a commonplace blog

  "In the most general sense, a commonplace book contains a collection of significant or well-known passages that have been copied and organized in some way, often under topical or thematic headings, in order to serve as a memory aid or reference for the compiler..." ||||||

[commonplaceblog-blog]

There is only 'illusion' in art where ignorance of the bystander confuses imagination and its works with cruder processes. Truly men feel an enlargement before great or good work, an expansion but this is not, as so many believe today a 'lie,' a stupefaction, a kind of mesmerism, a thing to block out 'life,' bitter to the individual, by a 'vision of beauty.' It is a work of imagination. It gives the feeling of completion by revealing the oneness of experience; it rouses rather than stupefies the intelligence by demonstrating the importance of personality, by showing the individual, depressed before it, that his life is valuable - when completed by the imagination. And then only.

William Carlos Williams | Spring and All | 1923

[commonplaceblog-blog]

Is there any of us who has not known this moment when compatible people - friends, congeners - obtain a flash of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems, not just their problems, could be resolved, whether emotional or cognitive, if only the group which is felt (in the first person) as "essentially us" could sustain its intersubjective illumination.

Victor Turner | From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play | 1982

[commonplaceblog-blog]

I saw that even on the worst days, when I thought I was utterly and completely miserable, I was nevertheless, and nearly all the time, extremely happy. That gave me something to think about. The discovery was not a pleasant one. It seemed to me that I was losing a great deal. I asked myself, wasn't I sad, hadn't I felt my life breaking up? Yes, that had been true; but each minute, when I stayed without moving in a corner of the room, the cool of the night and the stability of the ground made me breathe and rest on gladness.

Maurice Blanchot | The Madness of the Day | 1973

[commonplaceblog-blog]

I have loved people, I have lost them. I went mad when that blow struck me, because it is hell. But there was no witness to my madness, my frenzy was not evident; only my innermost being was mad. Sometimes I became enraged. People would say to me, 'Why are you so calm?' But I was scorched from head to foot; at night I would run through the streets and howl; during the day I would work calmly.

Maurice Blanchot | The Madness of the Day | 1973

[commonplaceblog-blog]

Loneliness, I've read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it's promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.

Richard Ford | Canada | 2012

[commonplaceblog-blog]

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him -- even concerning his own body -- in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous -- as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger. Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from?

Nietzche | On Truth and Lie in an Extra Moral Sense | 1873

[commonplaceblog-blog]

Memory is kind, a kindness, a kind of unlistening, a kind of grey wall even toward which you move.

Michael Palmer | “Notes for Echo Lake 1”

[theseliteraryquotes-blog]

I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.

Dry, Augusten Burroughs (via theseliteraryquotes)

[theseliteraryquotes-blog]

This might have been a funny story if it weren’t for the fact that people need a little loving and, God, sometimes it’s sad all the shit they have to go through to find some.

Revenge of the Lawn, Richard Brautigan (via theseliteraryquotes)

[commonplaceblog-blog]

I used to say it was like going home. We have no home in this world, I used to say, and then I'd walk back up the road to this old place and make myself a pot of coffee and a fried-egg sandwich and listen to the radio, when I got one, in the dark as often as not.

Marilynne Robinson | Gilead |  2004

[commonplaceblog-blog]

His situation, insofar as he was a machine, was complex, tragic, and laughable. But the sacred part of him, his awareness, remained an unwavering band of light. And this book is being written by a meat machine in cooperation with a machine made of metal and plastic. The plastic, incidentally, is a close relative of the gunk in Sugar Creek. And at the core of the writing meat machine is something sacred, which is an unwavering band of light. At the core of each person who reads this book is a band of unwavering light.

Kurt Vonnegut | Breakfast of Champions | 1973

[commonplaceblog-blog]

We have been deeded the largest landscaped space within a city anywhere in the world. In Fairmount Park, on horseback, among the ancient ginkgoes, oaks, persimmons, and magnolias, we are seventeen and imperishable, cutting classes May of our senior year. And I am happy as the young Tom Jefferson, unbuttoning my collar, imagining his power, considering my healthy body, how I might use it in the service of the country of my pleasure.

Robin Becker | “A History of Sexual Preference” | 1996

[commonplaceblog-blog]

19 You believe that there is one God. That is good! But even the demons believe that, and because they do, they shake. 20 You foolish man! Do I have to prove to you that faith without doing things is of no use?

James 2:19-20 (NLV)

[commonplaceblog-blog]

'Nothing’s perfect,' sighed the fox. 'My life is monotonous. I hunt chickens; people hunt me. All chickens are just alike, and all men are just alike. So I’m rather bored. But if you tame me, my life will be filled with sunshine. I’ll know the sound of footsteps that will be different from all the rest. Other footsteps send me back underground. Yours will call me out of my burrow like music. And then, look! You see the wheat fields over there? I don’t eat bread. For me, wheat is no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you’ve tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I’ll love the sound of the wind in the wheat...'

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry | The Little Prince | 1943

[commonplaceblog-blog]

It's good to be out in the night, naked to the cold mechanics of the stars. Space hurls outward, falconswift, mounting like an irreversible injustice, a final disease. ... So childhood too feels good at first, before one happens to notice the terrible sameness, age after age.

John Gardner | Grendel | 1971

[commonplaceblog-blog]

Like some people, he believes a thing as soon as he has heard himself say it.

unattributed misc. note from 1/10/2015

[commonplaceblog-blog]

His time is but a moment, his being an incessant flux, his senses a dim rushlight, his body a prey of worms, his soul an unquiet eddy, his fortune dark, and his fame doubtful.

Marcus Aurelius | Meditations II-xvii