Strange Islands

[jamreilly]

Every man is not a proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity; many, from the ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal unto truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazard her on a battle.

Sir Thomas Browne : Religio Medici (1643)

[jamreilly]

"Tuck up your sleeves and loosen your talktapes." - James Joyce : Finnegan's Wake

[jamreilly]

People are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.

[jamreilly]

“Men that look no further than their outsides think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that Fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death do thank my God that we can die but once. ‘Tis not only the mischief of diseases, and the villainy of poisons that make an end of us, we vainly accuse the fury of Guns, and the new inventions of death; 'tis in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholding unto every one wee meet he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.”

- Thomas Browne: Religio Medici (1643)

penelope.uchicago.edu/relmed/relmed.html

Considering the thousand doors that lead to death at Cemitério Alto de São João, Lisboa, Portugal. 01/ 2018.

[humanoidhistory]

[humanoidhistory]

The rings of Saturn, observed by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1980. (NASA)

[jamreilly]

"The part of life we really live is small."

"For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time. Vices beset us and surround us on every side, and they do not permit us to rise anew and lift up our eyes for the discernment of truth, but they keep us down when once they have overwhelmed us and we are chained to lust. Their victims are never allowed to return to their true selves; if ever they chance to find some release, like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and no rest from their lusts abides ...

... Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, and they rush to stones and arms if there is even the slightest dispute about the limit of their lands, yet they allow others to trespass upon their life—nay, they themselves even lead in those who will eventually possess it. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each one of us distribute his life! In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal."

- Seneca : On the Shortness of Life.

[jamreilly]

Escadinhas de São Cristóvão na velha Mouraria de Lisboa, Portugal.

[jamreilly]

On the 12th day of Christmas ..

[jamreilly]

A Marian Apparition At Sete Rios Station, Lisbon.

[jamreilly]

On the train from Alcântara to Algés. Portugal, December 2017.

[jellobiafrasays]

under the volcano (1966 ed.)

[jamreilly]

- Lewis Thomas : Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher (1990).

[magictransistor]

Kay Sage. Paysage. 1940.

[objetpetita]

The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum of fossils of life and civilisations.

Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (via objetpetita)

[furtho]

Beuford Smith’s Boy On Swing,  East 12th Street Park, NYC, 1968 (via here)  

[amiquote]

“ "The present is the instant in which the future crumbles into the past.” “

Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine short-story writer, essayist and poet (1899-1986), paraphrased by Susan Sontag in Letter to Borges (via amiquote)

[senecasredoubt]

When men’s minds have lost sight of true principles they are quick to take up false ones that thereafter obscure their vision.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (via senecasredoubt)