literary jukebox

The same meaning changes with the words which express it....

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:41:29 -0400

The same meaning changes with the words which express it. Meanings receive their dignity from words instead of giving it to them.

Blaise Pascal in Pensées

Song: “Words” by Guillemots

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As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:40:22 -0400

As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici, we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characteristics in our women a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.

Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man

Song: “Beautiful People” by The Books

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Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:25:32 -0400

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

James Joyce in Ulysses

Song: “Home” by Alexi Murdoch

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In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 07:12:01 -0400

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind.

Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Song: “Song For The Divine Mother Of The Universe” by Ben Lee

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FLUENT I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:56:56 -0400

FLUENT

I would love to live

Like a river flows,

Carried by the surprise

Of its own unfolding.

John O’Donohue in Conamara Blues: Poems

Song: “The River” by Anathallo

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Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 08:44:03 -0400

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Rainer Maria Rilke in Rilke’s Book of Hours

Song: “One More Time With Feeling” by Regina Spektor

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There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 00:21:00 -0400

There’s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.

Cheryl Strayed in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Song: “Know Which Way the Wind Blows” by The Postmarks

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Every department of knowledge we see excellent and calculated...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 09:34:14 -0400

Every department of knowledge we see excellent and calculated towards a great whole. … An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people — it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the Burden of the Mystery… The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this — in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with all [the] horror of a bare shouldered Creature — in the former case, our shoulders are fledge, and we go thro’ the same air and space without fear. This is running one’s rigs on the score of abstracted benefit — when we come to human Life and the affections it is impossible how a parallel of breast and head can be drawn…

John Keats in Selected Letters of John Keats

Song: “Know How” by Kings of Convenience

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The Indian Serenade I arise from dreams of theeIn the first...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 22:59:12 -0400

The Indian Serenade

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me — who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream —
And the Champak’s odours [pine],
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must on thine,
O belovèd as thou art!

O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast:
O press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last!

Percy Bysshe Shelly in The Oxford Book of English Verse

Song: “Sweet Darlin’” by She & Him

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Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 08:57:00 -0400

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!

Henri-Frédéric Amiel in Amiel’s Journal

Song: “Kind & Generous” by Natalie Merchant

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The pleasure we derive from sex is also bound up with our...

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:54:16 -0400

The pleasure we derive from sex is also bound up with our recognizing, and giving a distinctive seal of approval to, those ingredients of a good life whose presence we have detected in another person. The more closely we analyze what we consider ‘sexy,’ the more clearly we will understand that eroticism is the feeling of excitement we experience at finding another human being who shares our values and our sense of the meaning of existence.

Alain de Botton in How to Think More About Sex

Song: “You Sexy Thing (I Believe In Miracles)” by Hot Chocolate

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Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly...

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 09:29:00 -0400

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.

Daniel Dennett in Freedom Evolves

Song: “The Lucky One” by Au Revoir Simone

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One moment of unconditional love can invalidate an entire...

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 12:53:36 -0400

One moment of unconditional love can invalidate an entire lifetime of uncertainty and doubt.

Rachel Naomi Remen in Kitchen Table Wisdom

Song: “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” by Talking Heads

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The difference between science and philosophy is that the...

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 09:19:07 -0400

The difference between science and philosophy is that the scientist learns more and more about less and less until she knows everything about nothing, whereas a philosopher learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything.

Dorion Sagan in Cosmic Apprentice: Dispatches from the Edges of Science

Song: “Science vs. Romance” by Rilo Kiley

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Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If...

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 08:41:34 -0400

Gamble everything for love,

if you are a true human being.

If not, leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.

Rumi in The Essential Rumi

Song: “All for Love” by Sean Hayes

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The known universe has one complete lover and that is the...

Fri, 31 May 2013 09:12:59 -0400

The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What baulks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse … he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover … he is sure … he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him … suffering and darkness cannot—death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth … he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore or the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of his love and of all perfection and beauty.

Walt Whitman in the preface to Leaves of Grass

Song: “To A Poet” by First Aid Kit

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Evolution … is the central, enabling process not only of life...

Thu, 30 May 2013 13:24:30 -0400

Evolution … is the central, enabling process not only of life but also of knowledge and learning and understanding. If you attempt to make sense of the world of ideas and meanings, free will and morality, art and science and even philosophy itself without a sound and quite detailed knowledge of evolution, you have one hand tied behind your back.

Daniel Dennett in Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking

Song: “How Darwinian” by Dan Mangan

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If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the...

Wed, 29 May 2013 19:38:43 -0400

If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another’s mind.

Jack Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013) in The Face (The Book of Dreams)

Song: “New Religion” by Alice Smith

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We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when...

Mon, 27 May 2013 18:35:25 -0400

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.

Mark Nepo in The Book of Awakening

Song: “Green Gloves” by The National

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You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you...

Sun, 26 May 2013 10:42:10 -0400

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

Never whine. Whining lets a brute know that a victim is in the neighborhood.

Be certain that you do not die without having done something wonderful for humanity.

Maya Angelou in Letter To My Daughter

Song: “Godchild” by Miles Davis (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991)

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