Commonplace Book: a book or scrapbook into which interesting quotations, extracts, etc., are copied for personal reference (Oxford English Dictionary).
[Zeus] has provided each of us with an individual guardian deity, which stays by our side and is in charge of looking after us - a guardian who never sleeps and is impossible to distract. Is there any guardian to whose care he could have committed us that is better or more vigilant? Whenever you close your doors and turn out your lights, remember, never say to yourself that you are alone; you're not. God is inside, and so is your private deity, and neither of them requires a light to watch you by.
The Bodhisattva vow is a commitment to awaken for the sake of all beings, and the Six Perfections describe how this vow is lived moment by moment by giving freely, acting ethically, meeting difficulty with patience, applying joyful effort, cultivating steady concentration, and seeing the world with wisdom.
...I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Finally did something about all of Nick Nelson's heart eyes throughout the @heartstoppercomic. It's amazing just how much 2 little black blobs can express.
I started with 44 screenshots of potential Nick Nelson Heart Eyes (tm). But I spent time really scrutinising each pair and analysing the scenes I took them from, bringing the total down to 18 (including 4 which are LITERAL hearts when you look closely at them).
I know we don’t get happily ever afters in real life. I’m a hopeless romantic, not a total fucking idiot. As my friend, Russell, said to me once, “Even with the happiest couples, one of you dies first.” But first there is such unalloyed joy.
We went to the supermarket yesterday and we were wandering around and, at one point, he took my hand, because that’s the kind of thing he does. And instantly, I got flustered. Residual anxiety. Remembrance of past battery. Enduring scars. Even though I know I’m hardly likely to get my head kicked in by the salad bar, PDAs can still make me nervous. And then he said, gentle as anything, and I’m not going to do the accent… “If there’s a gay kid in here with his folks, frightened that he’s a freak, don’t you think that it might give him hope, seeing two guys wandering around, being themselves, getting their groceries, like everyone else?” If happiness is a place… it’s the biscuit aisle in Sainsbury’s. And anywhere else I am with him.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something.
What are we holding onto Sam?
That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for.
~Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten."
~JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers
Wool, first half of 6th Century CE, Egypt. Dimensions: 136.5 cm x 114 cm/53.7in x 44.9in. Location: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington DC (X). Scan from “Documents of Dying Paganism: Textiles of Late Antiquity” by Paul Friedländer, 1945. Photo: Doktor Faustus via Wikimedia Commons (X). Image License: Public Domain in the United States.
The central figure is captioned Hestia Polyolbos (”Hestia Rich in Blessings”). Hestia is the Greek goddess of the home and hearth. In Hellenistic Egypt, she was associated with Anuket (or Anukis), goddess of the rapids of the Nile. Hestia is depicted wearing Byzantine garments and jewelry, and is crowned with a wreath or tiara of pomegranates. She is distributing blessings to her attendants who resemble putti, divine messengers from classical mythology. The gifts are euphrosyne (“mirth”), euochia ( “good cheer”), prokope (“prosperity”), ploutos ( “wealth”), eulogia (“blessing”), and arete (“virtue”). Two larger figures stand at each side; the one to Hestia’s left holds a placard labeled phos (“light”).
Classicist Paul Friedlander believed that this tapestry was an object of household devotion, in spite of the decrees issued by Emperor Theodosius I a little over a century earlier, in 392 CE, forbidding all practices of traditional religion, including private rites, offerings of wine and incense, candles, and the veneration of statues. Friedlander’s view has been criticized by other scholars, though there is evidence to suggest the farther from Rome and Constantinople, the less likely Theodosius’ decrees were to be obeyed.
Sources:
Hanging with Hestia, Dunbarton Oaks
Hestia Polyolbos tapestry, Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index
Click here for other Coptic textiles with designs from Greek mythology.
“All is silent in the halls of the dead,’ Eddie heard himself whisper in a falling, fainting voice. ‘All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the rooms of ruin. These are the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one.”
'All is silent in the halls of the dead,' Eddie heard himself whisper in a freaking, fainting voice. 'All is forgotten in the halls of the dead. Behold the stairways which stand in darkness; behold the time of ruin. Three address the halls of the dead where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one. '
