Son of Ares

book quotes and poetry for angry souls. full of religious trauma.

[lady-alabaster]

Mihály Zichy (1827-1906), Tamara and the Demon, 1880 ca., lithography, Russia, Tarkhany State Lermontov Museum.

[charnel-grounds]

Laszlo Kubinyi, “The Jealous Vampire”

illustration from “Ghosts, Vampires, and Werewolves: Eerie Tales from Transylvania” by Mihai I. Spariosu and Dezső Benedek, 1994

source

[sidsledge]

we're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year

[kenz-eaye]

“In The Plague, Camus wrote about a doctor who doesn't believe in God, redemption, or higher purpose. Yet every day, he shows up to help the dying. Why? Because it's right.

Camus believed morality begins when justification ends. You don't do good because it saves you, or earns approval. You do it because suffering exists and you refuse to add to it.

He called this ‘the modest heroism of the absurd.’ In a meaningless world, the only meaning left is what we create through compassion, courage, and presence.

Camus saw that people want cosmic justice, rewards, closure, divine order. But decency doesn't need a witness. True morality, he said, is doing what's right when no one's watching.

In an age obsessed with saving the world, Camus reminds us that goodness isn't grand. It's quiet. It's the everyday rebellion of kindness in a world that's indifferent.

You can't fix chaos. You can't end suffering. But you can refuse cruelty. You can choose integrity. You can make one small corner of existence less unbearable.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe the most moral life isn't one that saves the world but one that quietly refuses to make it worse.”

— Existential Reflections

[skylark-234]

"The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days."

- Albert Camus, The Fall

[funeral]

“If we knocked on the graves and asked the dead whether they would like to rise again, they would shake their heads.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

[atasteforblood]

"You go out of the world the way you came in: surrounded by people and utterly alone."

-Parachute Infantry by David Kenyon Webster

[atasteforblood]

I love Tumblr so much, I quote historical literature, and then the tags are just

Thank you @isakvaltersnake and @crackerjacksman

David is tumblrs forever girl <3

[charnel-grounds]

Hugo Simberg (1873–1917), “The Black Death in Finland 1350”

oil painting, 1906

[lovelydisc]

Your body does not know it has eyes. Nor should it.

[averagemoderncitizen]

Eugene “Doc” Roe, Band of Brothers (2001) / Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost (1922)

—————

screenshots taken from the lovely gifs made by @saintmalosunsets ♥️

[guerrillatech]

[macassarebony-deactivated202603]

“Never let your enemy tell you how many of you there are. Never let the man that you’re against form your opinions. This is the trick that’s played on everyone who’s oppressed: when you have a revolution in a country, the first thing you take over is the radio. Then, you start telling the people that the war is over, so all of them surrender. They believe that thing right there. And once they take that over, they start telling you where you are and where they are, and you fall right in line — it’s plain thought control. The majority of the American people aren’t segregationists. The majority of the American people aren’t imperialists. But the government is. The structure is; the power faction is. So, how, then, do all the majority go along with it? Because those who sit in power over the television, over the radio, and over the press are constantly telling those who are the masses how free they are, how this they are, and how that they are.”

[atasteforblood]

-Parachute Infantry, David Kenyon Webster

[atasteforblood]

"The German fire continued to build up. 'Shoot, shoot!' I yelled, fanning the area ahead. "I can't see 'em," Janovec replied. 'You never see 'em. Shoot where you think they are!'."

-Parachute Infantry, David Kenyon Webster, Pg. 90

[saintsqueensbutchers]

Thomasin McKenzie in JoJo Rabbit

“There are parts in it full of fear and devastation but it’s also incredibly hopeful. By doing that, like I said, he’s made it accessible to the younger generation.”- Thomasin on the film

[atdawn]

‘It is no good trying to escape you. But I’m glad Sam. I cannot tell you how glad. Come along! It is plain we were meant to go together.’

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Breaking of the Fellowship)

[radiojamming]

There was one of those hyperspecific polls that had an option like “your grandfather told you war stories that he never told anyone else” and now I feel like I have to tell the story about how a spider saved my grandpa’s life in WWII and how my family doesn’t kill spiders because we owe our existence to that One Single Spider

[radiojamming]

So to set the scene, it's the height of WWII in France and my grandpa—a 6'3" 20 year old upper Michigan farm boy—has been separated from his company after their temporary camp was shelled. My grandpa (who, I have to add, was nicknamed 'the Suicide Kid' at this point because he worked in demolitions and bomb interception and kept taking the jobs no one wanted with the expectation that he was never going home anyway) is scared out of his wits, wandering around the French countryside alone. He has to move at night and sleep in barns and sheds during the day to hide from people who most definitely want him dead.

On one of these days, he finds a farmhouse of a very jittery couple who agree to let him sleep in the barn, with the conditions that he sleeps in the barn loft and if he's found, they disavow all knowledge that he was there. He agrees, because he's exhausted and will sleep in a hay pile if he has to. My grandpa manages to fit all six foot three inches of himself into a feed trough stored upstairs and tries to get some sleep.

However, right when he's half-snoozing, he hears motors outside and sure enough, here are some very angry officers of mixed Nazi and Vichy make confronting the couple saying someone up the road spotted an American soldier walking this way. They wouldn't know anything about that, would they? No, of course not.

All the while, my grandpa—now trying to figure out how to either escape the barn unseen or how to fight off six? seven? eight? people at once—freezes up and waits for the inevitable. While he does, a HUGE spider crawls next to his head and onto the loft railing. For one second, he thinks about swatting it away, but that would risk him being seen and killed.

So, instead, he lays there and waits to either fight to the death or get executed in a feed trough. And while he lays there, the spider starts making a huge web on the railing. My grandpa's transfixed by this thing. He watches her go around and around, building a solid web before plopping herself off to one side and waiting for breakfast. At the same time, the officers finally go into the barn.

My grandpa can hear them searching around, turning over crates and checking animal pens. Then, he hears one say to check the loft.

And then another say, "Don't bother. Look at the spiderwebs up there. No one's been there in a while."

And they leave.

Because my grandpa didn't swat the spider away and let her build her web, the officers thought no one was there and left him alone. They drive off and my grandpa immediately thanks the farmer couple and hauls ass out of there as soon as he can.

After this, my grandpa refused to kill any spider, and his kids did the same. Because if it wasn't for her, he wouldn't have lived and would never have had kids or grandkids. So we owe her one.

[radiojamming]

There's the man himself. Go grandpa!!

[arinewman7]

Buttonwood Farm

N. C. Wyeth

oil on canvas, 1920