My weaknesses are less remarkable than 

all the things I have at one time or another 

imagined were my strengths.

The mistakes I made from weakness 

do not embarrass me nearly so much as those 

I made insisting on my strength.

Vectors: 56 Aphorisms and Ten-second Essays

James Richardson 

 Money-makers are tiresome company, as they have no standard but cash value. 

--Plato

“I’m mercurial, sometimes I want greatness, sometimes just its shadow.”

Roberto Bolaño

The More Loving One

W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.

— William S. Burroughs, Letters to Allen Ginsberg

"The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication."

— Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards! 

“Sometimes you need to do more than burn the bridge to stop yourself from crossing it again.”

You cannot keep the view by taking the window with you.

“Must the moon

be full in order to be loved?

And what of the heart?”

Pavana पवन 

(via a-quiet-life)

"What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry."

 - Matsuo Bashō

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one does still know.

— René Daumal

Tumblr Page for Beachprophet

“I want to love 

One woman for
The longest that any man
Has ever loved one woman


But I will fail hopelessly
[…] 

So I want to be
The man who fails
Most frequently
And most beautifully


At everything
I do”

Matthew Lippman, from “The Man Who Fails Most Frequently and Beautifully,”

I have to tell you what I've learned, that I know now

what happens to the dreamers.

They don't feel it when they change. One day

they wake, they dress, they are old.

 - Louise Glück

 

“If I were fire, I would burn; if I were a woodcutter, I would strike. But I am a heart, and I love.” 

― Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ