorry, this has gone deeper than I wanted to. ;)
It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
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| — | Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (via somelittlejoy) |
My skull and books. I am a library science student specializing in rare books and manuscripts so this illustrates that pretty well.
This is my Shakespearean Lady dressed as a man. Along with a great Twelfth Night quote:
“There is no darkness but ignorance”
Perfect for me being a librarian :)
Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
“
| — | Colette, Casual Chance, 1964 |
“Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.” -John Green, Looking for Alaska
John Green is one of my favorite authors, and Rabelais is in my list of favorite poems. The compass was taken from one of Salvador Dali’s clocks. It’s broken because it doesn’t matter where I go as long as I go to find something bigger than myself.
